NADA ~ National Association of Digital Archaeologists

[truthman]

July 17, 3259
Associated Press

Earlier today, the National Association of Digital Archaeologists (NADA) gathered together to discuss another fascinating finding. It seems that, while searching through trillions of digital files, John Lewis, an archaeologist from Des Moines, IA, has located another heap of ancient websites that appear to have been some sort of digital community whereby people from many parts of the world congregated and collectively shared knowledge.

What they have found still baffles them and they are currently electing a team from the NADA to 'sift' through the millions of files associated with these websites.

Among the websites found were:

http://www.theologyweb.com ~ It appears that this was some sort of religion or denomination in the strain of Christianity. The archaeologists are sticking this with their findings from http://www.landoverbaptist.org as they appear to be from the same religion.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/ ~ This website appears to have been the leading website for news, countrywide. This too is an excellent find since the previous find appeared to be some sort of comedic rendering of news. That find was called http://www.drudgereport.com

http://members.aol.com/houdini994/ ~ This website is simply amazing. It is a detailed account a movie called Spaceballs. Spaceballs appears to be the greatest movie of the 2nd millenium in the genre that the primitives called 'Science Fiction'. Spaceballs has a humorous element throughout the production that leads us to believe that all Science Fiction motion pictures were humorous too.

===================================

I have written the above to get your thoughts going on something.

It makes me curious what the future archaeologists and historians will do with what they find from today. Will they understand something like Spaceballs? Will they know that it was a spoof on something else? Or, what about productions that come out nowadays that are spoofs about spoofs about original works?

How would they classify something as intricate as TWeb?

What if the first news website they found was http://www.foxnews.com ? Would they then think that our nation was conservative?

How might these observations help us in the field of archaeology today?

truthman

[romepunk]

http://members.aol.com/houdini994/ ~ This website is simply amazing. It is a detailed account a movie called Spaceballs. Spaceballs appears to be the greatest movie of the 2nd millenium in the genre that the primitives called 'Science Fiction'. Spaceballs has a humorous element throughout the production that leads us to believe that all Science Fiction motion pictures were humorous too.
:lol: I just about fell out of my chair laughing at that. Spaceballs is the greatest of the 2nd millenium. Not just out of sci-fi, all genres.

You have some interest ideas. I've thought about this too. We (as a society) always hold written evidence as somewhat suspect because it can be so easily made up and falsfied, thus the Bible is getting a hard time. Despite the Bible record, few scholars believe in The Exodus. I wonder if people will still believe in the Holocaust a 1,000 years from now. Arcaheological evidence will exist for death camps, but who says they aren't POW camps. Film strips will exist showing the horrors, but hey, Schindler's List does the same thing, and that's staged. Besides, I have a movie that shows a flying saucer blowing up the White House, so you can do anything with film, it can't be trusted. Not to mention that the whole story of the Holocaust fits into those same old tired archetypes everpresent in the Bible. Evil Tyrant, somewhat occultic, oppressing the Jews. The Holocaust may very well become a mythic footnote in the history of 20th century, from the perspective of the distant future. The 20th century wars will be collapsed into ideaological battle between capitalism, communism and fascism. Specifics will be in doubt.

[NeilUnreal]

July 24, 3259
Associated Press - Religion Desk

A heated battle has erupted among theologians of the True List, with the conservative faction arguing that TheologyWeb represents an early, heretical offshoot of the True List, while the liberal faction argues that TheologyWeb is the original basis of the True List. The Grand High Enumerator of the True List is reportedly studying the situation and will be issuing an official proclamation later in the week.

-Neil

[elysian]

One of the subjects that came up in our latest adult Bible Study was the meaning of Scriptural inerrancy. Pastor shared with us that back in the 1960's when he was at seminary they were taught that in some places Scripture didn't jive with the archeological record, that some of the stories such as Joshua and the battle of Jericho were legends- allegory maybe- but not historical fact.

More and more after more thorough study much of Scripture that was written off as legend or as "allegory" actually has evidence to back it up- the parting of the Red Sea and the battle of Jericho are good examples. There is even evidence that there was at least a widespread regional flood behind the Noah's Ark story.

Does Scripture inform science or does science inform Scripture? Perhaps a bit of both?

I don't believe the two are incompatible (though I don't necessarily buy a literal 6 day creation in the sense that a creation day=a normal 24 hour "earth day.")

Perhaps we will find the Scripture to be more inerrant and inspired than we once thought!

