If I’m creating new timelines through time travel, then I’m creating new worlds, and with them new beings living new lives who may or may not live better lives than the beings I’m leaving behind. If it goes really well, it might serve as a kind of one-time acausal trade if we get the new timeline to simulate the old one and let us escape from it.
I don’t believe that just bringing back advanced technology, as such, would be very useful because I would also need the influence and time and space and support to build the infrastructure needed to keep it going.
My first thought is to go the direction of the Moties. Can I engineer a a museum, or a library, or other easily absorbable body of knowledge to serve as a seed, usable by the civilization I travel back to, to help guide them in the direction I want to go? Unlike the Moties, I have the advantage of already knowledge some key information, like where large concentrations f natural resources will be located, that I can make use of in addition to scientific and mathematical knowledge and samples of technologies and materials and tools. If I’m personally present there is the risk of this becoming a cult around myself. Maybe I make many such seeds and scatter them around the world, while I myself go live in the asteroid built and have robotic systems build a Dyson sphere (hidden somehow with fancy optics until Earth is more scientifically mature) to be ready when Earth needs and is ready for it, thereby sidestepping much of the pollution and many of the other harmful effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Maybe I divide important knowledge among the seeds so people have reason to trade when they meet, and/or still reward independent investigation. Maybe I encode later info, a la Fine Structure, so that anyone who takes the time to study the parts that are unlocked to date has the sense that more is possible, just by how much knowledge and growth potential there seems to be in their future. I want a society that looks forward with hopeful eyes, open minds due caution, and the will to grow.
Where and how far back would I go? Not before the bronze age. Without writing and some division of labor in society, my job gets a lot harder. Probably not later than the renaissance—over time it gets much harder to shift the direction society is already going. I think late bronze/early iron age. Most likely shortly after the late bronze age collapse, when people knew they used to be able to do great things now out of reach, and are already rebuilding, rediscovering, and innovating new ways, while also mixing with near and distant neighbors often enough to know other peoples have other ways and useful resources they need.
If I’m really, really lucky, this might dissuade people from conducting experiments that are truly dangerous, on the basis that the answers might already be somewhere in the encoded info they expect to eventually unlock.
If I’m creating new timelines through time travel, then I’m creating new worlds, and with them new beings living new lives who may or may not live better lives than the beings I’m leaving behind. If it goes really well, it might serve as a kind of one-time acausal trade if we get the new timeline to simulate the old one and let us escape from it.
I don’t believe that just bringing back advanced technology, as such, would be very useful because I would also need the influence and time and space and support to build the infrastructure needed to keep it going.
My first thought is to go the direction of the Moties. Can I engineer a a museum, or a library, or other easily absorbable body of knowledge to serve as a seed, usable by the civilization I travel back to, to help guide them in the direction I want to go? Unlike the Moties, I have the advantage of already knowledge some key information, like where large concentrations f natural resources will be located, that I can make use of in addition to scientific and mathematical knowledge and samples of technologies and materials and tools. If I’m personally present there is the risk of this becoming a cult around myself. Maybe I make many such seeds and scatter them around the world, while I myself go live in the asteroid built and have robotic systems build a Dyson sphere (hidden somehow with fancy optics until Earth is more scientifically mature) to be ready when Earth needs and is ready for it, thereby sidestepping much of the pollution and many of the other harmful effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Maybe I divide important knowledge among the seeds so people have reason to trade when they meet, and/or still reward independent investigation. Maybe I encode later info, a la Fine Structure, so that anyone who takes the time to study the parts that are unlocked to date has the sense that more is possible, just by how much knowledge and growth potential there seems to be in their future. I want a society that looks forward with hopeful eyes, open minds due caution, and the will to grow.
Where and how far back would I go? Not before the bronze age. Without writing and some division of labor in society, my job gets a lot harder. Probably not later than the renaissance—over time it gets much harder to shift the direction society is already going. I think late bronze/early iron age. Most likely shortly after the late bronze age collapse, when people knew they used to be able to do great things now out of reach, and are already rebuilding, rediscovering, and innovating new ways, while also mixing with near and distant neighbors often enough to know other peoples have other ways and useful resources they need.
If I’m really, really lucky, this might dissuade people from conducting experiments that are truly dangerous, on the basis that the answers might already be somewhere in the encoded info they expect to eventually unlock.