Time Travel Narratives | OTIS

Questions for Kaku and Pickover

Page history last edited by kelvin kim 4 mos ago

Respond to the following prompts on this wiki page using the "edit" feature.

Make sure to include your username in your response and separate your answers from each other using the "insert horizontal line" button.

See the rubric if you have questions about how you will be graded on your response.

Before responding to the prompt below make sure you read the excerpt from Pickover (course reader) and Kaku (O-Space), and read the Lecture Notes. Don't forget to cite your information if it is coming from another source. Even if you are paraphrasing (putting information into your own words), you still need to acknowledge where you found that information originally.

Prompt:

Now that you have read excerpts from Pickover and Kaku, watched the final podcasts, and are working on your Time Machine article, I am curious where you stand on the subject of Time Travel. When you first heard of this subject, what did you expect and how do you feel now after almost ten weeks? What have you learned in this course? What will you take away and what can you apply in your future studio practice and/or careers? In addition, give me an answer to the why? What is it about time travel that holds such appeal? (Try to move beyond a superficial answer that it is cool or would be fun).

Explain your answers, use examples and BE SPECIFIC!

soap.

To be perfectly honest, the personification of myself that is me feels exactly the same about the traversing of time now as he (I) did in the first place. I love it. I WANT it. Think of the adventure! I mean, come on! If there's risks of changing the past, then a Time agency would just be formed. When I first heard the idea of this class all I was thinking was "thank god! something to take that doesn't suck." And I was right. It thouroughly does not. Like a vacuum stuck in reverse. My eyes hast bees opened to some of the more reality based time travel thoughts. And I have learned of a few good movies and such that I hadn't paid much attention to previously. Like Sliders. Which unfortunately bummed me out, cuz they killed off *BLEEEEEEP* (SPOILER BLOCKED!) I now have a better understanding as to how to implement time travel in my future fiction, and hopefully non-fiction exploits.

The Why. Why? Meeting your heroes. Seeing the future. That's all possible. But really, for some, who perhaps feel that they have been born into the wrong time, say for instance a friend of mine who models himself after the 80's? Boom! You can now live in your correct era. Perhaps you never knew your father? Well go ahead. have a talk, to his knowledge your just some pedestrian, but to you it'll mean a hell of a lot. Scientist you say? Well now why not go back and see how those fossils really happened. Most of all, it explains a lot of weird stuff. For instance, missing persons. Maybe they disappeared through time? Who knows. Amelia Earhart for example. Or the Limberg baby. And what really happened to that Jimmy Hoffa fellow?

Mike

When I first heard about time travel I of course automatically associated it with pop culture. I didn't really even consider the physics, theories, and scholarly talk of the subject matter. To be quite honest, I thought of the many movies and shows of Hollywood such as Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and other less significant shows where time travel came into to play(in only one episode) such as Family Matters and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I expected to learn about the various ideas of time travel, the many ways in which it plays out in film and literature (as well as the flaws of each) and the various motives behind time travel. After consuming a great amount of literature, film, and theory I have become more interested in the subject then ever before. I am not so much interested in the actual science of time traveling but the blissfully imaginative possibility of time travel. The idea of time travel liberates the mind from the everyday and serves as an impetus into living and playing out any fantasies you have ever dreamed of.

From this class, I have learned a lot about time traveling and its relation to pop culture, science, and the interactions among them. It has given me a look into the many ways time travel is perceived. I have learned about science but also the humanities and the grey areas in between. This class may not have cleared everything up about time travel (i.e. we don't know if will exist ever), but it has opened up a window of possibility. I will take the imaginary, fantastical qualities of time-travel and begin to meld them into my design (and life of course). In addition, I will take the hopeful spirit and mindset of time-travel theorists and begin to think less rigidly about what is and what is not possible. I think that might be the most important...how to think less rigid. This idea is very much so important because within our lives we experience a vast amount of negativity and closed mindedness so as a result we must begin to defeat this closed mind in order to progress as thinkers, theorists, and creative individuals.

