[pintxo]

75-100 years is roughly 3 generations. Which is, I guess about the average number of generations we have in our smallest social unit: the family. I guess we learn a lot from our parents and grandparents, but hardly anything from our great-grandparents, as they are usually not longer around. Which means 75-100 years is the learning horizon within our families, and therefore for a big part of our journey to become social beings.

I am a bit worried that we are loosing quickly the last people remembering the atrocities of ww1+2.

[ben_w]

I remember reading somewhere that there’s a specific name for that period of time, but I can’t find it even on Wikipedia’s lists of humorous units.

[barry-cotter]

Saeculum

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum

> A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or, equivalently, the complete renewal of a human population.[1] Originally it meant the time from the moment that something happened (for example the founding of a city) until the point in time that all people who had lived at the first moment had died. At that point a new saeculum would start. According to legend, the gods had allotted a certain number of saecula to every people or civilization; the Etruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula.[2

[ben_w]

Thanks! :)

[coffeeblack]

Maybe the Internet and its function as memory of humankind may break that cycle in the future?

[chii]

but books has been available for a long time - wouldn't this have made a difference?

[coffeeblack]

Books are more abstract. The internet has video and sound and casual conversations and memes and the daily trivialities of the life of millions of ordinary people.

If books and newspapers made a as difference when they were new, I don’t know. But now I want to know.

[junon]

Indexing, barrier to entry, higher degree of perspectives and levels of explanation/understanding, different mediums, etc.

[groby_b]

Unfortunately, large parts of human memory are 404.

I wish that was just a pithy remark - link rot is really, and it's rapid. Add to that that modern paper is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and the memory of humankind is starting to look shaky.

[pintxo]

The internet is pull-based. Grandparents push their experiences to their offspring.

[coffeeblack]

True. But I could imagine that 100 years from now, kids may browse the Facebook feed of their great grandparents, maybe even as a immersive 3D recreation of the life of their relative from a century ago. Including all their personal notes and thoughts.