Life After People. One of the last amazing productions of the History Channel as-was, before it became all Ice-Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens and fucking Pawn Stars.
It’s just the speculative history of all of what humanity would leave behind if, for some reason, every human disappeared in a single day. With experts in preservation, ecology, geosciences, history and infrastructural engineering, it asks: What are the cascading effects of a worldwide technological civilisation? And how long would it take for everything we have built to be buried in the dusts of time? Look on, ye mighty, and despair.
Sounds fascinating. By coincidence, I just listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage about “technofossils”.
Brian Cox and Robin Ince dig deep into the strata of an imagined human history to unearth the curious concept of technofossils. Joined by paleobiologist Sarah Gabbott, material scientist Mark Miodownik and comedian and tech enthusiast Aurie Styla the panel unearth how the everyday objects that we throw away today compare to fossils of the past.
Together, the panel investigates how these modern artifacts could degrade over time to become the fossils of the future. From old smartphones buried in bedside drawers to sprawling landfill sites, they imagine how these remnants of the Anthropocene might puzzle future archaeologists—and speculate on what these researchers might infer about our technology, customs, and way of life.
Life After People. One of the last amazing productions of the History Channel as-was, before it became all Ice-Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens and fucking Pawn Stars.
It’s just the speculative history of all of what humanity would leave behind if, for some reason, every human disappeared in a single day. With experts in preservation, ecology, geosciences, history and infrastructural engineering, it asks: What are the cascading effects of a worldwide technological civilisation? And how long would it take for everything we have built to be buried in the dusts of time? Look on, ye mighty, and despair.
Sounds fascinating. By coincidence, I just listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage about “technofossils”.
https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002fxn2