Yo…

Shall we begin with a song? From the 2001 The Optimist LP from Turin Brakes…here is Future Boy:

So Future Boy where are you from?My time machine crashed over yonderWe’ll build you a time machine to get back home

One aspect of modern life is the pain of arriving at a store...maybe a bank too late.

To tug fruitlessly on a locked door while being able to peer inside and spot weary staff who are clearly in a rush to get home. The store is not open. Even if they said they were open during these hours…they’re clearly…not open.You’ll have to come back another time.

Does the past...or the future work the same way?Do they have to be ‘open’ for you to travel to them via a Time Machine? And what happens if they are closed?

Is it mankind’s destiny to build a working Time Machine…like how we built rockets to take us to the Moon and hopefully…to Mars.

It’s somewhat acceptable to believe in ghosts; sometimes even comforting…maybe that was my Grandpa.It’s (generally) not acceptable to believe in aliens and anal probes etc. We’ve sorta kinda accepted A.I. and accessorized our lives with technology like smart speakers and those those DNA test kits. Where are we at with Time Machines?

All this science and all this tech…all this A.I. and we’re just going to assume not a single person or government or corporation is working on building a Time Machine?

“Time travel is a fantasy of the modern era. When (H.G.) Wells in his lamp-lit room imagined a time machine, he also invented a new mode of thought.” A sage quote from Time Travel: A History by James Gleick (page 6-7).

The tantalizing notion that the Time Machine “invented a new mode of thought” creates an intellectual butterfly effect. All the standard emotions associated with a well-lived life...regret, desire, fear etc. could finally be expressed through technology. 

Technology―modernity―finally caught up to the broad range of human emotions. 

Much like poetry is a broadcast of the contents of a writer’s heart, the conviction of a Time Machine facilitates a deeper expression of the soul.

How did we ever live without a Time Machine? Did individuals just perish in the cold consistent comfort of their final decisions? Were individuals able to understand or even see the totality of their linearly lived life?

A Time Machine arrives saddled with the potential for greater selfishness; with the temptation to revisit our past or see our future; it is a temptation worth resisting for the greater good. (Though the bulk of our time travel literature is mostly personal and suggests we often lose the struggle with temptation.)

In the final weeks of his life Albert Einstein learned of the death of his old physicist friend Michele Besso from his Zurich student days six decades before. “He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me,” Einstein wrote to the Besso family. “That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.”

Oh I like that…illusion.

A Time Machine is an inspiring instrument much like a telescope at an observatory. The telescope takes our eyes off us...and onto the stars and planets and all the possibilities their encounters suggest.

A Time Machine is all this…and much more.

Sweeter than a TARDIS and funner than a DeLorean...Time Travel: A History by James Gleick is highly recommended reading.

Continuing…4 more perspectives on Time Machines worthy of tea and contemplation…

II

“The world has seemed more full of this feeling than usual recently, as we wonder if we stand on the precipice of some dystopian moment. Recently, as we wonder if we stand on the precipice of some dystopian moment — the point at which divisions become irreparable, democracy ends, privacy totally evaporates, and world wars almost begin.”

So writes Sarah Scoles in a non-fiction book that’s an anthropological look at the UFO community: They Are Already Here.

When it comes to the present most of us are according to Shawshank Redemption...Institutionalized:

“I’m telling you, these walls are funny. First you hate em...then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes...you get so you depend on 'em. That’s institutionalized.”

A Time Machine allows us to escape this present prison; we are no longer institutionalized.

A Time Machine allows us to cheat on the present by being in the future.

It’s rejecting the present for not good enough; the present has fallen short...the future always has more unfulfilled potential than the present.

A Time Machine means you no longer have to love the one you’re with...you can dump the drab present for a shiny energetic future. With a Time Machine you can emancipate yourself from fate; unshackle yourself from destiny and restore your free will. “Stand on the precipice of some dystopian moment…” as Sarah wrote.

And yet there is a persistent laziness associated with time travel.

