Hello friends,
I am a human from your future earth.
I arrived in your time a few weeks back to study the ancient human society, and happened to meet your friend here, Ritesh, the owner of this site. Nice chap! (although a little boring). Anyways, I didnt want to communicate much with people of this time, but he really insisted that I share some of the insights about future with you all. I figured that as long as I dont talk specifics (like whether Saurav Ganguly will make it back to the Indian cricket team or not), it should be fine. So, here I am.
Let me first introduce myself. My name is Ropolo-82-manisto Trafo-3036-ganulakum. I understand thats an unusual name for your time, but believe me, such names are very common for us. You see, with the kind of human population we have in our times its hard to keep a name unique unless one uses alphanumeric characters and keeps it atleast that long.
If you are wondering what year I am from, that too, well, is a little hard to explain. You see, in our times, we travel so much back and forth in time itself, that we dont live in one time frame alone. But, yes, the year according to my hometime currently is 3273 BCE. Think of it as the way you guys travel on earth. People live in one place and commute for work to other places (or sometimes make business/leisure trips to far away places). We live in one place and time, and commute for work to another place and time. And sometimes, like this time for me, we travel far in time for our work/leisure. (Pardon the usage of 'time' so many times, your vocabulary is quite limited in ways to talk about time travel but I am trying my best). Just like most of you consider your permanent place of residence or your birthplace your 'hometown', we consider our birth-timeframe our home-timeframe. So if I had not ever travelled in time, I would be living in year 3273 BCE right now, which is why it is the year of my hometime.
Of course, we have some rules for time travel, actually only one rule (temporal prime directive, if you will), other are just ettiquetes. All commercial time travel machines come factory-configured with the rule, but the geeks always come up with a hack soon enough :) (thats how I managed to come here, to your time).
The first time travel machine was invented in year 2817 BCE. By the year 2850 they were already commercially available, which is when this rule was imposed by the government (and many time-travel terms like 'hometime' coined). The rule is simple. One can only travel between the time when time travel was invented (i.e., year 2817) and one's own hometime. Basically one cannot travel in future (w.r.t one's hometime) and to non-timetravel capable time. Travelling before 2817 is prohibited, I guess, to avoid awkwardness of non-time-travel capable people dealing with time travellers. And travelling after one's current hometime is prohibited, again I guess, to avoid the awkwardness of a person dealing with his/her own future. Anyways, just like all governmental rules and laws, this rule also doesn't make a lot of sense and people break it very often.
Time travel, of course, had an enormous impact on human society then. It was all very chaotic for a while, but things settled down slowly. Ritesh showed me a few of your movies about time-travel. You guys worry a lot about people going in the past and changing it to affect the present and future and all that crap. Well, that would have certainly made things very interesting, but sorry to say, nothing like that happens. Just like "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", "what happens in year 3090 stays in year 3090". Btw, that Back to the Future movie was pretty funny, hehe. Your parents not dating in the past makes your siblings disappear from the photograph in your hand! Wow! Magic! hehe.
Getting serious again, the interesting thing that did happen as a result of time travel is that 'past' became smaller and smaller and everything from year 2817 to one's hometime became 'present'. May be the analogy to a current phenomenon in your time will be apt here. Think about how 'globalization' has changed your perception of this world. Air travel, fast trains, ships, cars etc have left no place too far, right? Every part of the world is becoming dependent on other parts and the differences in living standards across continents are dropping, right? Something similar has happened to our time. Its becoming harder and harder to say that a particular time in 'history' was richer or better. And all the timeframes are becoming dependent on each other. You outsource work to other countries, we outsource work to other times!
I, myself, have frequent appointments in other timeframes to give lectures and take classes etc. My students, knowing that I am from future, always ask me about how will they perform in the exams, or what will they become in the future etc. And I tell them the truth always, if I know the answer and they really insist. Does it affect anything? Not really. They still do the same that they would have done otherwise. Somehow their future remains unaffected. Scientists, psychologists, socialogists (excl me) and many other are still trying to solve this mystery.
Another thing that might interest you (inferring from your sci-fi movies) is the way we handle awkward situations due to time travel. Awkward meaning, well, suppose I happen to bump into my own self from another timeframe in the supermarket. Thats a little awkward, right? First of all, he should not be roaming around in the supermarket, he should be doing his job for what he is in my timeframe, but anyways. In such cases, its understood to just say a polite 'hi' to your other self and part ways. Because, frankly speaking, there is no use talking to each other. It will only result in waste of time and nothing productive.
