
Who will remember you in 100 years? - mwidell
https://micaelwidell.com/who-will-remember-you-in-100-years/
======
kator
Many times, in my career while negotiating something with another party I've
said, "Let's get this fixed, it won't mean much to either of us in 50 years
and in 100 nobody will remember either of us."

I've managed to solve some pretty hairy problems saying that, the other party
usually pauses and realizes the futility of our disagreement and we work
something out.

Call me morbid but I started saying that when I was 18 years old.

I also say, "I raise my kids for me to die". It shocks people when I say it
but what parent wants to outlive their children? Honestly my goal is to teach
them how to make good decisions and find what feeds their soul for their short
stay in this world.

I’ve read many things over the years about the deep need for humans to somehow
push death out beyond their consciousness because otherwise it would destroy
them to think every day could be the end of them.

I don’t see it that way, I feel like I borrowed these atoms my body is
assembled from and it’s my goal to use them to learn, love and enjoy the
amazing reality we live in every day. Today could be my last, so what, at some
point I must give my atoms back to the universe for whatever purpose they find
in the future. Today they’re mine, and I’m happy to have them just a bit
longer to discover a tiny bit more about our existence and the people around
us all.

~~~
martalist
It's not morbid, but sensible. No-one gets out of life alive.

An unexpected death in my immediate family several years ago helped me realize
how underprepared most of us are for death; for all the people and living
things around us to die. Rather than be caught surprised, I've tried to
remember that life can end in any moment, and it's best to make the most of
things (and borrowed atoms, as you say) while you can.

~~~
marktangotango
Indeed, losing a loved one used to be common, now it's exceptional. One thing
that struck me when reading Dickens was how prominent death was. Everyone had
family members who'd died. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings. I think
almost universally in the current era we take life and health for granted. The
advent of antibiotics and sanitation has really had a profound effect. We know
this, but we don't _know_ this.

On the one hand, some one realizing the seeming meaninglessness of existence
is banal. This is well trod ground for many after all. But on the other hand
it's also a an xkcd 1053[1] privilege to be a part of the authors epiphany.

Personally, for myself, the question of 'what legacy shall I leave?' resulted
in finally settling down and having children of my own. I felt like I received
an immense gift of a kind, warm, and loving home. I seek to continue that
legacy with my own family. Because in the end, that's all most can hope to do;
be a positive influence on the generations to come.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

------
jupiter90000
I sometimes pay attention to the sheer number of people I cross paths with in
life, and think: see this person going by in their car, or that guy jogging up
the street. I know almost nothing about what their life has been about, what
struggles they've faced, what successes they've had, what it was like for them
growing up, what are they thinking and feeling right now. I'd wager that the
large majority of people out there, I know nothing about and anything they've
gone through hasn't even crossed my mind. So most don't even need to be gone
100 years, to be largely unknown on an intimate level except to a relatively
small circle of people.

I can find myself believing (perhaps due to a survival instinct) that what I
believe, think, do, etc matter greatly. The truth is, those things matter to
me and perhaps several others in my close circle. Sure, I can do things to
engage in greater society and provide a positive influence on others. That
doesn't change the fact that, in all likelihood, a large portion of the world
isn't even aware of or concerned much about my existence.

I like a quote from the book of the samurai (hagakure) that says: "this world
is vanity indeed. People always forget this." I've made up how important
things are and probably will continue to as part of human nature. So I'll try
to have a life I can appreciate and enjoy while it's here, because I want to
-- and most other people won't even notice, much less care, if I do.

------
madiathomas
Living your life with a goal to be remembered in 100 years sounds more like
living life to impress people you aren't even sure will regard what you are
doing as important. Politicians, whether they changed the world for good or
bad, are more likely to be remembered that 99% of who are contributing
positively to this world.

~~~
cm2187
Unless you become "the cannibal of {your village name here}"!

------
jondubois
Death makes life fair because we all end up with nothing. The universe itself
won't last forever. In terms of justice and equality, this is very comforting.

I don't understand all these people who are funding research to cure death.
Even if you manage to cure natural death, you definitely won't be able to cure
occupational death.

~~~
falcolas
> I don't understand all these people who are funding research to cure death.

It's very simple: they don't want to die. They're enjoying life, and death is
the specter which threatens to halt that enjoyment. They are also in the
privileged position of having money to throw at the problem.

