Forward or back

past.
but only if i could alter future events, and place wagers on sporting events...

One way to the future is unknown, To the past we could research all we would need to know. Go back to 1970 and make all the correct investments, make some incredible inventions.

Invent he INTERNET, faster and smaller computers, better software. In the past may be fun.

Living in the present may be the best choice.

I think I would rather stay on the time line I have, unless we could travel backward and forward in time, and return to home time.

Go to the past and you could screw things up, meet your great-great-grand-parent so that they will not marry your other great-great-grand-parent, you may never exist.

Most of us already have a one way ticket to the future.

cheesy idea but i always wanted to go bakc in time and steal the big songs that owuld come out a year later and make them myself early. So i dont even have to work for hard cash. All i do is steal the future songs (so it's not really stealing).

El-Diablo, I've had the same wish, but it makes me feel guilty since I do think it is sort of like stealing.

Joe,

Can we go back in time as ourselves but with all our current knowledge and change what we did?
I have that fantasy all the time.

Sometimes I even daydream about bus rides I had years ago. Completely uneventful bus rides, but I guess I think about them because of the streets and neighborhoods I loved, or maybe just the ease of using public transportation instead of having to drive oneself.

I would go back to August 12, 1341, to a remote region of the Gobi Desert. I would stand there, look around for a bit, then start walking.

This all started with a discussion of mortality. The combination of a thirty year mortgage, an update of a will and the announcement that NASA launched that probe to Mercury that won't even be there for eight or nine years got a bunch of us talking about we will live to see.

I would like to be there in twenty five years when robots are mining the deserts of Mars, there is peace in the middle East and politicians are talking about the legacy of the Kerry-Edwards-Obama Presidencies.

To speak of wanting to go back in time seems somehow to say there are regrets. I have nome that I'll admit to, though sometimes I wonder if I should have let the phone ring.

Joe

Like these will ever happen.

I know. It just makes me sad that I'm not going to get to see those robots.

For me, it's regrets and a deep sense of nostalgia for certain periods of my life. I know when I get older, I'll miss this particular period of time a lot.

I am a sentimental sort and rather glad I am, as a lot of people in my early life have died, and a lot of the places I lived have been torn down; I am an only child and don't have a lot of back up for memories. Ergo, I am glad I always seemed to have a "framing this time" setup in my brain. I am even sentimental about right now, in a way.
On forward or back, I'd pick now...

I would love to be able to do time travel. I like to research genealogy. Going back in time would make that task easier. To make sure the documentation was available, and to find out who my ancestors were beyond what I know, guess I would need to learn to speak german.

I wouldn't go anywhere if it was a one-way ticket. I couldn't stand giving up what I have right here and now.

I'd probably choose the future, I mean, it would be cool to go to the past and be able to show off all of the sophistimicated sciencey type stuff I know, but I'd probably be burned as a witch (or worshipped as a god! ) But being able to see the future, while less personally glamorous, would allow me to learn all new sophistimicated sciencey type stuff with no waiting! Besides, being a living relic, I'd probably be able to trade on my own "freak" value, doing the talk show circuit, making personal appearances. Gold-mine!

I want to travel back in time posing as a psychiatrist and convince my parents and my fellow psychiatrists that I am indeed bipolar so that I can get treatment earlier. I'll even stay on board and treat myself in the ways I know to be most effective, both behaviorally and chemically.

My problem: will I cease to exist after altering my future? If I cease to exist will my travel through time still have impact on my future or will it be as if nothing ever happened?

A most intriguing paradox...

What a good answer Eva.

Dauer, your answer ought to be my next movie.

Joe

If you somehow went back to the future after altering yourself, then perhaps. Or perhaps you would be there, changes extant. Or, maybe, you'd have to sacrifice the changes that you made to return. It's a real shame that we will never know.

I too would want to see the future. I would hate to be stuck in the past, even if it meant seeing those departed. Although I have my gripes about the world today, I wouldn't fit into old society... Yes, we know what's going to happen in the past; but to submit to something as inevitably interesting as the future would, I find, be more rewarding.