If you had a time machine . . .

[Guest PasadenaCA]

. . . and you could make only one, round-trip visit to observe, would you go forward or back in time--and where would you end up?

I'd basically use it to go a few years into the future get stock tips, but maybe some others have something else to do.

[Guest PasadenaCA]

Also, you're not allowed to assassinate Hitler, because that might screw up my stock tips!

[AdamSmith]

But the conundrum that jumping around in time alters it. Cf., among many, Fritz Leiber's Nebula-winner The Big Time. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Time

[Guest PasadenaCA]

Let's say that if you jump back in time, you're a pure 100% observer. No interaction with people or things before 2:05 p.m. PT on March 13, 2014.

If you go forward in time, you can go crazy and do what you want, since once you arrive back, it's like hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL.

[AdamSmith]

Let's say that if you jump back in time, you're a pure 100% observer. No interaction with people or things before 2:05 p.m. PT on March 13, 2014.

Well, OK, but then only a bit eviscerated gedankenexperiment, nein?

One sort of wants the whole hog, or nothing.

[AdamSmith]

P.S. Then what you are really talking about is not time travel but rather a time-viewing technology, as in Clarke and Baxter's The Light of Other Days. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

[Guest PasadenaCA]

P.S. Then what you are really talking about is not time travel but rather a time-viewing technology, as in Clarke and Baxter's The Light of Other Days. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

Time viewing for the past, but time travel for the future. For example, if you want to, you can load up on all kinds of junk from a garage sale this Saturday and bring it with you as antiques 500 years into the future. You're then free to hire all the escorts--or the robot equivalents--you want with the money you earned. If you go into the past, you can watch what Oscar Wilde is up to--even write your own novel when you get back--but you cannot touch, you can't even smell! You get to interact with photons only--receiving, not sending.

[Guest PasadenaCA]

Well, OK, but then only a bit eviscerated gedankenexperiment, nein?

One sort of wants the whole hog, or nothing.

If you change the past, you could end up disappearing yourself.

[AdamSmith]

You raise one of the great points: Does the future already exist?

As for example the great Dark Shadows 1995 flash-forward storyline. http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Category:1995_Characters

[Guest PasadenaCA]

You raise one of the great points: Does the future already exist?

As for example the great Dark Shadows 1995 flash-forward storyline. http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Category:1995_Characters

For the purposes of this discussion, it (or they) does.

[AdamSmith]

For the purposes of this discussion, it (or they) does.

Mein Kommandant, ve must have verisimilitude!

Defining which is of course the prime challenge of SF as a genre.

[RA1]

I time travel to the past all the time. I touch nothing and change nothing. It is all done through memories, some very pleasant and some not so pleasant. I shall never live so long as to double my current inventory of memories.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest Hoover42]

The multiverse theory posits that there are an infinite number of universes co-existing with our own that each differ in some small or large way from each other.

For example, you might have a universe that is the same in most ways as our current universe, except that when you were born your parents named you Fred.

So, consider that you might move sideways as well as backward and forward in time.

[Guest EXPAT]

This reminds me of a great book I'm reading called "11/22/63" by Stephen King. The main character goes back in time to prevent the assassination of John F Kennedy but changes things that he didn't expect nor wanted.

I like the idea of going into the future to review stock prices and price histories to make a number of better today.

[Guest PasadenaCA]

This reminds me of a great book I'm reading called "11/22/63" by Stephen King. The main character goes back in time to prevent the assassination of John F Kennedy but changes things that he didn't expect nor wanted.

I like the idea of going into the future to review stock prices and price histories to make a number of better today.

I might also take back a dozen or so best selling novels and a few Nobel prize winning ideas: just two or three, I don't want to be greedy. As far as the future goes, screw them, they are what we make them. They owe us, so I am just collecting on a debt!

[TotallyOz]

I'd go back in time to meet my father. He died when I was 5 and I don't remember much. I'd love to see what he is really like as opposed to things based on other people's memories.