Oh yes, a little about how exactly is time travel done. Anyways, going by your movies, it seems that you think a person can travel 1000 years in a split second. Well, sorry to burst the bubble again, but thats not how it happens. I mean, come on, when you travel in the other 3 dimensions it takes time, right? So just coz the 4th dimension itself is time, doesnt mean that travelling in it doesnt take time. If you think about it, its just like travelling on ground. The most fundamental travelling scheme is by walking -- one foot at a time. But we humans developed faster ways to travel. Bicycles, cars, trains, airplanes etc are all different modes of ground travel with different speeds. Very similar machines exist for time travel too, some fast and some slow.
Do you realize that everyone (including you) actually does time travel all the time already. Dont believe me? Well, tell me how much time passed since you started reading this letter? Didn't you travel from past to present and now travelling to future already? :) Granted, its a very slow mode of travelling, one second per second, but the fact is, its the basic truth and most people dont realize it very easily. Now think about it. How would time travel work? Yes! By changing this rate of normal time travel from 1 second per second to maybe 1 month per second (to travel in future) or -1 month per second (to travel in past) and so on. Exciting, isnt it? Well, my favorite rates are between [0-1) second per second. Just imagine, at 0 second per second rate, nothing in this world is happening, everything is standstill! Its an awesome experience man, I wish I could show you!
Hmm, so this was about time travel. I will write another letter soon. And I am going to talk about 'the death of Death' in that letter. Look forward to it :)
Hope you liked your future. Any questions, please leave comment, I'll try to answer as much as I can without giving out too much information. Thanks for bearing with my english.
Regards,
Ropolo-82-manisto
I am a human from your future earth.
I arrived in your time a few weeks back to study the ancient human society, and happened to meet your friend here, Ritesh, the owner of this site. Nice chap! (although a little boring). Anyways, I didnt want to communicate much with people of this time, but he really insisted that I share some of the insights about future with you all. I figured that as long as I dont talk specifics (like whether Saurav Ganguly will make it back to the Indian cricket team or not), it should be fine. So, here I am.
Let me first introduce myself. My name is Ropolo-82-manisto Trafo-3036-ganulakum. I understand thats an unusual name for your time, but believe me, such names are very common for us. You see, with the kind of human population we have in our times its hard to keep a name unique unless one uses alphanumeric characters and keeps it atleast that long.
If you are wondering what year I am from, that too, well, is a little hard to explain. You see, in our times, we travel so much back and forth in time itself, that we dont live in one time frame alone. But, yes, the year according to my hometime currently is 3273 BCE. Think of it as the way you guys travel on earth. People live in one place and commute for work to other places (or sometimes make business/leisure trips to far away places). We live in one place and time, and commute for work to another place and time. And sometimes, like this time for me, we travel far in time for our work/leisure. (Pardon the usage of 'time' so many times, your vocabulary is quite limited in ways to talk about time travel but I am trying my best). Just like most of you consider your permanent place of residence or your birthplace your 'hometown', we consider our birth-timeframe our home-timeframe. So if I had not ever travelled in time, I would be living in year 3273 BCE right now, which is why it is the year of my hometime.
Of course, we have some rules for time travel, actually only one rule (temporal prime directive, if you will), other are just ettiquetes. All commercial time travel machines come factory-configured with the rule, but the geeks always come up with a hack soon enough :) (thats how I managed to come here, to your time).
The first time travel machine was invented in year 2817 BCE. By the year 2850 they were already commercially available, which is when this rule was imposed by the government (and many time-travel terms like 'hometime' coined). The rule is simple. One can only travel between the time when time travel was invented (i.e., year 2817) and one's own hometime. Basically one cannot travel in future (w.r.t one's hometime) and to non-timetravel capable time. Travelling before 2817 is prohibited, I guess, to avoid awkwardness of non-time-travel capable people dealing with time travellers. And travelling after one's current hometime is prohibited, again I guess, to avoid the awkwardness of a person dealing with his/her own future. Anyways, just like all governmental rules and laws, this rule also doesn't make a lot of sense and people break it very often.