In someone's 30's and 40's, the biggest fear is of death as a general evil to
be conquered. I wonder how the focuses of these groups will change over time;
will they change their focus from death in general to particular symptoms of
aging in particular?

Will their focus move to curing cancer if they get cancer? How about
preventing Alzheimer's when their loved ones no longer remember them?
Regeneration of cartilage when they can no longer walk around pain free? And
so forth...

------
WalterBright
I know some things about my grandfather from 120 years ago, because he'd write
letters.

[http://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html](http://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html)

I suppose the stuff I post on the internet will last forever :-)

~~~
atemerev
Geocities were there 20 years ago. I posted some cringeworthy things there.
Now they aren't there anymore (thank goodness).

Your posts, too, shall pass.

~~~
marktangotango
I'll just drop this here as an FYI:

[http://www.oocities.org/](http://www.oocities.org/)

~~~
atemerev
I don't remember my Geocities ID in TimesSquare and I am not really inclined
to look it up now. But thank you, thank you.

 _(cries in horror and runs away)_

------
stupidcar
Even contemporary fame and success is no guarantee of being remembered. I've
stumbled across Wikipedia articles on countless authors who were hugely
successful in the 19th and early 20th century, often publishing dozens of
widely-read books, but who are already almost entirely forgotten. I'm sure
they imagined they had done enough to secure a personal legacy, but it seems
not.

------
Uptrenda
That's one thing that has always bothered me about grave yards: how little the
people end up leaving behind. An entire life gets reduced to a few meaningless
facts about a person that don't really tell us anything about who they were.
It would kind of be nice in that sense if there was more information available
about a person to perhaps leave something behind. Maybe some wisdom or
entertaining historical facts from the person... I dunno.

This is somewhat of a joke but: put sha256 hashes on grave stones that
identify contracts on a decentralized cloud storage system and then fund them
with enough coins to enforce their content for the next 1000 years.
Technically you could use time-lock encryption to reveal progressive
challenges to the hosting nodes to prove that the content still exists
overtime so that an autonomous system that enforces content could be made
(existing protocols somewhat depend on an active system to prove that the
content still exists but this is getting a bit technical now... Or otherwise
just embed content into a blockchain if its small enough.)

I guess there is also tomb stones that have QR codes on them that let you do
something similar with an app but there's no guarantee that the company will
still be around in the next 100 years. With a self-organising autonomous
storage system you could have a way to intelligently reallocate content
without any kind of human intervention. So that overtime if the people hosting
content go down or decide to stop doing it, the storage contracts can be
dynamically reallocated to new nodes who will collect fees from the contracts.

Much like a DropBox that never dies - it would far outlive anyone today and so
long as the funds for hosting content still existed on some blockchain - so
too would the content. And that my friends, is why blockchains are over-hyped
and stupid. LMAO, blockchains for dead people? Did you really buy that. I
mean, seriously.

~~~
jpatokal
The problem is not that information can't be persisted: diaries etc have been
around for a long time. The problem is that there is nobody left who will care
about a person they've never even met.

~~~
tim333
I recently tried looking up some relatives about 5 generations back. If you
average 2 kids each then in 5 generations you have 40 or so living descendants
who may be curious. It was interesting because one of them wrote a family
history in fairly literary form - bit Jane Austen in style. Not sure we would
have bothered if it was just diaries.

------
partycoder
I was putting working a genealogical tree today (using gramps
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramps)).

Even within your family it is hard to remember people after a couple of
generations.

------
eklavya
It's also important to remember "will you care?".

~~~
mirimir
Arguably, we'll never know that we're dead. That's a kind of immortality, I
suppose.

------
adam12
"Your most ambitious and daring dreams, no matter if they succeed or not, will
mean absolutely nothing when you are gone."

I need to remember this when I'm freaking out about an interview or a
presentation.

------
dwe3000
I remember my great-grandfathers: Gilbert, Clyde, Coit, and Sam. They mean
something to me because I would not be me if they weren't them. Something
would be different if their lives were different. There are connections. Life
continues.

Yes, we should live our lives not worried about appearances to others. Most of
our accomplishments will be fleeting at best, but the lives we live influence
our children and our grandchildren, and that influence passes along, whether
they remember my name - because of a shared passion for family genealogy - or
not.

