I have an old toy robot in my office that my kids played with when they were little. Its name is E.M.I.G.L.I.O.
Even though it is a toy, this Italian-made robot was interesting technology when it came out. It was remote-controlled; the remote had a microphone that turned my voice into a robot’s, and it had a tray sturdy enough to deliver a video game (or some other surprise) for my kids when they visited the office.
Looking back, it’s barely even technology, let alone a robot. But that’s because I’m evaluating it based on what’s possible now.
I feel the same when I think about my previous company, IntellAgent Control, and what we considered AI in the 1990s. We made a sales automation solution for teams before tools like Salesforce existed. At the time, the decision logic we used was innovative. The premise is still valid today, but the technology and implementation scream “relic of a time gone by.”
As another aside … when I searched for Emiglio (in order to write this article), I was astonished by the archive of old robots someone had put together. The site is like a specialized Wikipedia site for toy robots. Each entry includes high-quality photos of the robots and their packaging. It also includes facts, marketing copy, ads, and patents.
It is kind of cool … Kind of like Emiglio’s promo video.
It got me thinking about how much of history (and esoteric knowledge) only exists because a tiny community of people decided it needed to be cataloged or preserved.
“Garbage In, Garbage Out. Nothing In, Nothing Out.” What are we missing from the past because history is often written by the winner (or because no one volunteered to chronicle what happened)?
Even a site like Wikipedia has some serious content curation issues. For example, the top 50 Wikipedia editors have each contributed more than 500,000 edits. Think how much is missing.
We often worry that AI will change the future. I’m starting to think its bigger impact may be on the past. Every archive, database, and knowledge repository becomes part of the training data for how future generations understand the world. The stories that get preserved gain influence. The stories that don’t slowly fade from memory.
History has always been written by the people who showed up to record it. The only thing changing is the scale.
The future won’t just be shaped by the data we create; it will be shaped by the data we preserve. Made more personal … If you don’t intentionally preserve your data and stories, your company may literally not exist in the models that future decision-makers rely on.
Just a thought!
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