Time travel, of course, had an enormous impact on human society then. It was all very chaotic for a while, but things settled down slowly. Ritesh showed me a few of your movies about time-travel. You guys worry a lot about people going in the past and changing it to affect the present and future and all that crap. Well, that would have certainly made things very interesting, but sorry to say, nothing like that happens. Just like "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", "what happens in year 3090 stays in year 3090". Btw, that Back to the Future movie was pretty funny, hehe. Your parents not dating in the past makes your siblings disappear from the photograph in your hand! Wow! Magic! hehe.
Getting serious again, the interesting thing that did happen as a result of time travel is that 'past' became smaller and smaller and everything from year 2817 to one's hometime became 'present'. May be the analogy to a current phenomenon in your time will be apt here. Think about how 'globalization' has changed your perception of this world. Air travel, fast trains, ships, cars etc have left no place too far, right? Every part of the world is becoming dependent on other parts and the differences in living standards across continents are dropping, right? Something similar has happened to our time. Its becoming harder and harder to say that a particular time in 'history' was richer or better. And all the timeframes are becoming dependent on each other. You outsource work to other countries, we outsource work to other times!
I, myself, have frequent appointments in other timeframes to give lectures and take classes etc. My students, knowing that I am from future, always ask me about how will they perform in the exams, or what will they become in the future etc. And I tell them the truth always, if I know the answer and they really insist. Does it affect anything? Not really. They still do the same that they would have done otherwise. Somehow their future remains unaffected. Scientists, psychologists, socialogists (excl me) and many other are still trying to solve this mystery.
Another thing that might interest you (inferring from your sci-fi movies) is the way we handle awkward situations due to time travel. Awkward meaning, well, suppose I happen to bump into my own self from another timeframe in the supermarket. Thats a little awkward, right? First of all, he should not be roaming around in the supermarket, he should be doing his job for what he is in my timeframe, but anyways. In such cases, its understood to just say a polite 'hi' to your other self and part ways. Because, frankly speaking, there is no use talking to each other. It will only result in waste of time and nothing productive.
Oh yes, a little about how exactly is time travel done. Anyways, going by your movies, it seems that you think a person can travel 1000 years in a split second. Well, sorry to burst the bubble again, but thats not how it happens. I mean, come on, when you travel in the other 3 dimensions it takes time, right? So just coz the 4th dimension itself is time, doesnt mean that travelling in it doesnt take time. If you think about it, its just like travelling on ground. The most fundamental travelling scheme is by walking -- one foot at a time. But we humans developed faster ways to travel. Bicycles, cars, trains, airplanes etc are all different modes of ground travel with different speeds. Very similar machines exist for time travel too, some fast and some slow.
Do you realize that everyone (including you) actually does time travel all the time already. Dont believe me? Well, tell me how much time passed since you started reading this letter? Didn't you travel from past to present and now travelling to future already? :) Granted, its a very slow mode of travelling, one second per second, but the fact is, its the basic truth and most people dont realize it very easily. Now think about it. How would time travel work? Yes! By changing this rate of normal time travel from 1 second per second to maybe 1 month per second (to travel in future) or -1 month per second (to travel in past) and so on. Exciting, isnt it? Well, my favorite rates are between [0-1) second per second. Just imagine, at 0 second per second rate, nothing in this world is happening, everything is standstill! Its an awesome experience man, I wish I could show you!
Hmm, so this was about time travel. I will write another letter soon. And I am going to talk about 'the death of Death' in that letter. Look forward to it :)
Hope you liked your future. Any questions, please leave comment, I'll try to answer as much as I can without giving out too much information. Thanks for bearing with my english.
Regards,
Ropolo-82-manisto
9 comments:
You imagination is travelling places (and times)!
amazing!!
yaar, you should have taken a picture with Mr Ropolo-82-manisto ad have posted it on your blog.
Dont forget it next time. :)
One word- awesome.
But dude, a dimensional analysis on [T]/[T] (seconds/seconds or months/seconds) indicates that the resultant is a scalar quantity, and hence should be independent of time itself. (This must be the heights of nitpicking :D). Dude, just had this question for you: If you could time-travel once (into the future, assuming) what is the one thing you wish you could see/ verify? and what is the one if you could go back into time?
But on a serious note, you must develop this one into a critic of our contemporary practices and develop into a new blog. I mean why not? I tried it once, (http://coffeevendingmachine.blogspot.com) but I am way too lackadisical to have sustained it.
Have fun
Life sucks
man... tell me how much time did u invest to come out with this piece....?????
really amazing...! :)
@kiddo: I am sure that was a complement and I'll take it as it is.
