Tech prefers to be forward-facing. Like, obsessively so. What’s new? What’s next? We don’t even like to analyze and maintain what we’ve already made, let alone spend any time really looking back. After all, the interesting problems have already been solved... and where’s the money in it?
We can actually do both, and use the progress of technology to do a great service to the past. Bringing clarity, identity, context and even solving mysteries. Still usually no money in it, though.
This recent episode of 99% Invisible unravelled the story of the United States’ last Unknown Soldier in the Washington D.C. tomb/monument, whose remains dated from the Vietnam War. Spoiler alert: He was never really unknown. But… politics and PR…
Technology comes up in two interesting ways in that story. Thanks to advances in everything from trauma medicine to DNA analysis to GPS, it’s unlikely, should there be large-scale conflicts in the future, that there will be more unidentified or unrepatriated remains. Countries’ tombs and monuments will remain sealed time capsules.
Thanks to DNA analysis, it’s possible that remains from conflicts prior to the Vietnam War will be identified. But to date some attempts at analyzing older remains haven’t always produced definitive results (for various reasons). And in some cases and places the decision has been made not to disturb remains for the purposes of testing.
That said, a scant few days after listening to the 99pi podcast, I came across this article from Time. It does an excellent job illuminating just how important technological advances can be – beyond filling in who/what/where gaps of granular military history – but also for returning identity, dignity and family to those left for decades in a suspended state of wondering and incomplete mourning.
Back in the 1950s those bones would have remained silent, as would those of a thousand-year-old Viking warrior who – oops – was a woman, incorrectly identified for over a century. Modern science and tech are also illuminating women’s work in medieval scriptoria. Apparently history was full of girls doing stuff. Who knew?
On a more sinister note, technology’s ability to pinpoint identity can help solve decidedly more unsettling mysteries. Not quite a year ago the suspected Golden State Killer was arrested, thanks to DNA evidence and forensic genealogy.
Those tools are now being used to see if they can help crack the Zodiac killer case as well, which remains unsolved after 50 years. (Season 2, Episode 14: Sequence, of the Monster podcast discusses these cases and the technology and process in depth.)
While events from 50 or 100 years ago (when the First World War ended) might seem old, that’s still relatively “modern,” and technology existing at the time has enabled us to document (and preserve) events and experiences fairly extensively. There aren’t that many great modern mysteries remaining. But broad swaths of earlier time, geography and civilizations remain blank or riddled with speculation and biased interpretations.
Beyond war, technology has enabled us to fill in, or at least explore, all manner of gaps. Mapping technologies like Lidar have unearthed entire lost cities. Archaeologists – professional and amateur – can make amazing discoveries from the comfort of their offices or couches thanks to Google Earth.
The Titanic rested incognito at the bottom of the North Atlantic for nearly three-quarters of a century before technologies enabled us to see, record and visit it again in the 1980s. This brought a great deal more information about the ship’s construction (and weaknesses), the damage it suffered and how it sank. And, y’know, a movie.
Sometimes the things that technology enables us to learn about the past are somewhat minor, or of significant interest only to a niche community. But sometimes they rewrite the history books by providing perspectives other than the prevailing one(s) of the time. Which has “traditionally” been white, male and western.
Interestingly, though, we may have entered a new era where the ubiquity of technology has the opposite effect. In the future we could have mysteries regarding what really happened at cultural or historical turning points not because we don’t have enough data to interpret, but because we have too much.
Historically, some things will always remain mysteries simply because we don’t have enough (or anything) to analyze, regardless of how good our tech becomes. Even clay or stone is subject to bitrot. But these days, just think of how much media a public event generates. Any cell phone can record photos, video and sound. (And, perhaps as important, strategically edit it.)
Now multiply that by hundreds or thousands of people at an event. Different angles and vantage points and varying quality of the resulting media. Which of these is the most accurate? Which represents the most truthful truth? Or, once you aggregate and crunch all that data, does whatever averages out from it best represent what “really” happened?
I’m not so sure. See, this is an older problem than one might think. Even with media evidence, does that really mean we have the whole story? This episode of the Revisionist History podcast, regarding the story (stories) behind a single iconic photograph from 1963, suggests it’s never that simple. And now we’ve entered an era where any or all of this evidence can also be very credibly faked.
Of course, regardless of the evidence, there’s always the human factor. We’re the ones inventing and refining the technology. We’re the ones digging up history and feeding its data to the machines. We’re the ones analyzing and synthesizing results. And we’re all tainted by who, what, where and when we are.
Sure, if all you need to know is a DNA profile and a name, that’s hopefully straightforward. But anything bigger or broader than that is likely to shift and evolve over time.
And what if we do want our investments and tech advancements to make money? Nothing I’ve outlined really has that much potential to do so, even if many technologies do potentially have commercial as well as academic applications. I mean, I guess there is always the odd 300-year-old, multibillion-dollar shipwreck...
Now, there is possibly one technology that could fix it all. Take away the unknowns and guesswork and slanted interpretations and enable us to solve all the mysteries. Wouldn’t have to rely on any kind of media evidence. We could just go and hunt down answers to any of our questions.
I refer, of course, to the time machine. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
