I was just reading about a young woman who was killed by police who’s referenced in a song I’ve heard many times. I know I’ve read about her before, but I couldn’t even tell you when. Reading about her again got me to thinking about the half-life of information salience.
Andy Warhol (I think) said in the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes, and I have heard references to “fifteen minutes of fame” many times during my life, but humans simply don’t live anywhere near long enough for that to be possible. I tend to think Dunbar’s Number is much closer to reality than Warhol’s pith.
I think about this in the context of history. Hitler’s nazis were the third reich, but what does that even mean? What were the first two reichs? Was Bismark involved? Another saying is that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Was the thinking there literal or figurative? In an era of scarce text, that is a completely reasonable thing to say — ya gotta encourage the kids to learn about history. However, when the lion’s share of recorded knowledge is easily accessed, discretion and judiciousness become much more important.
Now and again, I contemplate time in the context of humans. At a micro-level, it makes a lot of sense to divide up time into stuff like hours and minutes. However, the larger units, like decades and centuries, seem less useful. In general, you can see society agrees: day-to-day facts erode quickly, as people of the present era typically care very little about the typical days of the past. Presumably, the quotation about doomed repetition doesn’t extend to basic ins-and-outs.
There’s a passage from (I think) “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” that talks about how every day books are being written and words are getting written that will never be read (guilty!). I think about that because it feels very true. Whereas a generation ago, I certainly considered sharing thoughts quite important, but I tend to think people should generally exercise more restraint and only contribute information when it’s potentially useful (what a terrible time it must be for stand-up comedians).