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Comment by JohnJamesRambo | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the notion that our time period would not be considered special to people from the future. Our recent history is the birth of the modern human- computers, technology, the industrial revolution, nuclear bombs, landing on the moon. I think it would be a time travel historian vacation hotspot.

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Doesn't that depend on what comes next. This period might really be a serious lull in time.

I mean, everything you list seems super important now but -

> computers, technology

And we make social media network after social media network

> the industrial revolution

Was actually 150 years ago

> nuclear bombs

Which gobble up nations resources and sit there providing nothing.

> landing on the moon

And never going beyond or back

Without knowing what comes later, it's impossible to accurately measure how interesting now is.

King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. What would be more interesting to see, the signing of a document that was promptly ignored, or the using of that document to limit the power of King Charles I 400 years later?

I read a book called "King David's Spaceship" by, IIRC, Niven and Pournelle. It had one point in it that horse collars were a critical technology. Without horse collars, a horse could do five times as much work as a slave. A horse also ate five times as much. But with horse collars, a horse could do ten times as much work as a slave, but still only eat five times as much. This made slavery uneconomic, which changed all of society.

But nobody's going back in time to watch the invention of horse collars...

My point: Important and interesting are rather orthogonal.

Also,

- AI singularity will probably be waaay more interesting then visiting period of first computers.

- What are nuclear bombs compared to... death star ?

- Why is moon important once you conquered entire star systems ...

And most of all, why go back in time when you can simulate the world so realistically that you can go anywhere you want as anything you like. If humans are so technologically advacned that type of stuff will certainly be the norm. Its even probable that we live in VR so that can be a reason that we don't see time travelers - its not coded in our particular version of the world.

> AI singularity will probably be waaay more interesting then visiting period of first computers.

That doesn't mean literally no-one out of the near infinite time remaining in the universe decides to come here.

> What are nuclear bombs compared to... death star ?

What are swords compared to nuclear aircraft carriers? Yet we have both as museums.

> Why is moon important once you conquered entire star systems ...

why is the place people first landed on america important? and yet its a historical landmark, protected and visited by many people time and time again.

And I'm sure bronze casting seemed pretty important at the time that developed but hardly anyone thinks anything about it now save for some scientists. Our computers and internet seem pretty revolutionary now but when viewed from the future they'll probably just be another minor technological improvement.

I'm sure there are many historians who would jump at the chance to go back in time and observe ancient bronze casting first-hand.

In fact, it seems like almost every period of human history has at least 1 historian who has devoted their life to studying it. So I think there would be at least some people in the future who would be interested in our present time period.

And, being historians, they would want to avoid making any history-altering changes, so if they do everything correctly, we'd never know they were here.

I have no doubt there would be some people very interested, I'm saying that most people probably won't give us a second thought.

Yes, it's safe to say than in the last ~50 centuries, the 20th was quite a standout one and the 21st quite possibly will be as well.

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