Author Topic: If you had a time machine...  (Read 3408 times)

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Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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If you had a time machine...
« on: March 07, 2021, 02:07:43 pm »
If you could work in the electronics/electricity/computing field (all defined broadly) at any given time and place, what would you choose? 

I usually come up with a different answer each time I think about it, depending on the vintage article I've most recently read or the YouTube video I've just seen.     
« Last Edit: March 07, 2021, 02:16:14 pm by AlbertL »
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2021, 02:59:16 pm »
I would go back in time by about 13 months. Give the time machine to myself, with instructions to go to 2022, and destroy it.
Probably creating a paradox, but whatever.
 
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Offline bsfeechannel

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2021, 03:20:41 pm »
Time traveling is just too dangerous.

 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2021, 03:28:57 pm »
mid 60's for me,just intime to invent a 24 channel desk and large PA rig in time for woodstock,weres the brown acid gone?
 
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Offline Messtechniker

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2021, 04:33:11 pm »
I'd like to go to summer 1940 to the lab where
Braunmühl and Weber accidentally discovered AC tape biasing.
A complete game changer back then.
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Offline Fred27

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2021, 04:40:11 pm »
I'd go back to 2010 when I was chatting to a colleague in the office and he said "What do you think of this bitcoin thing? I might get some." Then I'd stop myself saying "It's just a Ponzi scheme. I wouldn't touch it." (I still think I'm right, just one that still hasn't imploded.)
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #6 on: April 14, 2021, 10:15:48 pm »
About a week or so in order to warn Dave to find a new host before it's too la....  Oh.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #7 on: April 14, 2021, 10:26:31 pm »
I think sometime around 1975, I'd love to jump into the dawn of the PC revolution, or maybe get a job at a place like Atari during the bronze age of arcade games, it would be a lot of fun to ride that wave up into the golden age in the early 80s.
 
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Offline Syntax Error

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2021, 08:20:12 pm »
I guess I could go to the Year 3000, just to say that I had really been there. And show a copy of Grays Sports Almanac to prove it.

Seriously (?), I would travel back to the year 1950 to give Alan Turing this recently issued British £50 note. It would be delivered with the explicit instruction that he must get on the first liner headed for America as his life was in danger from a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic). There would be no need to explain to him the concept of time travel plus, he would understand the concept of a temporal paradox. When crossing the Atlantic, when he sees his face fade from the £50 note, he would know time travel was real. And his life then takes a new direction, inventing the equations for quantum time tunneling at MIT; for which he received the Nobel prize in 1987.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2021/march/the-new-50-note-unveiled
Using the equations, Dave then managed to build his dumpster delorean time machine. Where he is now living in Sydney in the year 1885, inventing everything electrical.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 08:22:12 pm by Syntax Error »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2021, 08:35:02 pm »
Seriously (?), I would travel back to the year 1950 to give Alan Turing this recently issued British £50 note. It would be delivered with the explicit instruction that he must get on the first liner headed for America as his life was in danger from a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic). There would be no need to explain to him the concept of time travel plus, he would understand the concept of a temporal paradox.

I think there's a very good chance he would think you were a nut and disregard everything you said. I don't know much about his personality but I would expect most rational people to respond in that way, certainly I would if some random weirdo showed up claiming to be from the future.
 

Offline WattsThat

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2021, 08:51:16 pm »
Seriously (?), I would travel back to the year 1950 to give Alan Turing this recently issued British £50 note. It would be delivered with the explicit instruction that he must get on the first liner headed for America as his life was in danger from a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic). There would be no need to explain to him the concept of time travel plus, he would understand the concept of a temporal paradox.

I think there's a very good chance he would think you were a nut and disregard everything you said. I don't know much about his personality but I would expect most rational people to respond in that way, certainly I would if some random weirdo showed up claiming to be from the future.

There was a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode that explored that exact theory. Russell Johnson (the professor on Gilligan’s Island) finds himself transported back in time to the evening of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. He pleads with those around him to assist with preventing the event but is seen and treated as a nutter. It was all very believable and was exactly the way we would all react to the situation.

Only later, after returning to the present time, does he realize he was being helped by John Wilkes Booth.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #11 on: April 15, 2021, 08:52:02 pm »
I'd go back to 1997 where I'd buy as much Apple stock (at $1 a share) as I could afford.
Complexity is the number-one enemy of high-quality code.
 
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Offline MathWizard

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #12 on: April 15, 2021, 09:04:11 pm »
OP I agree I'd have a hard time choosing 1 period, in fact it reminds me of in video games where you level up your tech somehow. I guess I'd choose something early, since there's lots of the game left. And I'd want to play the whole thing.

Today I'd say the 1930's, all the R&D in between WW1/2, a lot of cool stuff was in the works.
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2021, 02:54:03 am »
a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic).

"sic"?
Hoarder of 8-bit Commodore relics and 1960s Tektronix 500-series stuff. Unconventional interior decorator.
 

