An Introduction (Be Patient)Our culture has been pondering and fantasizing (if you're that kind of person) about time travel ever since Samuel Madden made an angel the first literary agent of time travel in his novel
Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. H.G. Wells then popularized it more than a century later with
The Time Machine in 1895. Other notable authors and their works then followed after, expanding and elaborating on the entire concept, exploring theories and potential problems until it graduated into other forms of media. From Isaac Asimov's 1955 classic,
The End of Eternity to the epic 1985 action-adventure comedy
Back to the Future to the gamut of today's modern interpretations of it, time travel has become one of the most readily understood and accepted plot devices in fiction and science fiction.
Somewhen between Samuel Madden and
Adam Sandler, science caught up. Einstein's theory of relativity gave scientific credibility to the otherwise eagerly generous postulating of fiction.
Time travel became scientifically plausible. But what's really weird and unusual about this whole affair is though time travel has been in the minds of our scientists and the general population as a plausible reality for close to three generations, we still don't know if it is actually doable. This is only because we haven't tested the hypothesis yet. Not
really.
My Friend & The "Welcome Travelers From The Future!" DayI had a friend once who, slightly frustrated about how scientists and smart people were dealing with the matter, put forward the idea of The "Welcome Travelers From The Future!" Day. This was how it happened.
[dramatization]"Why not just, you know, have a Time Travel Day?" said my friend from out of the blue, partially to himself. We were in our high school classroom.
"Huh?" I said, "What?"
"Time Travel Day. People meet up from everywhere and then they wait for time travelers from the future to arrive," he continued.
"What?"
"People agree on a certain date and then they just gather and wait...for the time travelers from the future. They can have banners and stuff, 'Welcome Travelers From the Future.' And a stage. Or something."
"..."
"People just have to agree on the date and the time and then we'll finally know if there's such a thing as time travel."
"..."
"And then, you know, we can just get back to our daily lives knowing we tried. No matter what. Right?"
A pause.
"Yeah...But there has to be enough people who know about it for it to work."
"Yeah."
And then the bell rang and everything was pushed back to the subconscious and my friend and I went back to school mode and the grind of everyday life and then it's suddenly today and me writing about my friend's idea. And it's been years since that conversation.
The Experiment ProperThis shouldn't be too difficult. If we can agree on a time and the place then it should work. If enough people take the initiative to make sure that it becomes
a global event that will be remembered well into the future then we take away the possibility that the would-be time travelers don't know about it.
I'll set the date. Let's set it approximately one year from now so the news can spread and we can all make preparations. There can be a big supporting social event just in case our time traveling visitors fail to make it for whatever reason (impossibility/great risk of disrupting something important). There can be a big social event just for the heck of it.
Organize yourselves. You can tell people you know, people who can spread it to other people better. Friends, family, the media. While we're at it, let's see just how much power this Web2.0 thing can generate. Make sure to post regularly--once every two weeks?--on your blogs about the upcoming event. It can be about anything about it. Scientific background. Ethical issues. Concerns. Speculations about the result of the event. Preparations.
Make the initiative yours. Make blogs. Make music. Make movies. Anything to keep the hype up. Remember, the
world has to know it for it to work. And we have everything we need to make the world listen.
I'm serious about this guys. So, in the spirit of fun, curiosity, discovery, participating in something bigger, doing something unprecedented in scope and scale, and grabbing an opportunity that doesn't come too often,
I hereby declare January 1, 2010 "Welcome Travelers From The Future!" Day!
Wait up!Vote on which timezone to use. State your case and submit your proposal on when exactly "Welcome Travelers From The Future Day!" should be. Myself, I'd want it to be according to my timezone (for obvious reasons) but that may not be the smartest way to go. For example:
I don't know. What do you guys think?
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