If you could travel forward/backward in time

[PigKnight]

I can't help wondering that 'discovering' laws of physics too early would just get you branded a madman or worse.

It's all very well knowing this stuff, but it's still going to be hard to get anyone to listen to you. You can't make a website.

I suppose you could demonstarte some simple experiments like a street magician, and just start working your way up the chain.

Basic physics would probably be accepted among the high classes; it's the impractical stuff like dark energy, atoms, theory of relativity that requires advanced techniques and tools to show that would get you labelled as eccentric.

History is not nearly as "burn the witch" as people think it is.

 

[Umbran]

I can't help wondering that 'discovering' laws of physics too early would just get you branded a madman or worse.

It's all very well knowing this stuff, but it's still going to be hard to get anyone to listen to you. You can't make a website.

What, you think scientific discourse is new to the internet era, or something? Before the internet, there were print journals. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is an academic journal dating back to the 17th century. Those who didn't go in for journals went for books - like Newton's Principia Mathematica.

How do you afford to publish, in ages before those in which you can just get a teaching job? Go find and impress a noble patron! Magicians (and later scientists) have always been showpieces for nobility. At the time, they got social credit for their patronage, and the showpiece got money to do their work.

 

[Morrus]

What, you think scientific discourse is new to the internet era, or something? Before the internet, there were print journals. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is an academic journal dating back to the 17th century. Those who didn't go in for journals went for books - like Newton's Principia Mathematica.

How do you afford to publish, in ages before those in which you can just get a teaching job? Go find and impress a noble patron! Magicians (and later scientists) have always been showpieces for nobility. At the time, they got social credit for their patronage, and the showpiece got money to do their work.

Oh, I agree. I just wonder how easy the "go find and impress a noble patron" stage of the process is! Would they even take your (metaphorical) calls?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, given my high blood pressure and the dietary options of the underclasses in 1913, I'd probably die of a heart attack after 5-10 years.

 

[Janx]

I can't help wondering that 'discovering' laws of physics too early would just get you branded a madman or worse.

It's all very well knowing this stuff, but it's still going to be hard to get anyone to listen to you. You can't make a website.

I suppose you could demonstarte some simple experiments like a street magician, and just start working your way up the chain.

Having watched the Tudors, and pondered the whole "what if I time traveled back to then" concept, I'd have key concerns that you raise.

They were killing people for disagreeing whether the sacramental wine turns into Jesus blood or is merely symbolic when you drink it.

Start contradicting the Church on the Earth being the center of the universe, etc and yer gonna have problems. Physics is how they predicted where planets would be discovered. Once you go down that mathematical trail, heresy is soon to follow.

While I get Umbran's point that there were vectors for getting your work distributed, like scientific journals. However, Morrus has a valid concern. Just because Danny and Umbran want to publish their work, doesn't mean getting it to happen is simple, especially for a time traveller who is basically a total stranger to the entire world.

With zero social connections, and a number of cultural knowledge gaps, unless your TARDIS pops right next to a dude under an apple tree, it may be incredibly hard to get to the right people without the right introductions, especially because higher society seemed to work by direct connection or letter of introduction.

 

[PigKnight]

Oh, I agree. I just wonder how easy the "go find and impress a noble patron" stage of the process is! Would they even take your (metaphorical) calls?

It actually wouldn't be that hard. Having a house scientist or philosopher was pretty common back then.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While I get Umbran's point that there were vectors for getting your work distributed, like scientific journals. However, Morrus has a valid concern. Just because Danny and Umbran want to publish their work, doesn't mean getting it to happen is simple, especially for a time traveller who is basically a total stranger to the entire world.

In some ways, I have an advantage over Umbran, in some ways he has an advantage.

In his favor, he is going to be working with provable facts, with the power of math & science behind them. As long as what he seeks to publish is supported by reasonable thought experiments, and/or testable with the technology of the day, he has an advantage. However, he'd have no credentials, so he would have a tough time getting the right people to listen to him, much less getting his stuff published in a peer reviewed journal.

