A Time of Magic

In that time travel is theoretically possible you’d think that it’s a little surprising that nobody has turned up here from the future, wouldn’t you?

But suppose that they did, how would you know? More to the point, how would they prove that they were from the future?

Let’s make it easy… say you built a time machine and travelled back from 2007 to 1907. How would you prove to the people in 1907 that you’d come from the future?

Yes, you’d be wearing strange clothes more than likely made with materials that didn’t exist at the time. On the other hand, would they be able to tell that your polyester shirt wasn’t made from some form of silk? Most people back then probably wouldn’t and besides perhaps you’d just bought it in China.

What about your digital watch? If it only had a digital display it would certainly be a curiosity and if you let them open it up that would be a pretty good indication that you had some seriously advanced technology. Of course, that’s assuming that you or they could open it.

Now in the films you’d just tell them who was going to win the Grand National but since this isn’t the films chances are that you don’t know who the winner was anyway and indeed unless you’re into the history of that period, you won’t even know about major events that happened in 1907. OK, you know that the first world war would be starting in 1914 but even if you landed in 1914 that wouldn’t prove anything as anybody reasonably knowledgeable about world affairs would be expecting it too. In short, your knowledge of history isn’t going to prove you’re from the future.

What else? Well, your attitudes would be quite different for a start but it’s hardly going to prove much if you speak to the servants as equals rather than as though they were insects.

So, even if you ignored any issues relating to changing the future, you’d have quite some difficulty in proving that you were from the future and would probably end up in a mental institution if you did try. Perhaps that’s where we should look for time travellers from our future?

Related posts:

1. How would you pick up that someone wasn’t a time traveller?
2. An interest in history?
3. Just when would a time-traveller actually go to?
4. Would “Seven Days” style time travel technology be any use?
5. Will your great grandchildren be able to see your photograph?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 10:21 am and is filed under Science Fiction Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.