The Future of the Past [Hardcover]

Alexander Stille (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2002

An engrossing look at the cultural consequences of technological change and globalization

Space radar, infrared photography, carbon dating, DNA analysis, microfilm, digital data bases-we have better technology than ever for studying and preserving the past. And yet the by-products of technology threaten to destroy--in one or two generations--monuments, works of art, and ways of life that have survived thousands of years of hardship and war. This paradox is central to our age. We use the Internet to access and assess infinite amounts of information--but understand less and less of its historical context. Globalization may eventually benefit countries around the world; it will also, almost certainly, lead to the disappearance of hundreds of regional dialects, languages, and whole societies.

In The Future of the Past, Alexander Stille takes us on a tour of the past as it exists today and weighs its prospects for tomorrow, from China to Somalia to Washington, D.C. Through incisive portraits of their protagonists, he describes high-tech struggles to save the Great Sphinx and the Ganges; efforts to preserve Latin within the Vatican; the digital glut inside the National Archives, which may have lost more information in the information age than ever before; an oral culture threatened by a "new" technology: writing itself. Wherever it takes him, Stille explores not just the past, but our ideas about the past, how they are changing--and how they will have to change if our past is to have a future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Great Sphinx of Giza, "part lion, part pharaoh, part god," is slowly dying. Large chunks of limestone crack off each day, the soft middle portion of its body is vulnerable and, eventually, the head will become unstable. Though Egyptologists try to restore and preserve the great monument, much of their work does more harm than good. In the disturbing words of one archeologist: "You study it, you kill it." That comment best captures the paradox at the heart of Stille's splendid book: scholars work feverishly to study and preserve precious monuments, rare species and ancient manuscripts, relying on ever more advanced forms of technology in their efforts, while the accelerating rate of technological change industrialization, population growth and pollution threatens to destroy these treasures. Hence, a cycle of preservation and destruction perpetuates itself. Stille (Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic), a lovely storyteller, brings to life the passionate and forceful personalities of preservationists, dedicated scholars, bald opportunists, looters and other key players in the world of conservation and preservation. He examines the dying traditions of canoe making and oral poetry on an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea; the tombaroli (tomb robbers) of Sicily who have helped to make illicit antiquities the third most valued item in the world's black markets; devastating levels of pollution in the beloved and holy Ganges river; and one man's ultimately scandalous attempt to modernize the 550-year-old Vatican library. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker (where parts of this book were previously published), Stille consistently offers a powerful narrative, rich with anecdote, detailed description and lively dialogue. This is a must read for anyone interested in the preservation of our world's decaying treasures.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

It is a paradox, historian Stille says, that human society forgets its past while steadily gaining technology that would help to study and preserve it. His absorbing book seeks to show the double-edged nature of technological change in a series of different contexts and from a number of odd angles. His explorations include the Sphinx, the looting of Roman artifacts, the Vatican library and the museum of obsolete technology--the U.S. National Archive, where technicians try to tease information out of modern media that have long vanished from circulation.

Editors of Scientific American

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (April 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374159777
• ISBN-13: 978-0374159771
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,837,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be Required Reading for all Students, June 10, 2003

By 

Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Future of the Past (Paperback)

This is an extraordinarily informative and entertaining book that sheds light on the problems and differing worldwide attitudes toward conversation and preservation. The author decries the rapid disappearance of historical landmarks, statues, buildings, art and sculpture - as do most of us. The modern effect whereby observation leads directly to degradation he has named the "Heisenberg" principle, based on the German scientist's observation that the very act of viewing affects the properties of light. Moisture, oxygen, germs, exposure - all of these are detrimental agents and all are associated with people.

He also decries the loss of those items that are elusive - tribal customs now recorded in any medium that have been passed from generation to generation for thousands of years, languages such as Latin, even - and surprisingly - outmoded technology. It is estimated that an enormous collection of data in the National Archives is for all intents and purposes lost since we have lost the technology required for viewing/hearing such data.

The differing cultural views on preservation were examined, from the rather recent Western one whereby objects remain in their natural state to the Oriental practice of repeatedly copying (in detail) ancient objects to the oral history of Africa. He rightly recalls that this process has been recurring since mankind recognized ancient works as something different.

