THE TIME MACHINE

Think ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (19) ◽  
pp. 47-48
Author(s):  
Stephen Law

A strange story about time travel.

Author(s):  
Stuart Moulthrop

This chapter reflects on John McDaid’s author traversal of his 1993 hypermedia novel, Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a groundbreaking work not just for its comprehensive exploration of Apple’s HyperCard authoring system, but also because of its principle of “modally appropriate” presentation, involving non-digital artifacts as well. Built around the science-fictional notion of time travel and multiverses, the Funhouse thus invites consideration of his own curious history, in which it figures as a kind of broken time machine. Comparing McDaid’s work with later, similar projects from the video game world, the chapter argues for an understanding of digital culture that moves beyond the harsh binaries of obsolescence. As McDaid says: “We win by losing.”


Time Travel ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Nikk Effingham

Bootstrapped things are things which are, at least partially, responsible for their own existence. For instance, a bootstrapped object might be someone who was their own mother whilst bootstrapped knowledge might exist because someone uses a time machine to go back in time and tell themselves how to make that time machine. The Bootstrapping Paradox is this: time travel is possible; were time travel possible, bootstrapped entities would be possible; such entities are impossible. This chapter investigates the different types of bootstrapped entity (objects, information, and causal loops). It then argues that you can avoid the paradox by denying that time travel necessitates bootstrapped objects and, more importantly, that there are also no good reasons to think bootstrapped entities are impossible.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deep Bhattacharjee

An arbitrary advanced civilization might have the technology to travel back and forth in time and that too within a large timescale like say ‘a thousand years’ into the past or future. But to us, in present day scenario, this ‘time travel’ seems impossible. Although many mathematical thesis have been published with sound theories about the structure and definitions’ of ‘time travels’ but still from an engineering feat, it’s practically impossible. Therefore, the time travel is a far more mathematical abstract concept and a source of science fiction for today’s physicists. However, theorists are not restrained by any limits or bounds and they likes to explore the plausibility of travelling through times and its fundamental overlying principles. Firstly, its necessary to develop a theory that is suitable for humans to travel in time like ‘without falling inside a black hole’ or ‘without any need of exotic matter’ or ‘without creating any paradoxes’ but we will consider ‘micro black hole and high gravity potentials’. So, to develop a more practical theory, its necessary that one needs to consider the factors which is not too hypothetical to be achieved by human beings at the present notion of technologies available to us. So, if such a theory can be achieved with a high degree of accuracy then the travelling through time will be possible by manipulating the circuits and machinery and creating a time machine after all at the end. However, travelling to future, although is theoretically plausible, travelling to past is always restricted due to the nature of ‘the birth of various paradoxes’ that may happen in due times. So, to extent the notion of casual loops without getting too far away with the absurdity of the physics, this paper will view the time from a new perspective and then it will aim to develop a theory so that its best fit within the current feats of technological challenges that we are facing today. Starting from the ‘relativity’ which first gives the scientific definition of ‘time travel’, ‘time’ as a whole has always been considered as 4th dimensions along with space and the other 3 spatial dimensions being orthogonal to them. But, what if there already exists an embedded 2-time dimension in our space-time and there is already existent ‘causal loops’ in our universe but what needs to be done is the action of a ‘temporal agent’ who can make the hidden 2nd dimensions of time prominent ‘from hiding’ and we are free to explore the ‘temporal loops’ in our space-time. This temporal agent can be any human beings with a high source of available technology or can be in any form of machinery like the ‘time machines’ which will allow the ‘embedded 2nd dimensions’ prominent from the hiding so that humans could explore the feats of ‘time travelling’. This paper is typically presented to deal with these ideas of 2nd time dimensions and causal loops in space-times where any object (or rather humans) can travel back and forth in time riding on these 2-time dimensions. My objective will always remain to focus ‘time’ from the perspectives of ‘2 dimensions’ in the form of a ‘circle’ rather than a linear straight line of 1 dimension and thereby manipulating the idea of this extra dimensions in such a way that, travelling through time can be achieved in practicality without getting washed away by too much abstract mathematics as theoretical physicists often likes to do. Its not quite easy to present time in such a form but I will try my best to do so and also keeping in mind that my theory is consistent with the current available technological challenges faced by experimental physicists and engineers in designing a time machine. A consistent theory is always necessary for practical implementation and that’s what I always intend to do and this paper is just the reflections of my ideas to provide an easy through to ‘time travel’ by focusing the extra hidden dimensions of time in nature. The possible outcome of these phenomena has been discussed thoroughly using logics & mathematics which will insight into a far more in-depth concept by taking us in exploring the 2-Time Dimensions in this universe and the related outcome or consequences of this more than 1 Time Dimensions. Moreover, this paper aims to provide the repetition or Looping of Timelines in a 2D Minkowski lightcone with the help of (exponential wavefunctions) which results in the occurring of same event in a synchronic pattern along with a desired property which will prove that, ‘N” past timelines are connected with “N+1+1……” future timelines and it is the law of nature to select the appropriate future timelines related to the past timelines which have the least degrees of errors in the “exponential wavefunctions” introduced in this paper. We will give an insight about the metric by taking time as ‘imaginary’ and how it solves the ‘singularity problem’ from Schwarzschild and Lemaitre metrics respectively. Then the concept of spatial divergence has been used.


