Social Media Posts, Algorithms, And Conspiracy Theories Can Shape Future Generations’ Perceptions Of The Present World.
Today’s Data Tell Future Historians, When John Randolph wrote his first book on the life of the Bakunin Russian family in the nineteenth century, he had a mountain of sources. He says:
I wrote hundreds and maybe thousands of letters to write this book. All of these messages carefully store in the family archive.
Bakunin’s letters described their lives and relationships in great detail and provided interesting details to historians such as Randolph. Randolph is president of the Eastern European and Eurasian Center for the Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois; But what if he had an archive of social media posts and a collection of photos?
Certa, only the form, and content of the remaining records can change people’s perceptions of past searches. This raises an interesting question in our day: If digital media survives into the distant future and is available to future historians (although there is no guarantee that they will survive), how can they influence their judgment of the present world?
Plain text messages, emails, and social media posts are all indications of events and comments that have been shared in the past. Thanks to thousands of images and video records, future history will likely encounter a rich source of present-day events. They can understand the body language and tone of voice of people in the 1990s; While such data for the Middle Ages are very scarce. Randolph says:
One of the interesting things happening today is getting a full view of the past with more color and glaze.
Movies and TV shows and personal photos, videos, and social media posts capture everyday events in great detail. The pressure that people were facing. They show how to travel, eat and socialize. Nowhere in human history has there been a record of documents such so small parts of life.
Anyone studying the history of food, exercise, transportation, leisure, or other aspects of life will use the current data; But what about the mindset? On the one hand, many people publish tweets and posts about their thoughts and feelings, and on the other hand, the long and accurate narrations that people brought in their letters hundreds of years ago are rarely found.
Future historians will be amazed at how the Dodge meme, which includes a beautiful dog, became so popular that it symbolizes currency.
The authors of the letters recorded not only events of their time; They also narrated their individual reactions to those events; From MMontegotago, who introduced the smallpox vaccine in Britain, to Hurricane Walpole, whose letters documented social change, including Georgian madness for bathing in mineral springs. Blogs, non-fiction books, and all kinds of journalism have replaced yesterday’s letters; However, by definition, they do not contain confidential or private information.
“Given the nature of current social networks, future historians may narrate our age as an era of narcissism,” says Katherine Weller, information scientist and head of the Social Services and Analysis Group at the GESIS Institute for Social Sciences in Germany. Social capital has always been important in human society, and futility is nothing new. However, Weller shows that countless posting of selfies and the desire to improve one’s position shows many people care about the mentality of others about themselves. Paying attention to this issue can occupy the minds of future researchers. Weller adds:
Imagine the galleries and collections of the museum in which you walk around and see the most influential current Instagram activists and their posts.
Seventeenth-century portraits were dedicated to the aristocracy and the monarchy; Because they were rich enough to hire artists. Today, social class manifests its different way. Some people have more followers on the web, and their voices are heard more. Social class is just as important t, but anyone can show their life through social media.
Future researchers will look at not only digital records but also physical objects. One of the materials that will last for years is plastic. For example, plastic packaging reveals many details about products and food, raw mater, dials, and storage methods—plastic isinterestingtive subject for the future. Humans have already produced large volumes of waste and do not know what to do with it.
Current memes influence future Historia; Like yesterday’s cartoons had this effect.
It will not be difficult for the future to realize the way of life in the 21st century. Still, Weller points out that any historian asks one of the biggest questions is: How and for what meaningful historical events reveal? For example, why did a specific political movement start, and how did it spread? Social networks can record viral memes and messes,ges; But that alone is not enough to describe the popularity of an idea in a larger population. Weller says:
In today’s world, some algorithms shape our lives.
Researchers were still to understand the algorithms fully. As long as the internal performance of algorithmic systems for related analyzes is not maintained, their impact on history will remain a huge and mysterious black box. Also, future generations may not be able to figure out how to use a website like Facebook; Even if the Facebook content of our time is preserved and available for years. Alexis Madrigal writes in The Atlantic that the performance of social networking sites is not saved every time they are updated or redesigned. These updates occur frequently.
Current current ideologies and political interests can confuse future historians. Misinformation circulating on social media raises these questions for historians: Why did so few people turn to conspiracy theories about earth’s flatnessarth in the early 21st century, or why were vaccines used as weapons?
Even today, it isn’t easy to find in-depth answers to these questions. Now suppose the future has no evidence of these issues. Did 21st-century algorithms change people to the point that some of them brainwash? Some doubted the manipulated media; But why did they accept the data so easily? The same questions arise for modern historians about past centuries.
One possible concern is that current digital misinformation may be valued in the future. Suppose people take a different stance on political events a hundred years after the current newspaper columns, blogs, and tweets; Because they will be faced with a lot of bipolar information. Randolph states:
People can get what they want out of the box, which will exacerbate the problem because of the scale of the issues.
In other words, current misinformation can distort history. This is even more likely due to digital media; Because the web acts as a giant de-escalator machine. Images and videos are often published without any information about their origin or how they were made or made; It is not even clear whether they were edited or produced by artificial intelligence systems.
Historian blogger Claire Miles also raises this concern. He discusses the informational value of memes for future generations. The current memes can be considered an evolved form of eighteenth-century political cartooSarcastic captions usually accompany these emissions. However, like some old cartoons, the creator’s identity and motives are unknown. Miles believes:
When studying memes in the future, we must keep in mind that these memes were created by someone with a different interpretation of a particular event or topic and based on real information.
In addition, the current volume and volume of data is so large that it will be challenging to study in the coming centuries. Randolph says:
I think presenting today’s information to future generations is like presenting a cluttered repository of random data.
Historians have to rely on data science methods to automatically search and organize archives to get the data they need. There is also the inverse possibility that the amount of information leftover can show the past very calmly and favorably. For example, people may rightly or wrongly have a good mindset about life in the 2000s; But they have had a completely negative mentality since the 1800s.
In the meantime, Weller believes this will not happen. Future generations will be amazed by the jobs of people like Steve Jobs or spend decades understanding the rapidly changing lives of people in developing countries. They may think that posts or tweets reveal people’s thoughts about big challenges such as climate change. Weller says:
No matter what, fascinating stories emerge.