Time travel holds much appeal because of its imaginative qualities as well as its foundational grounding in science. I think time travel, in a way, synthesizes science and fiction quite well and this seemingly seamless mixture holds for mass appeal. Time travel involves just enough science to ensure the viewer/reader that the idea might be possible. This brief assurance liberates the viewer from further question of its possibility in which the imaginary takes place. Now that the imaginary is free to move as it pleases the creative boundaries become endless. This endless creativity is something that is hard to come by within our world and because it is far and in between, we grasp for this feeling...

kelvin k

Time Travel is most amazing and interesting idea that motivate the human mind with full of imagination. Since I watched these time travel movies, I somehow interested with past and present moment and difference between times. There are different environment, and history but same human species existed. Our new images, these day are all remix or copyright, which it fomulates as new and put out on market. Still this time travel gives some powerful imagination that we can visualize far advanced technology or see something historical review, which it seems so interested because visual is more interested than reading or hearing.

One thing I learned from this time travel is that people want something like fantasy life or event. Because seeing stuff like big robots are figting and man can use some psychic energy or strange machine appear and changes whole man's life, these ideas are making so shivering people emotionly. These calls as a pop culture and modernity of art. Those natural and realistic art from past is now a history. Some people still like these old century arts but more people behave with those pop cultural art.

These leaves some confused question, which is the one we call as a best art. I believe anyone probably say both but it needs certainty answer.

This Time Travel class sure showed me a lot of ideas and power of imagaination.

Cristina

Before starting this class, I had very little understanding of time travel. My knowledge was extracted from movies and television shows about two kinds of people: Those who went back in time in order to resolve an event they regretted or the wacky and unpredictable professor who managed to build a capable time travel. My honest impression time travel was something in the realm of fantasy. I was more of the mindset that robots and AI’s could soon take over before time travel would ever be possible.

Now that the semester is almost over, I am grateful to have gained a basic knowledge on the science of time travel. My new knowledge has led me to believe that time travel is truly possible. This class has also made me consider the action of thought, what is memory, and what is intuition. Though I have tried to address these ideas in form before, I think my lack of scientific data stunted my designs up to a point. This class will give me a lot to ponder over the summer.

Other than altering the past and future for personal gain, I believe there is another reason why society is attracted to the idea of time travel. Our global timeline is accelerating and merging us closer because of conditions such as technology, global warming, and the continuous grinding down of ideas about religion, race and family. Technology’s evolution continues to unify individuals into one stream of energy; from trains to telegraph and telephone lines, to the Internet. It is most likely our fated evolution to time travel as a civilization and innately, deep down, we all know it.

Time travel for me is still pretty complicated to comprehend. Before this class I never would have thought time travel could be possible at all except through the mind. The idea of actually getting into a transportation devise that could send someone through time to the past or the future at the speed of light boggles my mind. I believe time travel would be a really bad idea if it were really possible. It has yet to be proven. There are way to many risks that could take place that I am just not willing to risk, the main one being: Changing the world for the worse. Just one different step changes one or more people’s lives that could change history. Changing history will change the present. From the moment the traveler arrived in the past his history would change. What if the time traveler can never go back to their present? And traveling back in time might cause a parallel universe and the grandfather affect which may cause the end of one family line.

It would really be interesting if we could travel back in time to find out all the mysteries that withstand in history today or change the bad in the past from ever happening like in the movie Déjà Vu, but in all actuality if we were able to do so I would suspect that people wouldn’t be tangible subjects. We wouldn’t be able to alter time because it already has a set future. And traveling the past is questionable for me. It’s even harder for me to believe that we can travel to the future. Which has been proven possible by Einstein by traveling at the speed of light as an astronaut has, which would be a version of traveling in time. But time travel hasn’t actually been proven. Traveling to the future becomes a jumbled mess to explain. That just doesn’t seem physically possible.

Although time travel is a difficult subject for me to fully rap my brain around I find myself relating a lot of things with time and time travel. Example: 1. The new Skittles commercial where a boy eats Skittles from the hourglass and it begins to age his friend. 2. I was watching the history channel when they did a story about ancient encounters with aliens in old civilization, Egypt, and Meso America where they found engravings on the wall of men in space ships and in objects that resembled planes flying in the sky and traveling to the moon thousands of years before a space ship or a plane were invented. (It might seem crazy but) I thought about time travel and if it were possible that the ancient people were drawing what they saw. 3. I was watching Jumanji, and realized that this story involved time travel as well. 4. A family guy episode where Stewie see’s he in the future on television and mistook himself for his “real” father.