Time Travel ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 147-175
Author(s):  
Nikk Effingham

How would probability work in a time travel scenario? This chapter offers answers for both the Ludovician and the non-Ludovician who believes the world is indexed. Given Ludovicianism (and impossability theory), metaphysical impossibilities can have a positive objective chance. Nevertheless, we should say our credence of these things coming about is zero. The chapter argues that the upshot of this is that we should never expect any time travel to happen. Indeed, the more likely it looks as if you can travel in time (and, e.g., build a working time machine), the more likely it is that some calamity affects you (or all of us!) to prevent that happening. At an indexed world, things work substantially differently. At an indexed world, credence and chance don’t come apart. The chapter argues that at an indexed world, we might expect time travel to occur.


Author(s):  
David William PARRY

At a time when the en tire world seemed to be opening u p for me i n the 1980s, I was invited to endless ―drinks dos‖ across London. On two occasions, I had the chance to meet a famous Kyrgyz author named Chinghiz Aitmatov, and although the opportunity to engage with him at length never fully arose, I went on to read his novels and learned to vigorously applaud his strangely poignant imagination on a wide variety of textual levels. Indeed, it is something of a dystopian nightmare that our ―youth of today‖ proactively shies away from Text in order to embrace the merely optical. Hence, with hindsight, by way of scrutinizing his literary habits and feeling compelled to sit in the seat of my imaginary time machine, I would seek to quiz him about the reasons ―Why anybody should read anything?‖ All in all, I suspect, a Central Asian bard of Aitmatov‘s stature would have suggested that apart from liberating our intelligence century-by-century from outmoded prejudices, and stretching personal brain capacity into a new-born range of empathies, the art of reading unfolds those eminently rare, but essential, hours of multicultural genius, thereby, so to speak, opening another exotic eye upon the world


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
pp. 226-251
Author(s):  
Alejandro Arteaga Martínez

Palamás, Echevete y yo o el lago asfaltado (Palamás, Echevete and I or the asphalted lake), Mexican Diego Cañedo’s second novel (1945), elaborates the time travel to the Mexican past. The sci-fi theme of the novel sustains a social criticism, and imitates H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine plot. In this essay, the sociocritical part of Cañedo’s work is studied, on one hand, because it seems to respond to the social problems of the period 1934-1946; and, on the other hand, because the relations established with Wells’ novel.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Mossbridge ◽  
Khari Johnson ◽  
Polly Washburn ◽  
Amber Williams ◽  
Michael Sapiro

Individuals with a balanced time perspective, which includes good thoughts about the past, awareness of present constraints and adaptive planning for a positive future, are more likely to report optimal wellbeing. However, people who have had traumas such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are likely to have less balanced time perspectives and lower overall wellbeing when compared to those with fewer or no ACEs. Time perspective can be improved via time-travel narratives that support people in feeling connected to a wise and loving future version of themselves, an approach that has until now only been provided in counseling contexts. Our team used an iterative inclusive design process to shape a scalable time-travel narrative tool – a responsive and progressive web application called Time Machine. Among other functionalities, Time Machine allowed people to record and listen to messages as if they were from and to their past and future selves. Using pre-planned as well as post-hoc analyses, we analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from 96 paid design partners (participants) who were taken through a 26-day pilot study of the technology. Among other effects, the results revealed: (1) high engagement throughout the design process, (2) improvements in self-reported time perspective and overall wellbeing scores that were greater for those using Time Machine during an optional-use period, (3) twice as much improvement in overall wellbeing scores for design partners with high ACEs (16%) versus low ACEs (8%), and (4) feelings of unconditional love apparently mediating the relationship between scores on time perspective and overall wellbeing measures. We discuss the limitations of these results as well as implications for the future role of spiritually informed scalable time-travel narrative technologies in healthcare and wellness.


Philosophy ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Grey

Talk about time travel is puzzling even if it isn't obviously contradictory. Philosophers however are divided about whether time travel involves empirical paradox or some deeper metaphysical incoherence. It is suggested that time travel requires a Parmenidean four-dimensionalist metaphysical conception of the world in time. The possibility of time travel is addressed (mainly) from within a Parmenidean metaphysical framework, which is accepted by David Lewis in his defence of the coherence of time travel. It is argued that time travel raises formidable difficulties which are not satisfactorily resolved by Lewis's ingenious defence of time travel. Objections to time travel considered include: (1) travel to other times is impossible because there is nowhere (or “nowhen”) to go to; (2) the problem that upon setting out on a journey to the past a time machine will collide with itself; (3) time travel generates a mysterious temporal dualism between experiential time and physical time; (4) travel to the past permits reverse causation, raising the possibility of causal loops and attendant problems arising, for example, from the prospect of empirical contradiction and the possibility of someone being one of their ancestors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 441-449
Author(s):  
Szymon Makuch

A MOUTAIN TIME MACHINE. THE LEGEND OF ROGER DODSWORTH IN LITERATURE AND CULTUREIn various legends and literary works the mountains often served as a place where time travel was possible, as they provided security for protagonists falling into deep sleep for years. It is no coincidence that legends of sleeping knights often place them in the mountains. In 1826 a rumour spread that Roger Dodsworth, who had been buried in an avalanche over 100 years earlier, came to life. The news was circulated by the press across Europe and attracted the interest of Mary Shelley, who devoted a short story to it. The present article is an analysis of press stories concerning the famous hibernatus and the story by the English writer, who saw the popular rumours as a background for reflections on a man from a different period transferred into the future, as well as an attempt to define the role of the mountains in the writings on Dodsworth.


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