But this book was also a personal journey since the author became intimately involved with the participants of this saga. From taking Latin classes in Rome to visiting Chinese and Italian scholars to reviewing the new National Archives and the Vatican Library, this is a "hands on" book that reads like a labor of love.

Our prosperous culture has created such sins as urban sprawl, deforestation, pollution, crowding, fast food - all of which directly affect not only the objects of the past but our view of the importance of past people's and events. It is this latter problem that seems all the most disturbing. A close reading reveals that the modern urge to preserve is directly related to the rise of industrialism.

What the book lacked were definitive solutions and perhaps that is not by accident. What is NOT needed are quick fixes or top down solutions. One of the things he has documented with sorrow is the repetitive nature of socialist dictatorships to screw things up with top-down solutions - whether it be Egypt, China or any number of African countries. Solutions should be from the ground up and must be in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants of the affected area.

Not only cultural but religious views have affected our past. How much knowledge was destroyed when the library in Alexandria was burned or how much religious statuary was destroyed in the first five centuries of Christiandom? And how many hundreds of thousands of paintings and statues have followers of Islam defaced or destroyed in the recent past? Rare is the culture or religion that demonstrates reverence for alien peoples and the products of their culture.

The final chapter sums up what we know, what we don't know and where we go from here. An important book that should grace the libraries of every literate American. Get the book, contemplate its message.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Future Has a Past, August 8, 2002

By 

Robert Pell Dechame (Fort Ticonderoga, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Future of the Past (Hardcover)

Stille's work is fabulous, insightful, intelligent...whether you have just acquired a taste for history and preservation, or whether you are a seasoned professional in these subjects, there's something for you in every one of the essays that make up this fascinating--and often disturbing--book. Neither pandering nor mired in technical jargon, this book will satisfy amateur and professional alike.

Stille's experience ranges from one corner of the world to the other and his reportage demonstrates that no matter how disparate the cultures, all are struggling with the insistent presence and immense pressure of The Past.

I've gone back to this book over and over since first reading it and I anticipate that it will remain a permanent fixture of my library.

Highest recommendation!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can the Past and Future Coexist?, February 6, 2004

By 

The Independent Review (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Future of the Past (Paperback)

"Stille takes us on a whirlwind tour of the world's natural and cultural resources, from the most prominent, such as the Sphinx and pyramids of Egypt, to the exotic, such as word carving in the East Indes. He shows that perhaps more than ever societies around the world are being forces to come to terms with the past, what it means, and how they want to preserve it. Approaches to historic preservation have been as diverse as the problems. The one commonality seems to be a heightened urgency of the problem. As societies have adopted some degree of capitalism and modern technology, they have often experienced a growing anxiety about the loss of tradition. As technological change has made available previously unimagined tools for the preservation and stuffy of the past, it has also brought about unprecedented potential to destroy natural and cultural objects. Social and geographic mobility has also had a profound effect. As Stille points out, `Paradoxically, the rootlessness of contemporary society has created a tremendous yearning for a connection with ancient or vanished civilizations.' He illustrates with numerous examples how this `double-edged nature of technological change' (p. xvii) is playing out around the world.

"Stille's stories demonstrate the common thread running through the debates about both environmental protection and cultural preservation: he realizes that `some of our notions about nature [are] deeply related to issues I was dealing with in the chapter on monuments and museums' (p. xviii). For example, he looks at the debate over who controls `endangered' resources or artifacts. Who decides what gets protected and what does not? The ever-present irony in these debates is that the Western preservationists, environmentalists, and art historians alike, concerned about preserving the past and diverse cultures and societies, often seek to impose their own Western values on the very cultures they purport to be interested in `saving.' It seems that the modernist idea of perpetual change leading to progress has been replaced by an equally postmodernist view that all change is bad and that preservation is the only good. Trying to implement such preservation strategies has often brought Western activists into conflict with the very peoples and cultures they claim to be helping, raising a question about whose interests conservation actually serves: the conservationists or those whose culture is being `preserved'?"

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Excerpted from a review essay, "Can the Past and Future Coexist," by Matthew Brown, in "The Independent Review," Winter 2004.