As time travel has taken place for me in several occasions, one’s I have only mentioned being on TV, I am sure that this class will take part on my future and I will be able to incorporate it into my studio practice. Although I am not sure how that will come about or what the future entails because I do not have a time machine :). Time travel holds such an appeal to all audiences because it is foreign and could or could not be real and many people are interested in their general relativity. Time is one of the universes greatest mysteries. They also would very much like to know what their future holds or prove something happened or figure out what happened in the past. I know there are many times in my life where I so desperately wish I could just go back to prove a point, not actually altering time because I wouldn’t know what changing the past would entail. The question stands, “is time travel possible and if it is how would in impact humankind? Would we really want to risk it and should we have the power too?” As I read more in The Time Machine I hope to come up with my own answer rather he should have traveled or not and read reviews on my fellow class mates as well as people on the internet about their opinion on the subject at hand.

-Arielle

Wonwoong

When I registered this class, time travel narrative, I just thought about the meaning of time travel. Time travel? In fact, I thought of it as just studying art history and backward human activities, but my guess was wrong. When I first read “preface”, I figured out this class is about time traveling so the article, “preface” provides me the possibility of time machine or time traveling with the theory of Einstein’s relativity. In the textbook, there are good examples about time traveling, but I just thought why I have to learn time traveling? Why ? Even though it is just fiction, not real!! After almost ten weeks, my mind is changed by “All the myriad ways” and the film of “Doctor Who” and “Donie Darko.” These movies and articles are so interesting to me. I did not care time machine or time traveling exists today, but time traveling shows me new world such as parallel universes, higher dimensions. These things are so cool. Even though I did not ever imagine like the mulitiverse, time traveling can imagine whole infinite possibility of whole human life. Time traveling is so an epoch-making discovery to increase our imagination and consideration ability. It makes me to expect various ideas and events of time travel.

Through this class, I have learned physics science and also interesting space time universe. The most important thing is to create a sensation of space and time. Some people said time traveling is impossible by showing literal objection like Grandfather Paradox, but other people said time traveling is possible by showing multiverse, repeating history, and having free will. All new theories and assumption make me to become aware of infinite new world, and also it can be used for our design or art study directly or indirectly.

Time traveling or time machine story also deal with social interaction and even religion. This source of time and space make me to create something such as how to meet between past and future person and what’s time role of God. Moreover, my major is architecture design. When I learned about architecture, we need to know just how to plan arrangement of space. However after taking this class, I can imagine fantastic arrangement of time and space in our life… It is so exciting!

Andi

When I first heard about this subject I was a little confused as to how we could not only discuss, but learn about time travel through fictional literature. Being much more of a mathematics/science person myself, I though the class might be too broad and full of “well what do you think?” but no real answers. I was very much surprised that this class actually had plenty of solid backing and support from physics. It was more of a blend between science and English, and made it so much easier for me to want to do the assignments and reading because I love physics. I think more classes should be this way because they will help English people learn about Science and Science people learn a bout English. I feel that I have learned so much more literature wise than I would have learned in a typical English class. This should be a real class as well as an online class. I can imagine the heated discussions that could a accrue and how wonderful a place it would be. To find a small niche with science in it, in a school that offers none.

In this course I have not only learned more about one of my favorite discussion topics, but have also gotten to see opinions of other’s. I really enjoyed coming back after everyone had posted and reading all of the things they had to say. Seeing how they interpreted something and blowing my mind away with something I may have missed or though unimportant. I leaned that there are many different form of time travel and that we are time traveling every second of our lives. I will take not only time management and the ability to work in self sufficient groups into my future. I will take knowledge of different scientist and theories.

Time travel holds such appeal to people because it gives them the idea that maybe things could be better. It gives them hope that perhaps they could go back in time and fix this and that and change everything. As well as going into the future and seeing how the world will be. Fulfilling the innate desire of exploration and curiosity that lives within every human and living creature. Unfortunately once logic is set into the equation one knows that going back and “fixing is impossible” that nothing will ever be perfect and that man is best off not tampering with what they do not fully understand. For me it is not only the exploration but the desire to get away that is appealing. Being some place different that no one around me will ever know about. Away from everyone I know and off to encounter new wonderful or even dreadful things.

