If you could travel forward/backward in time

[WayneLigon]

Part the first:
The concept of a modern-day person seeming like a "wizard" when thrown back in time is a bit of a trope in fiction. But what would really happen?
Say you were thrown back in time, at least 100 years, would your modern skills and knowledge be helpful to you? Would you thrive in such a scenario? Or are your modern skills and knowledge pretty much a waste in a time before electronic technology? How about 1,000 years?

'Thrown back' seems to imply something that happens suddenly and without consent. In that case, I'm likely screwed without a substantial bit of luck. If I emerge in 1913, I'm basically unskilled labor, excepting the ability to read and write at the post-grad level. I know about a lot of stuff but I have few practical skills. Sure, I know the basics of Relativity and a bunch of other stuff but I don't have the mathematical underpinning to actually put it to use or prove what I 'know'. At best, I might get a publisher interested in pulp stories or something and only in my dotage would I be hailed by geeks around the world as the 'guy who really predicted everything we know'.

Given, say, a year of prep time, though? Or the ability to carry even modest amount of cargo other than my skin and bones? If luck broke my way and I didn't die from a primitive doctor fooling around in my insides, I'd have a level of wealth that would beggar the imagination and the power that such a thing brings.

1,000 years in the past? Dead within hours, most likely.

Part the second:
Say you were going to travel to the future, (suspended animation, a time machine, whatever mechanic you want), how far into the future would you have to go to reach something "futuristic," something truly alien to what you live in now?

If the promise of the biological revolution pays off, about 150-200 years. Even if not, in 200 years our culture might well be something unrecognizable.

Part the third:
If you were going to reach back in time and yank someone, (at least of average or better intelligence, and middle aged), forward to this day and age, how far back-to-forward would you have to bring someone to have them completely out of their world? Would someone from 1913 (100 years ago) be able to come "up to speed" with our world today? How about someone from 1813?

I think anyone reasonably intelligent and intellectually flexible could come up to speed within a year or so and be able to do pretty much anything a modern human can do, language barriers aside. Take a kid from the Ice Age and plop him down here, inside of a year he'll be fussing about his iPod and showing girls the cool scar from when a sabertoothed cat almost got him.

 

[ghostcat]

As far as going into the past is concerned, what no-one has mentioned is that most 1st world residents have some familiarity with how the human body works. Probably not much good 100 years ago but anything over say 250 years and you should be able to survive as a doctor. Provided, of course, you don't got burnt as a heretic or are blamed when someone dies who would have died without your intervention

 

[Nellisir]

So thinking about this a bit...a hundred years ago, (December 1913)

• women could not vote in the US
• Woodrow Wilson was president
• Russia was a monarchy (but not much longer!)
• The Woolworth Building in NYC is the tallest in the world (the confluence of the safety elevator, 60 years old in 1913, and steel frame construction results in skyscrapers shoot up all across the US)
• Mexico was having revolutions
• The Mideast is still the Ottoman Empire
• Ford introduces the moving assembly line
• You can drive coast to coast on the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental "improved highway" for automobiles
• Traffic signs have not been standardized (or, in some cases, invented).

Fun fact: penicillin wasn't mass produced until the mid-1940's! Honestly, I thought it was much earlier than that.

Medically, most of us are probably relatively safe from disease in 1913, since we'll still be vaccinated and since we are "downstream" of events like the spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and so have a greater chance of having had some exposure to a related virus (additionally, the H1N1 antivirus from 2009 apparently confers some resistance to Spanish Flu, which is also a H1N1 virus.)

I wonder if our best niche in the past would be as "efficiency experts" or consultants of some kind. I don't need to know how to build a moving assembly line to explain the concept to someone. There are probably a lot of things that we're not aware of that we benefit from every day that are system improvements, rather than feats of engineering or chemistry.

 

[Dioltach]

Here's a chilling thought for anyone in Europe: in 1913 World War I was only a year away. Not something you'd want to be caught up in, even indirectly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Heh...it just occurred to me I could also ply my trade as a guitarist/singer.

I would have to change the lyrics to "Smoke on the Water" a bit, though...

 

[tomBitonti]

Don't think this would work out very well ...

Just about everywhere, you would be immediately noticed as a foreigner. If you are lucky, you will find a nearby community of similar folks. Lots of segregation by ethnicity. If you are very lucky and your ethnicity is of the current ruling class, you might win big.

A lot of folks will present themselves with a lot more deportment and good looks than might be common. Nowadays, there are a lot fewer folks with pox marks and the like. You might get snatched up to a brothel or taken as a concubine, or worse, immediately set upon (I'll spare folks details of what would ensue ...)

