What things in the past 10 years would you change?

An excercise in time travel

Published on December 28, 2003 By Draginol In History

What if you found a time machine in which you could go back 10 years in time? What business, political, and humanitarian things would you do or prevent? Or more to the point, that you could send a note to yourself 10 years in the past? What would you do? What if you only had a few minutes to decide? So you couldn't do research, you just had to go off the top of your head?

Here's what I would do if I were limited to things I could think of in 3 minutes.

1) Buy as much Microsoft stock as possible.

2) Make a note to not work with "Advanced Idea Machines". They are the ones who "published" Galactic Civilizations on OS/2 who never paid a dime in royalties.

3) Get out of the OS/2 market by end of 1996.

4) Start eBay.com

5) Start Amazon.com

6) Start Google.com

7) Send the government a list of "Bad things" that are going to happen such as 9/11, the Columbia explosion, USS Cole, Okalahoma City Bombing, Attack in Indonesia on Australians.

Comments (Page 2)

Solitair

on Jan 07, 2004

I gather we're not worried about causality and time bubble collaspe?

As a physicist I believe in time cones. You can go back in time but you can then never return to the original future and the new future won't repeat the same. Therefore buying stock in the winning companies, is not gaurenteed to win as chance will be different. That idea may not come, that chance meeting may not occur, that person may or may not die, some government official may chance tax laws, ...

Fraid all of my choices would therefore be introducing solutions. Good ideas are always valuable and working in R&D I could use all those money generating solutions and patent them years before the competition.

For example,
a) DFB laser designs (corner telecommunication market)

enhanced piezoelectric tranducer design (corner desktop printing market)
c) high Temperature super conductor materials
d) plastic electronic designs

That's a least 15 billion dollars in royalty payments alone.

The other choices would probably be all about relationships though. Not making that big mistake. Seeing the oppertunity. Taking the chance, etc.

Paul.

EFalgui

on Jan 22, 2004

Hmmm...

1. create friendster
2. try to have the senate pass a bill where movie stars cant go into politics unless they start as a councilman or woman
3. create maxim
4. tell my younger welf to be more responsible(would never work though

5. bet everyone i know for a thousand bucks that tyson would bite holyfield

sean

on Jan 30, 2004

wrie down all lottery numbers, winning horse names and other stocks to invest in and give it to y past self

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