Offline Syntax Error

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #14 on: April 16, 2021, 09:05:41 am »
a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic).
"sic"?
This is a Latin idiom used in written English to denote a statement is the truth, but often said in an ironic or cynical way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

Given how Turing was abandoned by the British establishment, someone very high up, was for sure conspiring against him. Maybe Turing knew too much about those senior figures who had done too little? Wild speculation (sic).
« Last Edit: April 16, 2021, 09:14:20 am by Syntax Error »
 

Offline bsfeechannel

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #15 on: April 16, 2021, 12:08:50 pm »
This is a Latin idiom used in written English to denote a statement is the truth, but often said in an ironic or cynical way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

Sic means thus, so. That is, it was thus, so written, quoted word for word like that. But you can use it to denote irony. For example, let's talk about the rapid response (sic) of Gorilla Servers to the power outage.

Quote
Given how Turing was abandoned by the British establishment, someone very high up, was for sure conspiring against him. Maybe Turing knew too much about those senior figures who had done too little? Wild speculation (sic).

It is speculated that the British gov't was afraid that, because Turing was gay and couldn't have a steady marital relationship, someone could surreptitiously approach him with the intent of winning his affection only to have access to sensitive information.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2021, 03:16:39 pm by bsfeechannel »
 

Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2021, 12:28:57 pm »
THINK ABOUT IT !!... If there was ever a real Time-Machine, then INSTANTLY there would be no more gambling !!!   :-+
Otherwise, anyone can get info about the Stock Market, or horse racing, or Pokies outcomes etc etc...
And countless BILLIONS would then be available again to families/homes/kids/education...
I've seen TOO many people & families ruined, and know of some personally that have committed suicide...   >:(
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #17 on: April 16, 2021, 01:28:50 pm »
a British establishment conspiracy against leading academics (sic).

"sic"?

Often used when you are quoting someone else verbatim and they made a spelling mistake or used poor grammar.

e.g., "The capasiter [sic] exploded."

It's shorthand for "yes, I did mean to type it that way - please don't correct it" (if you're being charitable) or "wanker, doesn't know how to spell so I'm going to shame him".
« Last Edit: April 16, 2021, 01:30:30 pm by JohnnyMalaria »
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #18 on: April 16, 2021, 05:53:26 pm »
Given how Turing was abandoned by the British establishment, someone very high up, was for sure conspiring against him. Maybe Turing knew too much about those senior figures who had done too little? Wild speculation (sic).

It was discovered that he was gay, no big deal today but that was a serious crime at that time and place. As far as I know, there are still some places where even in modern times it is a crime punishable by death.
 

Offline gnif

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2021, 12:52:15 am »
For anyone worried about paradoxes, you shouldn't be. According to Futurama logic, the universe/big-bang is an oscillation that repeats at a fixed frequency. All one has to do is travel forward in time to the same point in the next oscillation for things to remain coherent.
 
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Offline m98

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #20 on: April 18, 2021, 12:34:47 am »
1920's really would be interesting, even right here where I live in the pre-predecessor company where I currently work at. However, the time machine better also be working the other direction...
 

Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #21 on: April 18, 2021, 11:58:34 am »
For anyone worried about paradoxes, you shouldn't be. According to Futurama logic, the universe/big-bang is an oscillation that repeats at a fixed frequency. All one has to do is travel forward in time to the same point in the next oscillation for things to remain coherent.

True... But interestingly, as much as I can understand/grasp this concept of a repeating Big-Bang after re-collapsing on itself again, I feel that
there is absolutely no suggestion/thought that the 'new' expansion will follow anything like the same path/structure, or even the same 'Laws'!   8)
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 

Online Ed.Kloonk

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #22 on: April 18, 2021, 12:35:54 pm »
Time traveling is just too dangerous.



Don't panic. Just remember to bring a towel.


Oh, wait...
iratus parum formica
 
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Offline AlbertLTopic starter

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #23 on: April 19, 2021, 12:08:25 am »
I think one of the most interesting times to be in electronics would be the roughly 25 years from the end of WW II through the Apollo era.  That time saw the birth of the transistor and microelectronics, the rapid growth of consumer electronics and broadcasting that had been on hold during the war, the development of modern computers. missiles and space exploration, and the widespread commercial deployment of technologies developed during the war such as atomic power, radar, microwave communications and jet aircraft.
 
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Offline bsfeechannel

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Re: If you had a time machine...
« Reply #24 on: April 19, 2021, 03:14:45 pm »
I think one of the most interesting times to be in electronics would be the roughly 25 years from the end of WW II through the Apollo era.

I was there, at least at the end of that era.

What was cool about that time is that we were trying to figure out how to make our TVs as thin as picture frames on the wall, how to make our computers fit in the palm of our hands, how to make a worldwide digital network infrastructure.

We were devising ways of destroying that very present so that we could make way for the future.
 


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