Knowing how to read and write could be a big plus ... if your language matched the society where you landed. In a lot of places you could probably teach letters. Although, your lack of knowledge of social customs would hold you back. Your knowledge of hygiene and nutrition would help to keep you safe, as long as you were in a position to put the knowledge in use: If you are in prison, you would probably have to make do with what you are given.

In a lot of places, folks would immediately dismiss you as an out-of-place foreigner, and jail you or push you into a foreigner's enclave. Lack of papers would likely be a big problem, and would get you jailed. From there, seems that you would have to get lucky or be incarcerated indefinitely, and consigned to labor for the rest of your miserable existence. In a lot of other places, your failure to respect your social betters would get you in trouble. Simply looking at folks directly is going to get you roughed up. Failure to answer questions with a proper honorifics will just turn a bad situation worse.

You might be in rather big trouble as a disease vector. You might be a carrier of a lot of diseases which don't exist yet. And, at the same time, you would probably be susceptible to a lot of what is carried in the food and water, to which you have no tolerance.

Folks with advanced knowledge might have an edge -- if they can get an audience. Problem here is that without credentials most won't give you any time, and even those of the day who presented what turned out to be true ideas had a long time to get their ideas accepted. (As a kind of example, consider Ramanujan in England.)

Thx!

TomB

 

[tomBitonti]

On the other hand ... things might work out better.

What would really matter is what folks you encountered first. There are plenty of charitable folks would would provide assistance, if they thought you had a "higher" upbringing, and were needing help.

Being clean and mannerly, and having a good complexion and no flaws of the sort brought about by malnutrition, would probably give you a leg up. Being attentive and having a good work ethic would help considerably.

Explaining your background would be a problem. Virtually no explanation would work. Hopefully, one of your benefactors would be able to provide a convincing cover story.

From there, what would matter is how well you handled yourself and negotiated the intricate society around you.

Thx!

TomB

 

[tomBitonti]

To say ...

Folks with an academic background might have a rough time. Assuming placement in a western society, knowledge of several languages (Latin, Greek, French, German; whatever was in use in your field at the time) would be necessary. A lack of knowledge of the state of the field at the time could be a huge problem. In an area such as physics or mathematics, there could be issues of the style of presentation and notation. A very good depth in the field, and having surveyed a lot of older writings, seems necessary to make headway.

For engineering (including chemical engineering), knowing a few specific processes unknown at the time might be a big plus. On the other hand, the current practices might be quite different than modern practices, and differences in the available materials and tools could be a big problem.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Umbran]

Folks with an academic background might have a rough time. Assuming placement in a western society, knowledge of several languages (Latin, Greek, French, German; whatever was in use in your field at the time) would be necessary.

Depends on the when and where, and how far back you're going. Certainly, if you go back 1000 years, nobody's even speaking what you'd recognize as English, much less have that language be commonly used.

Closer to now, if you are in the British Colonies, you don't need to know many languages. If you're in Britain, knowing several would be nice, but isn't so much required. If you land on the Continent, then you have an issue. But then, we haven't stipulated - you could be in Feudal Japan, and then Greek and Latin won't mean diddly.

In an area such as physics or mathematics, there could be issues of the style of presentation and notation.

Standardized notation in mathematics is fairly new - it didn't exist in Newton's time, for example. And, for much of what I mentioned, the concepts came along with brand-new notation anyway, so no big deal.

 

[tomBitonti]

Depends on the when and where, and how far back you're going. Certainly, if you go back 1000 years, nobody's even speaking what you'd recognize as English, much less have that language be commonly used.

Closer to now, if you are in the British Colonies, you don't need to know many languages. If you're in Britain, knowing several would be nice, but isn't so much required. If you land on the Continent, then you have an issue. But then, we haven't stipulated - you could be in Feudal Japan, and then Greek and Latin won't mean diddly.

Standardized notation in mathematics is fairly new - it didn't exist in Newton's time, for example. And, for much of what I mentioned, the concepts came along with brand-new notation anyway, so no big deal.

Yeah. Have no idea outside of the west. I suppose if you end up in India or China there will be a few languages of note, e.g., Cantonese vs. Mandarin vs. a local dialect, which would be associated with a social class / background.

For intellectual stuff in the west, up until not too long ago, I though knowing Greek and Latin was more or less assumed. That was considered a foundation for a university education. For specialized subjects (say, Mathematics at the beginning of the 20'th century), I would expect knowledge of German and French would be a must.

For mathematics and physics, again, around the turn of the century, there were a couple of standard conventions? E.g., the Einstein summation convention (which rather irked one of my professors). I would expect some more modern notations to be unknown to the time.

Thx!

TomB