In Literature
Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky describes a space-faring trading civilization tens of thousands of years (hundreds of gigaseconds) in the future that apparently still uses the Unix epoch, despite the apparent problems that would have arisen with older Unix systems following the Year 2038 problem. The 'programming archaeologist' responsible for maintenance of old computer systems first believes that the epoch refers to the time when man first walked on the moon, but then realises that it is "the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems."
Read more about this topic: Unix Time
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“But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)