Joe

I believe in time travel. I am doing some right now, traveling forward through time at the speed of regular time. What first came to my mind regarding time travel was: a super villain has traveled back in time to WWII to change the outcome of the war. Damn you Vandal Savage! Justice League assemble! I was also thinking of back to the future a lot, having seen it numerous times as a wee lad. I feel that it is possible, but too powerful to wield. Hawking asking where are the future time travelers is loaded question. You have to consider that if time travel was made available in the future, that they would take some precautions in doing it. I doubt that people from the future would come to the present wearing their future clothes saying, “Look at me I’m from the future!” That would mess with the timeline that has been established, unless they were meant to do that. There is a lot of flip-flopping on the subject as no one has done it…yet. I have learned that in order to time travel, one must be educated and able to function in their destination. Like going to a foreign land, you need to know how things operate, get the right currency, and try to blend in as you don’t want to be a blatant tourist. I wonder what people will look towards after time is conquered. Will there ever be more dimensions? Will this fire from Olympus be our undoing? Flight, the dream of man and flightless bird alike was the goal of many a scientist and inventor, evolving into space travel, and now time travel. With proof of possibility yet lack of feasibility, one can only wonder what will come out of it. I will take he consequences of my actions from this class. Seeing how everything seems to affect everything else, it is clear that our actions hold a great power in the wild and wacky world of tomorrow. So I will make grander decisions that benefit things better. I’m not sure how yet, but my future self has already figured it out. From tangible things like the seas to the skies to the heavens, time may be the last thing to conquer. With the power of time, one could do anything. Man has searched the world and the universe for a power that has been on our wrist and in our pockets for centuries. Time travel is the ultimate power and a god-like one at that. Like fire, it could spring forth all kinds of things, building new societies in its wake, or destroying them. It is a dangerous illumination and a mysterious one. Time has been on peoples’ minds as long as they were able to perceive it. Being able to control time would mean being able to do anything without the constraint of a finite amount of time. Yet that would make life pointless in a way, as there would be no deadlines so to speak. But now I’m ranting a tad so I’m going to change directions. As long as we have been on this earth, we have sought to explore everything. Time has always been present, yet always out of reach. We have looked across oceans and sailed them, looked to the skies and walked on other worlds, now we look to our wristwatches and see that there are places that are gone and places that are not yet and we see that perhaps there is a new ocean to sail. Who wouldn’t want to see historic events unfold firsthand, and see how the earth was made, what tomorrow will bring etc.? It is not power and control that we seek from time travel, but knowledge. The power of time travel brings about the ultimate knowledge and to know everything feels good. People yearn to know and see and explore and time travel allows the absolute of all of those. It also gives power and control completing a nice little trinity of awesomeness. People can have all of these just from a Delorean. So lets all floor it and hit 88!

Julia Parmesano

At the start of this class, I felt blindsided by the course topic. I didn’t fully comprehend what a “Time Travel Narrative” could be, or what something like that might have to do with an English class. I understand now that the subject is an intriguing hybrid of learning to understand human emotion and interaction when combined with potential technologies and “out there” scientific theories. This course was about learning to synthesize and explain how human beings create and affect not only themselves and their world, but even their ability to interact with the fourth dimension, Time. It’s like taking any story we tell and analyzing it. In our younger years it was “Tuck Everlasting” and the “Odyssey,” and now it’s “the Time Machine.” There is always another story to break down and learn what insights it provides into the nature and potential of man.

8 weeks into this course, I longer feel discombobulated or confused. I feel I have a fairly steady handle on the terminology of time travel, as well as the real and fictional theories that relate to it. The most solid thing I take away from this class is my understanding of notable figures like Hawking and Niven. I feel fully able to understand what their ideas involve and potentially mean, despite the fact that this course was as much about current science as it was about fiction and story-telling.

I think the “why” of our interest in time travel has to do with our limitations as humans. We live finite lives and are confined by many things. The most notable of these is time, and as such, time travel appeals to so many of our wildest desires. To see our futures, to change them for the better, to be in control, to see the past, to change it for the better, and most of all, to once again see those that we have lost. Death is a hugely influential power on human life, and one that we as a species have spent thousand of years trying to understand and deal with. We created religion as a comfort because we cannot see any resolution to it in the near future. But time travel is an instant, magical solution to our fear and pain. We could see our departed loved ones again, meet historical figures, and even prevent or see our own deaths. Like Kaku discussed of Hawking’s ideas, we would stampede to be time travelling tourists. We simply can’t resist the magical solutions that time travel would seem to provide.

