To State The Obvious: Addressing History's Blind Spot | Jason Roberts

Long Now Member Jason Roberts elucidates how common knowledge becomes uncommon, and emphasizes the need for a Department of Obvious Information.
With thousands of members from all around the world, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experiences to offer. We're excited to showcase our annual curated set of short Ignite Talks created and given by the Long Now Members themselves. Presenting on the subjects of their choice, speakers have precisely 5 minutes to amuse, educate, enlighten, or inspire the audience.
Our speakers and their talks:
Natasha Blum: Famous Last Words: Self-Discovery for Life, Death, and Rebirth
Dave Elfving: My AI Co-Teacher
Altay Guvench: Ultraviolet Exploration: Fluorescence in Nature
Trevor Haldenby: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Fossil?
Andra Keay: Robotopia
Alyssa Ravasio: Recreation for Restoration
Jason Roberts: To State The Obvious: Addressing History's Blind Spot
Ya'el Shatz: From Dirt to Treasure
Sarah Cameron Sunde: Tides As Metaphor: Proposals Toward Living on Tidal Time
Diane Tate: Oral History and Human Connection
Natalia Vasquez: Visualizing Climate Futures
Jason Winn: Stories as Ancient Maps: A Tale Told for Ten Thousand Five Hundred Years
Connie Yang: Nonagenarians Doing Shit
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[@FlameForgedSoul]

A search here on YT yields about a dozen significant results on how to make Garum, so We're not so certain about that one. Otherwise a very salient point once made.

[@vapormissile]

"It's a garum buggy. Doi?!"

[@Libellisth]

Garum est salsus

[@anna_in_aotearoa3166]

From a linguistic & archaeological point of view, these lacuna caused by loss of context around "common knowledge" are really fascinating, and SUCH a headache in translation of ancient texts! This is not just an academic problem, however, but one that can have significant real-life present-day implications...? Think for example of the Bible & Torah - these texts still have enormous religious, political & philosophical influence... and yet at the same time they're full of words & cultural concepts that have lost their historical context & cannot be fully translated. (Looking at the various guesses or elisions made by past translators is also an interesting topic in itself, mind you!)

[@JE-ee7cd]

😊👍

[@czperiod2576]

Good point. We have no idea what the Roman national anthem sounded like because no one wrote it down.