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!" Day
I 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 Proper
This 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:
- Maybe we should consider global availability to witness the event in unison.
- Maybe we should have a sponsor country.
- Maybe we should consider until everyone's gone through their New Year's celebration.
- Maybe we should make it the New year celebration.
- Maybe we should make it coincide with some sort of global phenomenon.
I don't know. What do you guys think?
***
Now that it's been more than a month since I first posted this, maybe it's time you checked out related posts and some campaign material. Help me spread it around. =)
Posts
if time travel was posible we would be seeing people from the future already!!
ReplyDeleteno that is not true.
ReplyDeleteit has to be recognized in the future. hence if a time machine was built today, we could only travel back to this day. no further. theoretically this makes sense, but that is assuming there are parallel universes amongst this one. if we were in a single universe then this would not be plausible assuming we are in the most recent present. we would only be able to go back to that date where the machine was turned on. there are so many ways to look at it - but i am SO down with this idea. i am going to try to spread it around. i think that it should BE the New Years Celebration - but then again it will be oh so hard to get the religious fanatics on this bandwagon... unless they are there to try to prove science wrong. i also agree with the host country.
also - get facebook involved - millions will join in days if you explain the theory correctly.
ReplyDeleteThanks
Thanks for commenting.=)
ReplyDeleteI know there are lots of theories involving past or future time travel. They go either way--for and against.
However, the thing about time travel is we're dealing with future potential which we've historically been UNABLE to predict or even describe accurately. The farther into the future we try to predict/describe, the less accurate we can expect ourselves to be.
Think of how hard it would be for people 50 years ago to imagine the internet. Now, think of how hard it would be for people 500 years ago to imagine the internet. We can push this line of reasoning back until the dawn of human consciousness, but you already get the point.
Of course there is a theoretical limit to all these hypotheses, subject to present scientific knowledge. But even scientific theories and laws can change as we become more aware of what this universe really is.
I guess the point here is we have the ability to try it out right now if we wanted to. We're so interconnected these days that if we wanted something to happen, we need only say it. Maybe say it well enough to make people act.
We can throw our theories for or against it. Good. But we can also do something tangible about it. And I think it's worth a try.
Thanks for the interest, guys. =)
For an article more related to this comment to the post, see
http://rlexperiment.blogspot.com/2008/08/fathoming-end-of-age-of-information.html
It's not a shamless plug. You don't have to read it. But it's an very brief overview of this interconnectedness thing.
This is awesome! While you are at Time Travel Day, I'm going to go to your house and steal your Star Trek collectibles.
ReplyDeletecreate a facebook page - that's definitely the way to go to get the word out
ReplyDeletemay need to be a few locations around the world to get as many people interested and able to attend
and perhaps even suggest some sort of sign to indicate that time travel has occurred - physical transportation of a person through time may not be the actual outcome but some other sign might be - but we would need to know what it is so we don't confuse it for a sign from god or the flying spaghetti monster or an act of nature
I'm so down for this. Such a great excuse to have a party. If I'm still in Chicago I'll will host a welcoming rager without a doubt. I'm looking forward to it, wherever I'll be in the future.
ReplyDeletepbtoutant@yahoo.com
This interests me. I have a few suggestions. First, you may want to take note that places on opposite sides of the world are half a day apart. I'm in the USA, and it's almost always tomorrow in China and Australia. You may want to make 2-4 host timezones.
ReplyDeleteSecond, if you want to get this out to the *chans (2chan, 4chan, 7chan, overchan, etc.) which tends to spread it around the Internet, then you will want to find something silly that will make users laugh. I recommend the anime/book "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya." It's about a girl that is searching for time-travelers, aliens, and ESPers. For a twist of irony, they are all right under her nose, and she's a bit extraordinary herself.