If you could travel forward/backward in time

[Janx]

There are people today, in Western society, who have difficulty coming "up to speed" with a lot of the stuff going on. People who are baffled by all the cell phones, computers, ATMs, GPS devices, DVD recorders, and much else.

In some ways, unless they are of low IQ, those people are just being whiny and not applying themselves to stay current.

as side business, I've had 70-90 year old clients, normal people who use computers on a regular basis. If people who predate the computer can figure it out...anybody can. So those who don't, chose that.

 

[Morrus]

Folks with poor eyesight might struggle. Contact lenses would run out quick (assuming you took some) and glasses would be hard to replace if they got broken.

My tooth infection a couple of weeks ago - just needed some anti-biotics. Without them? I don't like to think!

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Folks with poor eyesight might struggle. Contact lenses would run out quick (assuming you took some) and glasses would be hard to replace if they got broken.

My tooth infection a couple of weeks ago - just needed some anti-biotics. Without them? I don't like to think!

This is kinda what I was thinking. People take a lot of stuff for granted. So, I'd probably be ok in a lot of different time periods cuz of the stuff I know how to do but if that time period was sufficiently before easy access to glasses, well, I'd be boned in a couple of years or sooner. Doesn't matter how well you can do much of anything if you can't see.

 

[Janx]

Part 1: going to the past
Umbran has the advantage. A physicist going back 100 years is in position to use his primary skillset to his advantage. He could probably scoop Newton if he went back farther.

I'm a technologist, with a wide swath of other skills. Unless I happened to have all my gadgets on me (and a charger), my ability to appear wizard-like dwindles as fast as my battery capacity. After that, I'm just a madman ranting about things to come.

Assuming nothing bad happens to me, I could probably get work as a carpenter's assistant or laborer (having laborerd before, the concept isn't foreign to me).

The printing press is likely the main invention I could cook up. Maybe typewriter if I get help from a metalsmith or machinist. Otherwise, my knowledge of science to come, while advanced, isn't complete enough to "prove" anything. I know penicillin comes from mold on oranges, but I have no idea how to process it to "save" somebody to score some credibility points.

Part 2: going to the Future
As a technologist, the future is where all the cool stuff I've been waiting for is at. So for me, going there, I'll be able to adapt to what I see, based on understanding how we got to that. I'm not sure how weird it has to get before I'd be stumped, but I should hope it has to get wierder for me than most other people.

Sadly, all my mad skills will be hopelessly outdated. I can hope there's interest in history, as I could perhaps work as a technology historian or something. Though I imagine forging credentials in the 25th century is even harder for a guy from the 21st.

Part 3: bringing the past back
Consider that watching the city scenes in Bladerunner when it came out, is akin to bringing one of those current day primitives to New York City. A lot of hustle, bustle, and seeing things you've never seen before.

Nobody died from that. And if you have somebody explaining it all to you, at least so you know what its called, can make the transition easier.

 

[Umbran]

Part 1: going to the past
Umbran has the advantage. A physicist going back 100 years is in position to use his primary skillset to his advantage. He could probably scoop Newton if he went back farther.

Ooh! I could invent calculus, and have high school students curse my name for time immemorial! Woot!

 

[Dioltach]

If I were stuck in the past I'd buy up large tracts of land that nowadays are known to hold oil, gold or diamonds. Allow others to mine them, but the proceeds get stashed away until, say, 1991 and then get released to me.

Or I'd write a book of prophecies. Or draw pictures of 1980s rock stars on the walls of ancient buildings.

 

[Janx]

Ooh! I could invent calculus, and have high school students curse my name for time immemorial! Woot!

Yup. Where I could only tell the academics that such complicated math or physics is possible, you can show them.

However, depending on the exact time period and where we land, I doubt we'll face as warm and easy a welcome as the Doctor usually gets.

Imagine landing in England, circa Henry VIII. Dressed oddly, with a "foreign" accent, prove you aren't a french spy, crazy person or heretic and avoid offending a nobleman or guard until you can get to Oxford or wherever England kept the nerds back then.

Figured that every other thing you say might be blasphemy or treason, even trying to spill the beans about how many wives Henry's going to grind through is not likely to be received well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Going into the past 100 years, I could become one of the greatest sci-Fi writers of all time....

 

[Dioltach]

Just in case anyone has any misguided ideas about the joys of living in Victorian times: 10 more things that could kill you.

 

[Janx]

Going into the past 100 years, I could become one of the greatest sci-Fi writers of all time....

How do you get to that point?

On the one hand, we've got our "can do" American spirit that won the West to succeed at anything we put our mind to.

On the other, life is hard, and if you're not in the right place at the right time, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other, and you'll be needing to wash your hands frequently and then you die.

Land in the wrong spot, and nobody will give you break to get started or front you some money so you can write and publish your first story. Land in the right spot, and somebody will help you at just the key moment you need it.


Consider Einstein. We kidnap him, before he took the job at the post office, started working on math, and put him in a mud farming family in Elbonia, and he doesn't become a world renowned Physicist. Instead, he frets over his family as MudRot slowly takes them all as he toils in the soil.