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Studying history is actually a pretty good way to make the people and societies of the past, even 100 years ago, (understandable and "alive".

The people and society of 1900 are accessible, "relatable", and understandable, provided one makes a little effort. After all, 1900 isn't ancient history. Yes, society has changed--it's always changing--but there are many constants which haven't changed.

Your assumption that people in 2118 will have a clear picture of 2018 because of the internet, recordings, films, videos, photographs, and so forth is not altogether well founded. We do not know how much of current communication technology will be operable, accessible, or even in existence in 100 years. Already, technology of the 1960s, like 2" wide video tape is largely lost because the technology was abandoned. The internet will be as enduring as all the big server farms scattered around the world. Do you think the millions of digital machines sitting in the big windowless buildings are still going to be working in 100 years? 25 years? It isn't certain whether CDs will still be playable in 50 years, assuming one still has a CD player.

The media that are most enduring are physical media: film, vinyl disks, print on paper. Virtual or digital media depends entirely on technical continuity over multiple decades of time, something we haven't seen so far.

If libraries keep collections of books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, vinyl recordings, or somehow maintain stocks of machines and servers to preserve digital information, then a record of today's society will be available in 2118 and 2018 will be understandable and accessible. Some libraries have already dumped their newspaper collections -- not because they were unusable, but because the librarians decided the future was in microfilm and digital storage.

Is the society of 1903 Boston in this silent film of 1903 so strange? Electric street cars, crowds, bad traffic...

I'm with BC, but this may be because I'm almost as old a git as him/

I'm from Leeds where Louis le Prince shot this little bit of film, the second oldest in the world from 1888: a scene I still know well, though they've jut decided to shut the bridge for improvements.

They'll wish we had done more to prevent global warming.

Maybe the only reason we are looking back in the first place is because of meliorism. We know we'll see technological progress but does anything really get any better?

What philosophical implications does this pose for the people living in the year 2118 in terms of people’s perceptions of time, society and place? — Time

Between now and 2118 our period will be evaluated and re-evaluated numerous times, just as the period between 1900 and 2018 has been evaluated and re-evaluated. For instance, World War I was said to be "a war to end all wars". Not quite. What WWI did, we discovered in 1939, was lay the groundwork for World War II, a much worse war.

Just as researchers investigating WWI snoop into the backstory of who-knew-what-when about the 1914 assassination In Sarajevo of the heir presumptive to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria Hapsburg (his friends just called him Frank), researchers will be snooping into the back story of how, in the end, the world's nations failed to take the neessary steps to reduce CO2 and methane emissions after the relationship between global warming and these green house gasses became apparent.

Some of the back story will be appealing and some of it will be disgraceful. There will be wars between 2018 and 2118, and the outcomes might be quite important to the people of 100 years hence -- assuming there are any. Some of the historians will, over the decades. paint their history (our lives) favorably and some will paint it as one damn bad decision after another.

We can send them a message here, since some historian will certainly be combing through The Philosophy Forum archive: what message should we send? "Oops!" "Sorry." "I recycled faithfully." "The world is going to end soon, anyway, get over it." "Blame George Bush, Dick Chaney, Donald Trump, Exxon, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and Old King Coal".

— Time

History as an intellectual/academic discipline may no longer exist in 2118. We seem to have decided that the liberal arts are luxuries that contribute nothing to economic growth. Perpetual economic growth is our global addiction. Consequently--or coincidentally--governments are gradually eliminating support for the fine arts, humanities and social sciences.

People may not even interact intellectually in formal schooling much longer. Instead of a dialogue on brick and mortar school campuses education will be a monologue that students absorb at home on a computer. The content will be nothing more than technical training in STEM fields.

Transhumanism may prevail, and the past may be something erased from all minds.

Even if the past is preserved, humans may not be the ones interpreting it. Fast, powerful AI may replace human historians.

It is not just the fine arts, humanities and social sciences. I have read that AI may replace humans in the natural sciences.

I can't comment on the non-West--I have no experience there--but, living in the West my observation is that we are becoming increasingly anti-intellectual. At the rate that that is unfolding, people in 2118 may not think for themselves, let alone evaluate the past. Human thought may be completely controlled by the people who control communication technology, and the content may be all fantasy. Only a small minority of people now seem to care about reality, and the trend seems to be in the direction of barely anybody caring about reality.

Basically, if people in 2118 think at all about 2018 the content will be what they want, not any rigorous attempt at arriving at objective reality.