Thread: Rapid acceleration in technological advancement via time travel?

Okay so the thought I'd like to convey is this. Suppose someone aquired a means to take knowledge or technology from the future and brought it back to our time, say they went forward 1000 years, then we built off of the technology. The future 1000 years from now would potentially be increasingly advanced than the first venture, then say we re-traveled to the same time 1000 years from now, bringing back yet even further advanced technology back to our time, the question then would be, how far could we advance in a short period of time if we took technology from the future? Also, if backwards time travel were possible, why has no one from the future traveled back to our time? Perhaps it's some universal law of non-interference due to unforseable consequences from poluting time lines? This has become an increasingly intriguing line of thought, especially with there already being theories of how one could travel forward in time. Please, if you have any thoughts critical or inspired by this idea, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Originally Posted by Symple

Okay so the thought I'd like to convey is this. Suppose someone aquired a means to take knowledge or technology from the future and brought it back to our time, say they went forward 1000 years, then we built off of the technology. The future 1000 years from now would potentially be increasingly advanced than the first venture, then say we re-traveled to the same time 1000 years from now, bringing back yet even further advanced technology back to our time, the question then would be, how far could we advance in a short period of time if we took technology from the future?

There would be no limit to how far we could advance in a short period of time because each trip would establish a new baseline.

Also, if backwards time travel were possible, why has no one from the future traveled back to our time?

How would we know if they had? Art Bell, a former late night talk radio host, would often have open lines specifically for time travelers to call in. I've heard people calling in claiming to be time travelers. I, of course, assumed these callers were crackpots or just people having a laugh..........but what if they really were time travelers?

I read a scifi book once in which some scientists from a far distant and dystopic future decide to go back in time to stop Columbus from discovering the New World. While doing that, they find out that Columbus only discovered America due to the intervention of previous time travelers from an even worse future in which Columbus did not discover America!

Perhaps it's some universal law of non-interference due to unforeseeable consequences from polluting time lines?

It's possible, but there's also the fact that it's very possible that the time line could be changing all the time and we'd never even know it. To us, it would seem that each change was the way it always was.

This has become an increasingly intriguing line of thought, especially with there already being theories of how one could travel forward in time. Please, if you have any thoughts critical or inspired by this idea, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Time travel is always an interesting idea to contemplate. One of my favorite treatments of the subject is the episode of Futurama: "Roswell That Ends Well"

In his novel ​Singularity Sky, Charles Stross suggests time travel might be exploited for computational purposes. The key development being a logic gate that can give the result of a computation before the question is asked. A very interesting novel.

Originally Posted by Symple

Okay so the thought I'd like to convey is this. Suppose someone aquired a means to take knowledge or technology from the future and brought it back to our time, say they went forward 1000 years, then we built off of the technology.

The fact that this hasn't happened would appear to be a pretty strong argument against the (current) existence of time travel (and travellers). Although there is the idea that you can never travel to a time earlier than the time machine was invented. But as soon as it was invented there would be an exponential increase in technology.

Although you may run into the "Rufus" (*) paradox: you bring back technology from the future which is used until those time travellers arrive from the past and take it back to their own time.

(*) Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: How do they know Rufus's name? They are told it by their future selves....