Yat Tse

After reading the two articles, it has given me a clear conclusion on the Time Travel Studies so far that time travel is possible! I truly believe that every story that has been told for a reason and human being will strive to find out the true of time travel. I have read so many fascinating time travel stories since the beginning of this course, and many of the stories are told from a whole new perspective that really impresses me. When I first heard about this course, the subject had already interested me, because my first impression to the time travel is something exciting and futuristic which I can easily link to my favorite movie “Back to the Future”. I always think that time travel only happens in science fiction and the time machine is always fancy looking. I also never close to think that there are actually people trying to study ways to the past or future and try to find supports through the laws of physics. By learning that Albert Einstein’s general relativity that can support the theory of time travel and various researchers believe that time travel is possible if human can build a time machine that can travel as fast as the speed of light, it makes time travel more believable!

???

Applying to my studio practice as product designer, what inspired me the most is that “technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics.” (Kaku) It is almost suggesting me that nothing seems to be impossible; your imagination is the only limit to your accomplishment. After looking at all the predictions from some of the famous people from the pass, I am surer that human are capable to advance in technologies to fulfill their imaginations. Assumptions on the impossibilities of airplanes, the non popularity of personal computer, no value of development on telephone and radio, etc… are all proven to be wrong, and thanks to the fact that there were “somebody” that didn’t deny these things are possible to be happen and never gave up on the development. And I think a lot of people do not realize that our imagination from the past has becoming real by overcoming a lot of difficulties. When I first watched the movie “Minority Report” almost 7 years ago, human interaction with machines still something look beyond reach, but look at the Iphone and the next generation touch PC, they are current and no long a future to us. I think new interaction, innovative technology, and imagination will always be the new future while we will continue to create and never stop imaging.

Chris J

When I first heard about this class and its subject matter I was pretty thrilled. I have been fascinated with time travel for a while now, not much more than any other sci-fi topic since I am naturally drawn toward impossibilities. I think the only fields worth exploring are those deemed impossible by contemporary science. I think the fact that the idea exists and that we now struggle to squeeze it into these backward scientific constructs built upon previously held notions we know to be outdated. I think we are living this backward existence in a way. We build more and more barriers, more laws, more rules, more “impossibilities” Our world is getting smaller and smaller everyday, if we keep explaining away all the mystery and magic, whats left? We will NEVER understand everything, that’s just ludicrous. Do you think that one lowly cog in a infinitely complex clock realizes its part of the system? Maybe in an abstract way it “feels” its connection but it will never b e able to step out of its role and view it all from afar. And that’s OK, its nice to know your needed and important who cares about why, it’s a pointless question. If we can conceive it and accept it then there must be a shred of truth. But I do believe a time machine could be possible. If it lay completely outside our reality we would never even begin to ponder such a feat. If time is just a construct of our mind, and we conceive a time machine NOW but can’t build it till THEN, what’s the difference? If there was ever a machine that lay in theoretical form now simply because the tech’s not ready now then its almost certain it will be in the future. A machine that’s crippled by time and yet functions to cripple time is amusingly ironic. Perhaps it lays in wait until we reach a “time” were it can exist harmoniously with the universe? I’ve learned a lot over the past few weeks. It was really nice to see all the theories of time travel. The different ways science coul d explain it. I really liked reading “Alice in Wonderland” and “All you Zombies” and all the other stories really. Very interesting. I think time travel holds such an appeal because it really is our final frontier. Our only frontier really. I think our obsession with it has to do mostly with mortality. We are terrified of death, it’s the only thing that we will never understand, at least not for a long time. I think previous cultures had a much healthier relationship with death then we do. From the minute we are born we are aware of a deadline, that there is a destination out there, this train has an end of the line. But I don’t feel that way. I think that train track is built in a big circle. Sure there’s a few stops along the way but it will always keep chugging along. With time travel we think maybe we can get off the train, maybe we can ride along side it awhile like those cowboys on their horses or we can simply stand by the tracks and watch the train disappe ar in the distance. We think we’d want this power too, “If only I could go back and fix this or that” or whatever paranoid neurotic thought our contemporary culture has made us so worried about. When we get to a time without fear of death or life for that matter we will laugh at our scientific pursuits to placate our pains. When you remove the cause the effect dies with it. We’ve been given the most incredible sandbox to play in and yet its not enough, we want to explore the rest of the playground even if were to small for the monkey bars were going to try anyway. I just hope we don’t get too hurt when we inevitably fall off.