------
DanAndersen
I'm curious what the policies are for the persistence of cemetery plots in
different areas. I thankfully have had no personal interaction with the
funeral industry yet, but the article's matter-of-fact mentioning of
gravestones being uprooted and hauled elsewhere (or even destroyed) after some
period of inactivity seemed hideous to me. A bit of research (
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-
pl...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-plots-have-
expiration-dates) ) suggests that the US (where I reside) seems to have more
permanence in burial plots than Europe does. I suppose it makes sense given
the limitations of space and accumulated time that Europe has had to deal with
as opposed to the US, but there is something aesthetically horrifying to me
about the idea of evicting dead bodies for failure to "pay rent." Moving
graves for new development is one thing, but for it to be a policy of an
active cemetery seems like such an alien concept.

In a similar way, I've found myself less happy with the idea of modern
cremation the more I learn about it. The mental picture of "body goes into the
fire, ashes come out of the fire" seemed beautiful, but the use of the
cremulator ( essentially a blender to crush up all the bits of bone that
didn't turn to ashes, as seen in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTclbBKxKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTclbBKxKk)
) gives me pause. It may be an irrational thought in our modern materialistic
world, but that last act of push-button pulverization feels violent and overly
industrial. Perhaps embalming is not much better, but at least that connects
with a familiar historical tradition. I wonder how far back the use of
cremulation in cremation goes -- in modern times can you request that your
cremation keeps the bits of bones "unprocessed"?

------
timdafweak
Well, an interesting and yet humbling, depressing read.

What a way to start my morning.

~~~
AndrewOMartin
That feeling isn't depression, it's hubris leaving your body.

------
arca_vorago
Depends on how much of my consciousness I am able to put into the AI that
becomes the singularity.

~~~
sigi45
In his spin on this view, only until the universe freezes. Its longer than a
100 years but still :P.

For you, this still doesn't matter as you are still dead.

------
tellarin
In all seriousness,

Who cares? I don't.

It's like discussing life after death. I'm fine with just this one.

------
mirimir
In many countries, cemeteries aren't managed so well as this one in Sweden.
I've toured my share, and recall seeing graves that were hundreds of years
old. In some places, thousands.

Not that it matters, of course.

------
fdej
From the epilogue of Barry Lyndon: "It was in the reign of George III that the
aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich
or poor, they are all equal now."

------
antisthenes
Is it possible to remember someone without having shared experiences with that
person?

I don't think so.

Otherwise you're just remembering a short list of their most significant
accomplishments and not really the person themselves.

So if no one is alive who interacted with me in 100 years, then, by
definition, no one will remember me. A few people might recollect my
accomplishments, but it will only have been done through 3rd party accounts
and documents like my notes/books or photographs.

------
giancarlostoro
If any software I work on today survives that long without any major rewrites
I just hope they are not yelling and cursing my name because I missed a 100
year old bug.

------
josh_fyi
With today's networked data, assuming enough technological acceleration that
all the web content gets archived, your Tweets, posts, and other writings
could be available indefinitely. Not so sure that that's a good thing.

------
elorant
Well there's a very good chance we'll be alive in 100 years.

~~~
dbg31415
This is the most depressing comment in the thread.

It's not about how long we live, it's about how long we live while we are in
our prime... Gen 1 tech issues... we are extending lives, we aren't really
extending prime years... so all we're doing is stretching out that twilight-
period. Every time I visit my 97 year-old grandparents they say things like,
"I pray I'll go soon..."

I'd rather just go quick at 50 than prolong my years after 70. The thought of
perpetually being old and frail sounds like some sort of torture. And while it
may be appealing to say, "I'd like to stay 21 forever..." 21 year-olds tend to
be idiots and the thought of having "21 year-old problems" forever sounds like
a whole other form of torture.

~~~
japano1se
I'm fascinated by this idea.

Let's say there's tech to freeze your age at whatever point you like. Where
would you want it to be frozen?

~~~
giancarlostoro
26 sounds like a decent age, but you never know if it's your prime or not.

------
bertlequant
The pale blue dot will

------
diyseguy
Easy: the internet. Archive.org if it still exists

------
andrewclunn
TLDR: YOLO!