In my favor is that the standards of publication are so much more relaxed in the venues I'd be submitting my work to. However, I would have more competition, and my work would be judged on more subjective grounds.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

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?

Exactly how far back in time and exactly where on the globe one comes in for a landing would have rather a significant impact. If it's just 100 years ago but I show up in the middle of Greenland I'm not lasting any longer than if I show up there tomorrow and have to survive. I MIGHT do better getting myself out of the Amazon or the Gobi - but then I'm still stuck somewhere that I don't speak the language.

Assuming I can at least choose to land somewhere "civilized" - which for me is gonna mean someplace decidedly English-speaking then even in 1913 I think I might carve out a fair existence. Get a job in a shop somewhere and start trying to make some money as an author - whether of SF or social commentary or both. But I'm sure it would not take long to convince myself that playing Kerbal Space Program and pointing VSAT satellite equipment for a living will NEVER translate into much of an opportunity beyond that. I'd probably tell stories about a schlub who plays Kerbal Space Program and assembles things called satellite dishes, and let Heinlien and Asimov as well as Lucas and Speilberg keep their own tales unless that fails. Maybe try and go BACK to school and actually get somewhere. After all, I can at least grasp the concepts of atoms and relativity despite their not having been known to science yet.

Now, there is the notion that although I don't know much about WWI (which is just over the horizon) I do know a fair bit about WWII which is just 26 short years away. If I wanted to try to CHANGE history I have some time to think about how and when to do that. And THAT would make a few decades of working as a shopkeeper worth the wait. Or maybe get into the auto industry or aircraft industries right as they start...

If it's 1000 years? Lessee, that's 1013. What the hell is going on in the year 1013? It's over 50 years yet before the freaking battle of Hastings! 520 years before bleedin' COLUMBUS sets sail. We're talkin Middle Ages here still. That's gonna suck just about anywhere. Not much that I know is gonna make much impression on anyone. It's more a matter of knowing what I want NOT to do. I might try to invent a telescope a good 600-700 years early, followed by a microscope. If nothing else that ought to make me somewhat worthy of being deemed smart enough to keep around as a pet. Maybe put quill to a few pages of parchment with some ideas about... indoor plumbing, political theory (gotta be careful with that one), economics, medicine, etc. I don't know if I could make gunpowder NOW if I had the recipe and ingredients in front of me but a few years of alchemy ought to produce some good results. Follow that up with a touch of metallurgy and I'll be running the planet, right?

More likely that I'll die early like everyone else of disease, injury, or simply work.

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?

Change is accellerating. Things are rather different today than they were even 20 or 30 years ago. I'd say maybe 10 years. Possibly 20 and things will be remarkably changed in ways both good and bad. For something truly ALIEN? 50 ought to be more than plenty.

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?

Depends on the person of course, but 1913 would adapt fairly well. Having already seen the uses of electricity and the automobile would help as a foundation of knowledge to build off of. 1813 would be more of a shock as that'd be the later part of the Industrial Revolution and simply coming to grips with a steam engine might help, but electricity being still just a lot of science theory and no practical application would be harder to grok. I'd say that if you go back before practical steam engine applications then time matters less and less - they'll be as flummoxed if they're from 1713 as 1013. Then it'll be more a matter of their individual ability to learn to seperate religion and superstition from practical scientific reality.

 

[Scott DeWar]

Re your first question: Dara O'Briain on technology: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ0T6E2j3Lo&desktop_uri=/watch?v=yJ0T6E2j3Lo.

Dioltach, that's a hilarious video. Thanks for linking it. (I can't give you xp now.)

Bullgrit

"Its, uh connected to the wall .. . . . " I am an electrician, If I were to try and explain it I would be burned at the stake as a heretic. heh.

Also, [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION], I gave him an xp for ya.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'd rather move forwards in time and hope that there will be equally good or better social welfare options than there are now. Maybe I can catch up.

If humanity is regressed technologically and culturally, well, than I am out of luck.

I don't really want to go back in time. I don't think my half-remembered physic lessons or my experiene as software developer will be of any use.