I have a recurring fantasy of visiting my favorite physics professor in the 1970s and showing him a modern smartphone. He showed me how to use integrated circuits, when microprocessors were a very new thing and we were mostly just making LEDs blink.
Came to say cell phone. Even as recently as the early 90s, no one on Earth had tech that was close. It would be plenty understandable by extrapolating current tech, but no one would believe it was a contemporary device.
Yep exactly. Many people in 1975 might have thought a smartphone was some kind of trick, but the professor I’m thinking of was very familiar with digital electronics and would know it was absolutely impossible to build such a thing at that time. I would really love to tell him all about the Internet etc. And of course when to sell his house and buy Microsoft stock lol.
I’d bring a scientist with me. Not sure which one. Just grab one with a cloth sack when they’re having breakfast with their kids, and stuff em into my time machine. They’ll figure it out.
Then I’d prod them to do future math and stuff for peasant farmers.
Then the peasant farmers either burn you both for witchcraft or shun you as the village idiot rambling about nonsense.
But… but… The Taylor Series expansions!
Something like a digital version of Wikipedia could work out great. I could have encyclopedic knowledge of their world and future events, such as “the pope is going to name himself such and such” at the palm of my hand
Something like a digital version of Wikipedia
?? Wikipedia IS digital.
What did you mean?
Oh, my bad. I meant offline version hahahaha
Yeah, I wonder how robust an ereader and one of those solar phone chargers would be? I seem to recall English Wikipedia takes up about 5GB, so you could probably bring a good chunk of Project Gutenberg too.
Solar powered e-ink reader would work well.
Even if the battery dies you could use it in direct sunlight.
Imagine reading a book that’s still being written. Straight to the stake!
How far back are we talking?
I mean the 90s were about 30 years ago (sorry for making you feel old).
So let’s say that that I managed to find a way to travel in time, and had time to prepare for a trip to 95…
I will also assume that it is a paradox self correcting time travel deal.
I’d bring an iPhone with me, that should convince anyone that I am from the future.
Generator. Television. PS2. Cowboy Bebop on DVD.
Idk if it would work at all, but TANK is such a good fucking song, and I hope they enjoy at least that much before burning me for witchcraft.
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An almanac of the time period I’ve traveled to.
I’d want something that can help people and can be tested and has an immediate, dramatic effect to make it undeniable
Maybe insulin? You could literally bring comatose people back from the brink of death in minutes
Wouldn’t anyone needing insulin already be dead? Or is there a middle ground where a diabetic can go in and out of shock, yet survive without?
They would survive for awhile after diagnosis on a starvation diet, maybe weeks, and slipping in and out of a coma but it was a death sentence. There’s stories from the 1920’s when whole wards of kids were hit with a first dose that removed the symptoms in minutes. I can’t imagine being in that room when all that despair and anguish turned into hope and relief.
A spork, man, a spork.
Aluminum foil
Good one! Bring enough and you would be rich as well.
A fistfull of random coins of varying ages.
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A bag of cool ranch Doritos.
I think a dirtbike and some gas would do it tbh
Pictures of them holding a newspaper
