Can you prove that you are from the future?
The idea of time travel is such a fun topic. Sci-fi literature is full of ideas about how it’s going to work. What you can do and what you must not do. For example, you should limit your stay there, because when you return to your current time space, all the food you consumed there will wreak havoc on your body. Ideally, you breathe your own oxygen. The headache will take a long time to dissipate.
Another rule is that you can't see yourself in the past, and you can't tell people in the past about the wonders of the future; otherwise, it might affect the timeline.
Not only do you need to invent the technology to allow time travel. You must also adjust your grammar to properly place events on the correct timeline when you are describing something that will happen in the past, yet it will be in the future of the other past. The future past tense.
Now, imagine that you can travel back in time and you land somewhere, some time.
Would you be able to determine where you are and what year it is? I found it fascinating that people always talk about the past, but it makes me curious if they would be able to identify which past they are in – if they appeared there and then.
The next question – Would you be able to prove to people you meet that you are from the future? What thing can you say that makes people recognize that you are from the future and not a lunatic? And no, taking the Sports Almanac with you is not proof. That's cheating.
But do you know who is also travelling back in time and is trying to convince people that they are from the future?
Entrepreneurs and startup founders!
They've been to the future; they know what the future looks like. The only thing they have to do is convince the rest of us that the future will happen as they describe.
I think that you suddenly see how difficult and daunting the task is. You meet so many people from the future, you listen to them and then decide that's not a future; that's pure lunacy.
That's also so fascinating. People who never went to the future, or who can't imagine the future, tell you that this is not the future.
A good example everyone knows: the Internet. What started as a military-sponsored project became an innovation affecting so many things around us. What we take for granted now: the past had these harsh words: Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana published in Newsweek in 1995.
A few quotes from the article:
The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper
Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book
Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete (sic). So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet (sic). Uh, sure.
For the balance, the same article also states:
Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee.
The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany (sic) more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment (sic), and anonymous threats.
What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht (sic) the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading.
The recurrent pattern? Live the life of the person from the future and share the amazing things which are awaiting us there. Share it with all the people living in the present or the past. You will have the most exciting life.