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If You Had Something to Say to Future Generations...?
gauthier-s asks: "KEO is a project that intends to place a geostationary satellite in orbit that will keep our messages for future generations (up to 50k years after our current existence) as a 'souvenir of Humanity'. Everyone is invited to submit his own message to future civilizations, since it costs nothing to do so. It has been said that any message submitted will be included without any censorship. These messages will be stored for the long trip onto glass disc, which will hopefully be readable by whatever future technology exists when it is recovered. Submissions are possible until December 31, 2002, so take the time to think about your message!" If you feel inclined to share, what kind of message would you leave to the future children of Earth?
They will never listen to us. Even if we gave them the most insightful advice possible, they wouldn't follow it. Look at the bible! Does anyone actually care about what's in it? Most "Christians" never even read it, let alone understand it. And yet it could similarly be regarded as advice for future generations. And if we could ever somehow follow the gist of it strictly, as in, love your neighbour, live in peace and harmony, do not kill steal or covet etc. then we would have sort of a utopian, idyllic society. But who cares about the bible or any other religious text? It's only created rivalry between people of different religions, and generated the majority of all wars ever fought. Whatever you tell someone, you'll be lucky if they listen to it. People never learn anything except from their own experience. You may try time and time again to teach them how to properly live their lives, but it would take genetic manipulation to get people to actually learn from each other instead of learning from trial and error. If people would only learn from their elders, we would all have ceased bickering amongst ourselves a long, long time ago, after the first wars were fought.
Just look at spain and morocco. They're getting close to a war over some stupid deserted islands that no one ever heard about.Morocco just invaded one of them, and there's nothing there but rocks and sand, what's the point?
You might as well send them "frosty piss" and "AYB" messages. They'll shit on them.
I'm allowed, once in a while, aren't I?
But 50,000 years seems a bit too long.
Why?
The assumption is that our technology will continue to advance the farther we travel into the future.
But, consider _The Time Machine_ by H.G. Wells. When the main character traveled far enough into the future, eventually we reversed this trend, evolved into two separate species, and ran around in happiness about all the fruit we've found (okay...so its been a while since I read the book).
And I think Wells has this point right on. Look around us, people. If you haven't noticed, the renaissance is over. We've already passed our Great Enlightenment. And we've already passed our technological maturity.
Scientists already think that we pretty much know most of what there is to know (I read this somewhere, not sure where). Even if you're a programmer, what else is new or interesting to program? (I am seriously curious about this, but probably off-topic)
At what point does going to school mean learning that any new idea you have has already been discoved and written about in depth?
And at what point are we running around naked, glad at being so happy eating our yummy fruit, completely oblivious about the messages contained in a dark satellite, silently circling around the earth?