A question for any deep-future Earth building: is the Roman alphabet still around? Or Arabic script? Or Chinese characters (though those seem more mutable, by government fiat if nothing else.) Hindu numerals? Spoken languages have changed but the raw writing systems have a couple of millennia to them already. Of course, Egyptian hieroglyphic knowledge faded, and that was a major empire... still, not widespread per se, and complicated, vs. a global and relatively simple system. You'd need a total literacy break, or a series of "rationalizations" and authoritarian purging, or something, I think.
(Vs. Deepness in the Sky, or Psychohistorical Crisis, where 8000 or 80,000 years still has continuity, in language or computer code.)
Sorry: I have a tendency to sound more opinionated that I can justify. Not like anyone knows what 30,000 years would be like. Still, I find the ambition of "hard fantasy" cool, and wanted to encourage thinking about mechanisms of change, not just handwaving in "stuff happens".
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A question for any deep-future Earth building: is the Roman alphabet still around? Or Arabic script? Or Chinese characters (though those seem more mutable, by government fiat if nothing else.) Hindu numerals? Spoken languages have changed but the raw writing systems have a couple of millennia to them already. Of course, Egyptian hieroglyphic knowledge faded, and that was a major empire... still, not widespread per se, and complicated, vs. a global and relatively simple system. You'd need a total literacy break, or a series of "rationalizations" and authoritarian purging, or something, I think.
(Vs. Deepness in the Sky, or Psychohistorical Crisis, where 8000 or 80,000 years still has continuity, in language or computer code.)
Sorry: I have a tendency to sound more opinionated that I can justify. Not like anyone knows what 30,000 years would be like. Still, I find the ambition of "hard fantasy" cool, and wanted to encourage thinking about mechanisms of change, not just handwaving in "stuff happens".