Question

Choose a short text, such as the lyrics of a popular song, a joke, or an urban legend. You may find this text online and you may copy and paste it directly into your entry. Identify and discuss the cultural presuppositions one needs to know to understand the text. Imagine that someone from 100 years ago reads that text, would they understand it? Or someone 100 years from now finds that text. What will they make of it?

Answer 1

Let the short text be this one-liner joke:-
"The 21st century: Deleting history is often more important than making it."

Even such a small joke has cultural presuppositions that are attached to it and without which the joke/text can lose its real meaning. It should be noted that this joke may not even be understood by all the people that are living in poor countries right now as they may not be much aware about the way in which the internet works. Therefore, pop-cultural knowledge about the way in which the internet and internet history works in essential for this joke to make sense.

If someone from 100 years ago read this text then he would not be able to make much sense of it as the internet would not have been invented till then. Therefore, even a simple joke like this could be a matter of enigma for a person of the past.

If someone reads this joke 100 years from now, he might get it if he is thorough with his history textbooks and has knowledge about how the internet used to work 100 years ago.

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