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September 08, 2005
Time Travel
"If there was anything that grabbed me about the book, it was the underlying conceit, the notion of time travel itself. Yet Wells had somehow managed to get that wrong too, I felt. He sends his hero into the future, but the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that most of us would prefer to visit the past(...). If given the chance of going forward or backward, I for one wouldn't have hesitated. I would much rather have found myself among the no-longer-living than the unborn. With so many historical enigmas to be solved, how not feel curious about what the world had looked like in, say, the Athens of Socrates or the Virginia of Thomas Jefferson?(...)To see your mother and father on the day they met, for example, or to talk to your grandparents when they were young children. Would anyone turn down that opportunity in exchange for a glimpse of an unknown and incomprehensible future?"
Paul Auster, Oracle Night
This bit affected me particularly. Thinking about it, if I could travel in time, I had no intention of visiting the future whatsoever but it didn't even cross my mind to visit my ancestors. I actually had a cunning plan :-) to change the course of History of the entire western civilization which I can't really post about (XXX-rated, I'm afraid).
I also asked some friends where/when would they travel to, out of statistical (and personal) curiosity. I'm posting a very non-representative sample of answers - since in its composition there are only highly intelligent beings of the opposite sex - but a high quality one :-)
I'm developing a theory that links the answer to the person's personality...
"The Holistic Bourgeois" said:
"I would go nowhere before the 20th century. I can't imagine myself not driving a car or not having paper to wipe my ass :-)
I'd go to the roaring 20's, USA. It must have been a great time socially, economically and culturally; also it should be a lot of fun mingling with artists and gangsters."
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"The Cautious Curious" said:
"Although there's the temptation to confirm some 'truths' that we think we know about the past, if given a chance to travel in time, I'd risk it and travel to the uncertain future (like 500 years from now), even if inside an indestructible device that would protect me in case I decide not to "land" there. The reason? This is the supreme curiosity, what's there for us on the following day, the only land of chances that we have. The Past, we slowly discover it through History and that itself is a Time Machine that has improved with the years. Discovering the future is much more complicated. Ah immortality, immortality..."
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"The Ambitious Inventor" said:
"Maybe back to the time of Leonardo Da Vinci or Isaac Newon - the time when great ideas / inventions / discoveries were being made. Today, revolutionary science is usually revolutionary to 10 super-experts in a corner, not the general public. Being the inventor of the parachute or discovering gravity - now that would be cool!"
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"The Lazy Laid-Back" said:
"Time Travel? What for? I like the Present. The Future is ours to build and the Past is of no interest to me. It's gone." - after which he makes me read out loud a passage from a book by Gonçalo M. Tavares about how there's no point in wanting to change the past since the connections between any two events are far too complex for us to understand. So destiny isn't really predetermined but we have no way to figure it out out either.
"Oh, wait. Maybe I would travel to the beginning of August 2005 so that I could go on holidays again."
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"The Hesitant Traveler" said:
"I'd like to meet Leonardo da Vinci because he was, probably, the most brilliant mind ever to have lived. I'd like to travel aboard the Niña with Columbus and the Espera with Cabral because, if it is great to travel, it must be unbelievable to travel on a (re)discovery expedition, and those were two of the greatest (re)discovery expeditions ever. But there were so many times and places to go, it's tough to choose... I just feel like traveling, so I went for the Discovery option... :-)))"
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"The Intensity Craver Cartographer" said:
"I'd like to travel back maybe 30,000 years into our past. What was the world really like then? Were we still cowering from beasts or starting to come into our own? During the Paleolithic, we were just starting to write on bones. The sky and stars and moon must have been like some strange fire lighting up the night sky. The howls of beasts a reminder that Death could come tomorrow and swiftly. That this very moment was a borrowed moment. The next day would bring on a new struggle, a new fight to survive. The depths of despair must have been deeper but the joys of the abbreviated life, I imagine, must have been euphoric."
Posted by claudia