@critic: Mr Ropolo is very camera shy. I'll still try my best :). Thanks, btw!
@kishore: Took me a few sittings and a few revisions, but I still dont like the final product. I guess I am just not patient enough.
@Prakash:
Whats the problem with it being scalar? (nitpicking or not, I still want to know) I dont get it :(
If you could time-travel once (into the future, assuming) what is the one thing you wish you could see/ verify? and what is the one if you could go back into time?
Dude, thats a trick question! :) There are tons of things I want to do if I get to time-travel! But maybe my foremost wish (atleast now, it might change with time) will be to meet with aliens. Not the ET/Koi Mil gaya types, but the Star Trek types. Like I mentioned in this post. Aliens who are as intelligent as us, but different. And I would like to see how we humans will interact with them. I would like to see how First Contact with them happens.
In past, I think I would like to go and see how the early humans used to live. How they developed language, how they developed agriculture, how they learned to live together. How they started controlling fire. What was their life like? How did they develop wheels? What will happen if I suddenly meet them? Will they welcome me or attack me? How intelligent were they? Would I be able to teach them something? What was their life like?
Hmm, I think I live in a whole another world. What about you, what would you like to do?
But on a serious note, you must develop this one into a critic of our contemporary practices and develop into a new blog. I mean why not?
I thought about it, but couldnt convince myself. The question is why? (and not 'why not?') Please convince me! :)
Whats the problem with it being scalar? (nitpicking or not, I still want to know) I dont get it :(
I meant that the concept of time changes when you talk of time travel which, when i read your blog again, is what i think you allude to.
Let me clarify (or obfuscate): (ok, before that, I am trying to show off my GRE vocabs, so atleast even if I do badly in the exams, I atleast will be happy I used it in Ritesh bhai's blog). Your idea of time travel somehow makes me think that 'event' is a series of picture-postcard like things arranged against time. and that travelling through time means varying the relative speed of your movement to the speed at which time moves (or the postcards are 'run) independent of direction- since you say you cna travel back in time . I do not agree. My point is, since you look totally in need of a peg, you cannot travel back in time. You can increase or decrease the speed at which time 'moves' (relativity theory) but as yet, I do not see how time can be reversed. Am thinking in terms of DELTA(t2) = DELTA(t1)/ SQRT(1-v^2/c^2), but again, you cannot have v>c. That'd be quite a disaster (unless Ropolo-82-manisto has other ideas).
Also, I am assuming that Chinkees will have succeeded in taking over the world by whatever time this Ropolo was from. So the name must've been Chiang-(sa-shra-er)-Kai-Tsai (Chiang-42-Kai-Tsai) or something like that.
Dude, thats a trick question! :) There are tons of things I want to do if I get to time-travel! But maybe my foremost wish (atleast now, it might change with time) will be to meet with aliens. Not the ET/Koi Mil gaya types, but the Star Trek types. Like I mentioned in this post. Aliens who are as intelligent as us, but different. And I would like to see how we humans will interact with them. I would like to see how First Contact with them happens.
That is,... assuming aliens exist. Macchi, i ask you one thing and you pull out another controversy. You have a good chance in American politics man!! just kidding.
Hmm, I think I live in a whole another world. What about you, what would you like to do?
Mera trick question, mujhipe ???
If i could go ahead in time, I would like to see if I will ever take up GRE exam.
If I could go back in time, I would reject the option (and select "none of these" :D). Like a friend remarked sometime back, dont drive looking through the rear-view mirror. (and incidentally got a ticket for rash driving and changing lanes a few days later).
But on a serious note, you must develop this one into a critic of our contemporary practices and develop into a new blog. I mean why not?
I thought about it, but couldnt convince myself. The question is why? (and not 'why not?') Please convince me! :)
Pls take a quick glance at my post Prasthutha- Relevant thoughts for responsible people (http://kboyone.blogspot.com/2006/11/prasthutha-relevant-thoughts-for.html) I hope I have answered. Convincing is an art I am naturally (and by definition) bad at.
I guess you are write. We need to come up with a new time travel theory. You gotta help me! :D
Ahh.. even after reading 'the selfish gene', you doubt that aliens exist? Of course, its not been proven yet, but if life developed by evolution on earth, I dont see why it cannot repeat the feat somewhere else.. in similar conditions.
PS: I haven't read selfish gene yet.
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