If I wasn’t a broke ass graduate student I’d be on a flight to Boston tomorrow morning. “Why,” you ask? The Guardian says it all [tip from Francis Assisi]:
One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world’s first time traveller convention this weekend.
The organiser, Amal Dorai – a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.
This is friggin awesome! Dorai’s hypothesis seems to me to parallel the Fermi Paradox which asks why we haven’t been overrun by intelligent beings from elsewhere in the galaxy yet.
“We are doing this as a very low-risk, low-cost way to investigate the possibility of time travel,” he said. “I think the probability they will come is very low, but if it does happen it will one of the biggest events in human history.
“Of course, no time travellers doesn’t rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention.”
Ahhh…hope. The last refuge of the nerd. Incidentally there was a Star Trek the Next Generation episode years ago where a time traveler from the past pretended he was a time traveler from the future. No word yet on how Dorai plans to handle this possibility. If we were to teach a time traveler from the past too much, he/she could pollute the timeline. It’s enough to make your head spin.
OK, that’s kind of awesome, I have to admit.
The Times has a story on this as well.
It’s GENIUS! I LIKE it!
Gawker has this story and the best line.
“…Indeed, it may well be not just the first such confab but in fact the only one, because, as they point out, time travelers from the future can easily stop by this shindig whenever they want. But we suspect they wonÂ’t be staying long, as the party is non-alcoholic. Even worse: Is the organizer dude planning to wear that shirt? All the cool future kids will be laughing at us 2005ers, and being ridiculed till we cry is something weÂ’re trying to leave in the past.”
“If we were to teach a time traveler from the past too much, he/she could pollute the timeline.”
Yeah, but if we get a time traveler from the future, that fucks it up too.
Ok..say they manage to figure out how to safely travel in time in about a 1000 years from, just exactly how is Dorai going to get the invatition’s to them? A time capsule? And how would they RSVP if they could?
Through the news media and blog posts.
The trouble with this convention is it’s easy to spoof. Someone could go stoned and pretend to be from 30 seconds in the past.
A publicity stunt of course, and I wonder why there is so much brouhaha, especially since there is no alcohol is involved. Apart from the obvious paradox involved with time travel, Suppose you can time travel, but are you going to be reading a newspaper (or SM) from sometime in the past to know about this convention?
But Najeeb…if you are from the future then surely you know about the convention. Or, a time traveler from the past could travel into our future, read about the convention, and then travel backwards. Mind blowing isn’t it? Also what makes you think you need alcohol to have fun. You must never have been to a nerd convention 🙂
Why were the comments closed on Chino Hills? It was just getting good.
Sure, if your idea of good is a standard-issue left-right content-free flame war with a topping of ‘desis go home’ racism.
Today we’re #4 in Google for wingnuts on both sides searching on ‘Ajai Raj.’ The moonbats are out in force.
Iago, I notice you love flameage. Might I suggest you check out DailyKos and Free Republic.
Through the news media and blog posts.
You know I used to think about this in college about leaving a note for my children and their children, and so forth until a time machine was created. Why? So that I could get the test answers and be able to get good grades, but the ramifications are unknown from these changes; but since I have never done it, I don’t know if it’s possible. Plus what makes one think that blogs or new media of any sort will survive for another 1000 years? So everyone start it now, write a letter to your children, to give to their children, telling them the exact 5 dimensional coordinates and see if a time traveler appears right afterwards…
I disagree (although IÂ’m surely biased). I think youÂ’re really reaching with your allegation of “sprinkling of anti-desi ‘go home’ type racism” as being the justification for the closing of comments.
What I saw was a mutineer who I believe has a history of being quite inflammatory with her posts, (note case in point: “you’re deluded”, “SHAME ON YOU”, “spouting such garbage”, “thorougly lame”) when I believe she misinterpreted what she was even responding to. I donÂ’t believe there was anti-desi racism by API so much as there was “turning of the tables” to illustrate a point, which was obviously a flawed tactic. ItÂ’s also noticeable that the recent trend of hypersensitivity on sepia is connected with protecting certain mutineers from backlash, which in many cases she, excuse me, they invite on themselves.
You mutineers really should exercise some discretion when closing comments. ItÂ’s one thing to manage the community so as to promote communication and fend off trolls. ItÂ’s another to go so far as to stifle dialogue, especially those instigated by mutineers themselves. ItÂ’s hardly realistic to expect that the evolution of posts should always strictly stick with the topic at hand.
Manish (aka the Janitor) “love flameage?”
I’m motiveless, simply reflecting on the state of events… by the way, it’s about that time to clean up here as well
Iago/The Kid, you don’t see deleted comments by definition, so you have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re deleting shit like “dirty Indians should never have been let into the country” and “<specific person> is a fat fuck.” I’ll stand behind those deletions 100%.
If you want civil discussion, stop switching screen names within an argument. It’s extremely rude to pretend to be multiple people in a single argument.
If you want to abuse a specific mutineer, take it to email, if they’ll engage with you.
If you don’t like managed forums, go to Usenet or the political sites.
I read the article at Yahoo News and figured you guys had posted it. I think it’s pretty innovative (a little weird)… even w/o the alcohol!
I’ll tell you what. Let’s keep all comments in this post related to the actual post from this comment on. If you want to send an inquiry or complaint to SM, use the tip form. I’ll delete any non-related comments here.
“if you are from the future then surely you know about the convention. Or, a time traveler from the past could travel into our future, read about the convention, and then travel backwards. Mind blowing isn’t it? “
Well, my assumption is that none of us on earth are able to do time travelling and in that sense none of us can get the message to them (and we are not time travelling at this moment). Then the only chance is that someone who is doing time travelling has to simply happen to see yesterdya’s NYTimes (Do you read newspaper from 1887 Aug 20?, may be you do 🙂
“Well, my assumption is that none of us on earth are able to do time travelling”
But you see Najeeb, that is the VERY reason that they are having the convention. To disprove your statement. You are also falsely assuming that we need to travel into the future to get a message to them. This isn’t the case. The fact that the convention was announced means that from now until the end of human civilization a record of the announcement will exist. THIS is the invitation to time travelers from the future. In the future they will have SuperGoogle so it isn’t necessary to read a copy of the NYTimes. All you have to do is type in “time traveler conference” and it will do the rest.
Okay enough nerd talk for today. 🙂
Oops, sorry…sent that last post before I was finished. Is John Titor going to be there?
I heart nerds
The NYT article was the best – these same dorks ( I mean that lovingly) have motorized a couch and drive it around campus!
Why would a timetraveller from the future actually waste their time (no pun intended) to come to a convention with no alcohol!!! Although they did say that there would be brownies……….
For some reason, I am REALLY looking forward to reading the news on Sunday.
Well to be fair, this story is just as much flamebait as any of the comments. Don’t you know that there’s nothing more interesting than a juicy flamewar? 🙂
Abhi, that is one HUGE ASS assumption….
Yes, but I am an eternal optimist.
Also when you throw in the fact that right now the North Koreans are building a set of “viewing bleachers” to see their nuke go off, “the end of human civilization,” may not be far off (at least for poor West Coast me). Hmmm. Maybe I’m not an optimist.
Haha..SNL had the story on it’s Weekend Update, and the punch line being….the people in the future will not be attending because they know it already sucks..
surprisingly funny, for SNL