Re:The Notre Dame fire and the future of history
by rexpop on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @06:21PM
(#19677864)
> the money-men were thinking that far ahead
I wonder, in all that hierarchy, and in all those networks, who was "thinking far ahead", and who was cynically participating in the endeavor for personal gain, while quenching existential thirst elsewhere. In modern society, the majority of our lives are spent in the latter mode, I think: no one's passionate opus is sugar water or targeted ads, yet they occupy millions of us.
Incredible things can be done by people who are "phoning it in," by firms stacked top-to-bottom with talent whose passions lie elsewhere.
Is it possible that cathedrals, too, were constructed entirely obligatorily?
And got paid (which, in fairness, still means the money-men were thinking that far ahead).
>We don't really have projects like that anymore. Contemporary structures and infrastructure are designed to be completed within the lifetime of the creator.
The deep space probes from NASA took something like 20 years to reach their destination, on top of the mission planning time, and involved a lot of senior engineers, who didn't get to see it to completion. But you're right, I can't think of anything on a 100+ year timescale.