That I can go back in time and kill Baby Hitler and this would somehow miraculously (even more miraculously than traveling back in time) ease the suffering of Jews. Somehow it is easier to do 1 simple act...go back in time and kill Baby Hitler than it is to do the real hard work. Daily confronting racism or even combating its insidious tentacles.Laziness masquerading as efficiency: go back and change one aspect.

Or in our own lives; change 1 decision…go left instead of going right and that will make everything alright.

Like all the technology and social media that currently litters our society they simultaneously offer utopian goodness and dystopian darkness.

Facebook is great because you can effortlessly connect with out of town family. Facebook is not great when Russian bots use it to hack American democracy.

A Time Machine is no different…utopian goodness and dystopian darkness.A Time Machine is a commentary on our shortcut culture. It is easier to write cheques or tweet a relevant hashtag then it is to volunteer or even start a non-profit.

So perhaps it’s not the technology…perhaps we’re teeming with utopian goodness and dystopian darkness. Ya can’t carpe diem it everyday…I bet if that was possible then we wouldn’t have invented a Time Machine.

IIIA Time Machine would be yet another instance of technology replacing human jobs like fortune-tellers, soothsayers etc. all spiritual prophetic retailers.

The technology would be a more accurate broader vision of the future rather than an isolated (almost selfish) desire to know what “my future holds.” How would a Time Machine effect dreams?

A Time Machine is a modern device that cures doubt, processes regret and invites an openness of the human heart as much as the future actively does.

I agree with (The Tenth) Doctor Who when he says: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...time-y wimey...stuff.”

We live linearly but we think crooked: we jump back to the past to reminisce or we leap ahead to the future to dream.

Even as we’re rooted in the present and can just do one thing at a time. Just because you say “Present” when the teacher taking attendance calls out your name…doesn’t mean you really are.

Time is messy.

I firmly believe in fixed points of time. Those profound moments where so much history hinges on everything that follows. Basically almost every major event in the (good) Wonder Years: like the JFK assassin is a fixed point of time.

I’m not smart enough to tell you why. I just face value accept fixed points in time are true.

Stephen King does not agree with me. He wrote 11/22/63 where Jake Epping a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher goes back in time to save JFK. Fantastic novel because it doesn’t end with saving JFK. Epping must live in the reality fashioned from his actions.

Or perhaps quality time is your love language. Then you will probably be wise to use a Time Machine to facilitate romance which is the seductive premise of Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays. (Currently being adapted for TV by Seth MacFarlane on Peacock.)

Personally? If the option is to go to the past, that’s a simple one. I get a book of UFO sightings and I check each one out starting with Roswell. Oh Yes. Change nothing; know everything.

IVNear Toronto Comic Con I once a Time Machine DeLorean do a U-Turn...they were driving the wrong way.

I...didn’t think that was possible in a Time Machine...

My advice is invest in a Time Machine then you never hafta live with regrets or mistakes. Magic!

VIn 2005 MIT held a Time Traveler Convention. I had a chance to visit (in “real time”) and got to meet a number of time travelers...meet an older gentlemen from 2052. He shared some details...hmm. Also met some individuals from the past who marveled at our technology and had questions.

Fascinating and good fun...you only need 1 Time Traveler Convention because...you can just travel to it at any time (depending on...of course if your Time Machine goes forwards or backward).

Here’s the Wired magazine article on the event; and here is NPR’s reporting on the same event.

So I was super excited to talk to Ryan North about his useful Time Machine book. I know it’d be a boon for all time travelers.

Ryan North has written How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler! What the fresh. This is how you go back in time and become a god.

This book has real science and real jokes! He "traveled" to My Summer Lair so we could discuss Doctor Who and the time I went to MIT’s Time Traveler Convention and met real life Time Travelers! Super Fun! And Back to the Future and Star Trek. All kinds of nerdery.

That conversation is attached. Check it out and lemme know your Time Machine thoughts.

Out of Time,Sammy Younan-28-

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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.

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