[Guest hitoallusa]

Oh my you are such a sweet son. If I had a time machine I would travel back in time and change history so that more people could live a more prosperous happy life. Maybe a great world where everybody is happy is possible. I heard in theory time travel is possible if we could find a way to realize it.

I'd go back in time to meet my father. He died when I was 5 and I don't remember much. I'd love to see what he is really like as opposed to things based on other people's memories.

[AdamSmith]

I'd go back in time to meet my father. He died when I was 5 and I don't remember much. I'd love to see what he is really like as opposed to things based on other people's memories.

Mine died when I was 8. This is a wonderful notion.

[RA1]

I lost my father when I was 24 and he was 51. I knew him to be a wonderful man and father during my "growing up" years but he was gone just when I became a "real" adult and he was getting smarter every day.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest hitoallusa]

When you are part of him and you came to this world because of him.. So I believe he still exist with you.

I lost my father when I was 24 and he was 51. I knew him to be a wonderful man and father during my "growing up" years but he was gone just when I became a "real" adult and he was getting smarter every day.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest CharliePS]

The problem is not only moving in time, but in space. If I went back to 1899, let us say, because I wanted to see my grandfather being thrown from the freight train he was riding in Utah by a security guard, how could I guarantee to be in the right place to see it, and to follow him around after he picked himself up off the ground and made his way to a hospital in Salt Lake City, and thence to the gospel mission in the red light district? The programming of the machine required to allow me to be in the right place at the right time, and to continue there from one minute to the next for days, would be incredibly complicated. Likewise, if I wanted to go into the future and specified a particular place in Manhattan, I might find myself crushed under a hi-rise or under water after the melting of the glaciers. One can't move through time without moving through space. The notion that we can watch things like a film with a director who knows precisely what we want to see and gives it to us, unedited, is naive. We can't locate our observer in time without locating him in space as well.

[Guest PasadenaCA]

The problem is not only moving in time, but in space. If I went back to 1899, let us say, because I wanted to see my grandfather being thrown from the freight train he was riding in Utah by a security guard, how could I guarantee to be in the right place to see it, and to follow him around after he picked himself up off the ground and made his way to a hospital in Salt Lake City, and thence to the gospel mission in the red light district? The programming of the machine required to allow me to be in the right place at the right time, and to continue there from one minute to the next for days, would be incredibly complicated. Likewise, if I wanted to go into the future and specified a particular place in Manhattan, I might find myself crushed under a hi-rise or under water after the melting of the glaciers. One can't move through time without moving through space. The notion that we can watch things like a film with a director who knows precisely what we want to see and gives it to us, unedited, is naive. We can't locate our observer in time without locating him in space as well.

The machine in which I am allowing you to travel has an SGPS system, which not only synchronizes time, but space and the correct vertical position above the center of the Earth. So fear not, chrononaut, you'll arrive where you need to be.

[RA1]

As I said, if you can imagine it, you are already there.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest CharliePS]

Instead of the stress of time travel, what I would prefer is access to the digital archive of the NY Times for the next fifty years--with a good index, of course. That way I could find out what happened in the next Clinton administration (Chelsea Clinton, 2029-37) and the next Bush administration (George, son of Jeb, 2037-45). I could find out whether global warming and the sea level rise caused the federal gov't to abandon DC and move the capital to Leadville, Colorado, whether Lindsay Lohan won an Oscar for her role in the biopic about the Norwegian nun who had a gender reassignment and became Pope John Paul Benedict Francis I, whether people heeded the CDC warning about a new virus that leaped the barrier between computers and humans, that caused the brain to freeze and the face to turn blue, etc.

[AdamSmith]

Charlie, that may be the Best Post Ever Here (or There, or Anywhere).

(In my end is my beginning. ) (Etc.)

With just one little reservation: Chelsea is a wonderful fulfillment of the human potential, except she has thus far shown an (admirable, arguably, though I would not make that argument) lack of the raw political animal passion that even yet drives both of her parents.