Will a publication looking back from 2030 damn them with such faint praise?
To us, looking back from the staggering opulence of the present day, life in 1620 looks more than threadbare.
The courage it took to oppose the Iraq war does not seem so monumental now, looking back from 2015.
As he says at the end, looking back from the future, "Time is the longest distance between two places".
Ms. Wilson's version is quieter and less fraught than its forerunners and distills the album's retrospective attitude of looking back from a point of grown-up serenity.
I wrote about this way back in 1996, when the Times Magazine, on its 100th birthday, asked various people to write articles as if looking back from 2096.
But there's much to ponder, looking back from a present in which whiz-bang technology is no longer a wave but an ocean.
Might historical pessimists like Spengler, whom Barzun evokes looking back from 1900 on "the decline of the West," turn out to be right after all in 2000?
Yesterday, blooded by a tumultuous year and looking back from atop a vertiginously steep learning curve, Mr Clegg's 2011 speech was framed by and rooted in difficulties.
But for my father, circumspect in looking back from his eighth decade, watching real-life courtroom dramas was like sitting down with Shakespeare.
"I kept thinking, 'Is Paul Steiger dead?' " James Pensiero, an assistant managing editor, looking back from another ferry, had the same thoughts.
