Wednesday, May 24, 2006

My Theory on Time Travel

If time travel were ever going to become available in the future, it would also be available now and yesterday. Why? Because even if the secrets of time travel are unlocked 1000 years from now, the technology, like all technology, would eventually become cheap enough to mass-market. Everyone would have his or her own personal time-travel device, the same way everyone now has a computer.

With average joes and janes traveling back and forth through time as easily as we go to Disney World or even the supermarket, and with money to be made by big companies from selling time machines to people of every preceding generation, time would not exist as we know it. Time would be like a highway, where you can get on and off at any exit. We wouldn't think of time as linear, but rather as no more than a location. "My friend Bob lives in the 17th century," you might say.

The fact that time is linear is proof that time travel will never be available to us. But if there are theories about how to do it, doesn't it make sense that, given enough time (500, 1000, 5000 years even), time travel should become possible? That it's never invented is proof that humankind simply isn't going to be around long enough to invent it.

Thus humanity will end.

In summary, since time travel doesn't exist now, it will never exist, which means we aren't around long enough to discover it.

Discuss.

5 comments:

Maggie said...

That's a really good point that I don't think I've ever heard made before.

Great entry.

I'm going to let this sit on top, at least for the rest of the day. I was going to write about eating habits, based on a conversation I just had with the other two editorial assistants about their parents' eating habits. It was interesting I guess, but not nearly as interesting as time travel.

Tom said...

It's funny that you write about this because it's something I've thought about (probably in no small part to a certain cosmic treadmill). When I was getting my massage in Atlantic City three months ago, the masseur was talking and talking and talking, so I tuned out a little. When I tuned back in he was telling a story that involved time travel and it sounded very scientific, so for a second I was very, very confused. Did this man know something I did not? Were these magic fingers from the future? But it turns out he was just describing the plot from a Michael Crichton novel. So what are the morals of this story? Apparently a male masseuse is called a masseur and honestly his fingers were not that magical.

NickM said...

There can be no time travel since the only time that truly exists is NOW, this very moment. The idea of time travel is very appealing of course, and fun to think about, but simply is not possible. How can you go someplace that doesn't exist? The past is only a memory...the future only a possibility. God may have a perfect memory of the past, but even he/she/it doesn't know what will come in the future. If he/she/it did, what would be the point of continuing? Everything would cease to exist!

Ben Monopoli said...

Well, I think things can be worth doing or seeing through even if you already know how they'll turn out. There's a reason people watch their favorite movies a million times and repeat the lines along with the characters. Maybe God is like, "Oooh, ooh, this is the part where Ben moves to Providence! Little does he realize that his new landlord will have connections to a big-time literary agent. I can't wait till he finds that out!"
When you throw a surprise party for someone, there's no surprise for you but it's still fun to watch the person find out.

NickM said...

then you're living in a rerun?
life IS a surprise party, and even though god, seeing through every eye at once, can predict the future very well, sometimes he's just as surprised as we are.