What would you do if you could go back in time?
Imagine it's 2036, and Elon Musk has finally perfected time travel. You can revisit any point in the past. When would you return to and what would you do?
A big Beatles fan, I've always wanted to go back and save the life of John Lennon. So we hop in and travel to Jan 1, 1980. Now, I have to get to New York City, find the Dakota apartment building where he and Yoko live and somehow warn him not to give up his security team in the fall. How do I convince the doorman at the Dakota that the nutjob holding a copy of Catcher in the Rye is about to murder Lennon? A pretty tall order, right?
The other thing is, suppose we could jump back to that era while still retaining the knowledge of history that have now? In 1980 - there are no cellphones, internet, email, or social media. No online gaming, (you won't be playing League of Legends or Call of Duty!, people would freak out!) Computer gaming consists of Pong.
No smart TV's, rap music is confined to the Black community, country music has not yet crossed over into sounding like pop, Michael Jackson isn't yet "The Kig of pop" and there's no Justin Bieber...
Typical 80's bands:
We would know the outcome of every US.Presidential election and the future British Prime Ministers. I would be bored to death. The upside is, being be able to play the stock market like a champ. Buy AAPL at $20? DONE! Load up on Bitcoin in 2010 while avoiding the Mt. Gox debacle? DONE! I'd be living large with everyone wanting to know about my impeccible timing. However the grind from 1980 to 2019 would be a snoozefest. Watching everyone get excited about developments in the news when I would already know the outcome would put a huge damper on things. However there would always be the ability to do good with that foreknowledge.
For example, being able to warn the occupants of the World Trade Center on 9/11 may not be as easy as it might seem. Getting a message to Steve Jobs about his cancer, Michael Jackson about Propofil (when his own family couldn't even reach him) Amy Winehouse, Tupac and Kurt Cobain, so many people we've lost... Trying to change the future (which would be my past) would become a fulltime job with no guarantee of success, but very much worth a try.
Would you like to return to an earlier time in history? If so, when? and what would you do?
Thank you so much!
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