[truthman]

this going a different route than I thought it would, but that's cool

I'm really hoping to understand how future societies will classify us. For instance, take the millions of blogs out there. What will they say about all the unique types of information and information handling that we currently have.

truthman

[NeilUnreal]

I think the problem is we’re unfamiliar with our own late second and early third millennium history.

Most modern inhabitants of our Queuedeo/Listian society are able to trace the foundation of the True List back to the ANE (Ancient Network of Earth), and early 21st-century Queuedaism. “Queue” is a modern word used to translate the Queuedaic word “thread” in the PV (Previous Version).

Fewer, however are familiar with the details of the split between Northern and Southern Orthodox Listianity. This split is also called the Great Partitioning, and it occurred when the fourth council of Knuth was unable to agree on whether the List was best thought of as singly-linked or doubly-linked.

If modern Northerners are aware of Southern Orthodoxy at all, it usually brings to mind images of brooding, gilded icons, animated cursors, and other desktop paraphernalia. When informed that the Southern Orthodox List believes that the List is doubly-linked, most Northerners respond with adjectives like “baroque” and “Byzantine.” They take single-linkage as received dogma and consider the additional pointers as being unnecessary additions to the True List.

The modern debates in the North about the True List center on four topics:

First, there are those that argue that both the Previous Version (PV) and the Current Version (CV) are bug-free. They argue that bugs in either version render the entire List corrupt. More liberal schools of thought reject the idea that version bugs of necessity invalidate List pointers which have been demonstrated to dereference properly.

Second there is the bootstrap node controversy. Conservatives argue that a special-case, non-enumerable, nil node is required as a foundation for the List. Liberals argue that only data nodes are required and that all nodes are enumerable by science.

Third, archaeologists differ with respect to how much the Version Control System supports what doctrine teaches us about the List. Liberals argue that current source reconstruction yields a result far different from either the PV or the CV. Conservatives argue that the Version Control System itself is corrupt or incomplete and that if it were complete it would support both the PV and the CV.

Fourth, there is the controversy over the origin of the Queue itself. Conservatives argue that the Queue was independently developed on the ANE, then downloaded to and re-uploaded from the Egypt server. Liberal scholars believe the Queue is derivative from source code already present on the ANE. The most liberal scholars believe there are no records of the Queue prior to offline storage in Babylon.

-Neil

[Alien]

July 17, 3259
It makes me curious what the future archaeologists and historians will do with what they find from today. Will they understand something like Spaceballs? Will they know that it was a spoof on something else? Or, what about productions that come out nowadays that are spoofs about spoofs about original works?

How would they classify something as intricate as TWeb?

What if the first news website they found was http://www.foxnews.com ? Would they then think that our nation was conservative?

How might these observations help us in the field of archaeology today?

truthman

To attempt a serious reply, I think it depends to a large extent on what had happened in the intervening 1255 years. If our civilisation had collapsed and risen again, and most records had been lost or corrupted, then no doubt many inaccurate conclusions would be drawn from what they could find. On the other hand, if civilisation had survived and continued to advance technologically, it could be that most of our records would exist in readable form. (How long is a CD or DVD expected to last?) In the latter case, the historians would have an embarrassment of riches to work with and probably much more advanced tools to use for searching, correlating, etc. They would have little excuse for making the kind of mistake you suggest.

It is my opinion that the biggest problem with historical research of the Biblical era is the small number of documents that have survived.

I read a (humorous) sci-fi short story that dealt with this subject. Aliens land on Earth many millenia in the future, to find that the human race is extinct. The only record they can find of our life is a single roll of film, which they base all their conclusions on. They conclude that ours was a very violent civilisation, with people of many different physical shapes and sizes dashing around in all directions, wrecking vehicles, falling of cliffs etc, but not getting permanently hurt (from which they conclude that we were a very tough race). They never decipher the language, and wonder what the final frame of the movie says ... it is "That's all Folks!"

[Socratism]

I once read a great spoof of "unwarranted conclusions" that was written by an archeologist.

I think it was called "The Ancient of the Motels" or something similar.

I was close. It was "Motel of the Mysteries"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0395284252/ref=sib_dp_rdr/103-8190415-0904637#reader-link

[NeilUnreal]

"Motel of the Mysteries" rocks. In fact, all of David Macaulay's books are worthwhile.

-Neil

[truthman]

Hey all, that book looks awesome. It's exactly what I'm talking about here.

Thanks for the info. I don't have a spare cent for purchasing though. Anybody want to loan me a copy?

truthman