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Ask HN: Which tech founder, company or tool will be remembered in 1,000 years?

3 points by jollofricepeas ↗ HN
What will future generations know about our time?

- How likely are they to know the work of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk? Who will be most important to them?

- Will they be most impressed by the fact that we put a helicopter on Mars or the invention of smartphones? Which will be most important in their time?

- Will the tech companies of our generation be remembered and viewed negatively in the same light as monopolies like Standard Oil or colonizing entities like the Dutch East Company? Will the companies of our time be remembered at all?

14 comments

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tus666
None, we remember thinkers, not engineers.

They will remember Einstein and Newton and Aristotle, just like we do.

trinovantes
I'd say Einstein is remembered today because his name is ingrained in our pop culture and is effectively an adjective for being a genius. I doubt many people outside of STEM even know who Newton or Aristotle is.

Personally I doubt any name will be remembered a thousand year from now amongst the entire population.

missedthecue
Everyone learns about Newton and the apple tree in elementary school.
c0balt
Yep, and everyone learns about lots of history, math and other stuff. But if you don't use it regularly and, e.g., work as chef in a restaurant, you might/ will forget a lot over time.
cosmodisk
There are plenty of engineers that will stay in history forever but obviously they aren't as popular as some thinkers.
tus666
Name one. Actually I can - Brunel who built much of Victorian Britain, but only because I have a specific interest in that and he may well be the most famous engineer in history.

I suppose Da Vinci is kinda sortof an engineer, but he was a visionary thinker engineer not a bridge builder. And he kind of painted the Mona Lisa too.

amohajerani
Wow, that was profound. You are a thinker my friend.
tus666
Actually I am an engineer.
f0e4c2f7
Very good chance the Capital of Mars or some significant cities / outposts on Mars are named after Elon.

I think there is actually quite a good chance he is remembered in 1000 years. At least in a vauge recognize the name from textbooks kind of way.

beardyw
I think "remember" takes on various shades. Is name recognition the same as understanding what they did?

Most people will recognise the name Julius Caesar but few could say much more (at school I had to read his Invasion of Britain in latin so I know a little - utterly failed the subject)

Ask someone about Aristotle and 99% will have no clue. A Greek maybe.

I would say that outside of people associated with a religion, only names will sometimes live on.

noud
Can you name 10 founders of companies from more than 1,000 years ago? I cannot. Additionally, there are only a handful of companies left that were founded more than 1,000 years ago [1]. Therefore, it's unlikely that any founder or company will be remembered in 1,000 years.

If I have to make a wild guess what will be remembered in 1,000 years, I would guess that SI units with its derived units will still be in place. [2] These (derived) units are named after some inventors, James Watt, Gustav Hertz, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Lord Kelvin. Maybe some of them will be remembered in 1,000 years. But keep in mind, 1,000 years is a very very long time. A lot can be forgotten in that time span.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

jollofricepeas
I didn’t even think of SI units. That’s a good point.

In the same way that the Dutch East India and British India companies are referenced in college courses as the first “publicly traded” companies or as tools of colonization, I was wondering if the impact of Apple, Microsoft, Tesla might be viewed in a similar way in the future.