sillyThe rules:
1) You can bring anything you want to the past, but you can't leave anything behind. So you can't bring back the polio vaccine and start treating people. It wouldn't work.
2) You can't take anything forward with you, either, except for information. So you could, say, travel back with a copy of a book and a pen, and have the book signed with that pen. Or you could bring a camera and take pictures. But all things must be somehow made from materials you carried with you.
3) You can't get sick in the past, but you could be eaten by a T-Rex. No one native to the time periods you're visiting will notice anything odd about you.
For my personal use, I would pack a bunch of digital cameras, Flip video recorders, and a gene sequencer, and hop back to Messina in 1347. I would then document the Black Death in ten year jumps, with lots of photographs and recordings of people trying to breathe as they fully expressed the virus. And then, when I got back to the present, I would drive the CDC insane...but I would finally know for sure.
For the good of all mankind, I would hop back to the pre-tape losses BBC archives with a tape-to-DVD portable recording rig (and a technician), and get copies of all the missing Doctor Who serials. Upon returning to the present day, I would probably also get knighted.
So what's your personal use? And what's your use for the good of all mankind?
April 22 2010, 03:06:12 UTC 7 years ago
With a battery powered digital projector, lots of batteries and a bottle of caffeine pills, I would storm the halls of the Royal Society and delivery 24 lectures on the upcoming centuries of scientific advancement. There'd probably have to be lots of glossing over and "trust me on this for now, but here's how you could verify it..." but it would be _soooo_ satisfying. It'd probably be 12 hour-long lectures and 12 Q&A periods. I'd jump ahead a day (week?) after each so the Society would have a chance to digest and forumlate their queries (so subjectively, it'd be one 24-hour lecture streak).
...figuring out how to formulate "All modern knowledge" into a series of 12 paradigm upsetting lectures would be a pretty cool exercise in, and of, itself. How to break it down? How much math to include? (probably have projector displaying a mathematical sidebar the whole time with someone transcribing it for future reference/instruction).
If you hand Newton the cliff notes on the Principia (so to speak) what does he do then? Retreat totally to alchemy and biblical scholarship or wade deeper into the Ocean? If you lay out Darwin's observations 250 years early...? And steam engines? And give those damn universal language people the Dewey Decimal system and some basic computer science??
So many dead ends and incredibly random tangents. To be able to convince just a _few_ of these minds that perhaps here are some paths you don't need to wander down all the way to the end. Honest. Really not worth your time.
April 22 2010, 19:46:23 UTC 7 years ago
April 23 2010, 03:00:56 UTC 7 years ago
In any case, you wouldn't over-write the timeline, you've split off a new branch. By the 21st century, the new branch would have its own time machines and could set up a cross-continuum embassy to exchange culture and technology with us. Everybody wins! :-D