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Would you search for your long lost ancestors? Would you watch the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Would you look into the personal lives of famous figures? Would you follow the life of Jesus? Would you attempt to isolate the invention of fire, the wheel, or tools? Pastwatch is basically the door to all sorts of information, and it can be used and abused.
So what would you watch in the past? What events tickle your fancy; what would you want to witness (the TruSite II seems high-quality enough to support 1080p ).
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: The life, times, and effect of Malcolm X.
Oh! Good answer.
I'd follow Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, all of them folks. Then I'd write a book about it. Then I'd follow every historical event EVER.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I'd try and follow my family history, because it's been so concealed and twisted and rethreaded . . . if nothing else, it would be a fun challenge.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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What, none of you would stop the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations?
Heartless jerks.
I would observe the founding of every major civilization and then go to the 1986 AFC championship game and stop John Elway.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Reader: I would observe the founding of every major civilization and then go to the 1986 AFC championship game and stop John Elway.
D'oh! That reminds me - I'd go to the Ice Bowl. Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I'd witness the Exodus from Egypt and subsequent events at Mount Sinai. There was some special stuff going down around there!
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I'd watch religious events, follow my lineage, and observe important historical figures - mainly political/military geniuses and mathematicians.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I would find out who really committed various crimes, living memory or not.
Either learn Aramaic and listen to Jesus, or more likely read translations from Aramaic experts. Certainly I'd want to watch his interactions with others.
Observe my own childhood, to get a new perspective on it.
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I would like to see how big the Great Flood really was.
I would like to follow Crazy Horse around. He was so solitary and mysterious.
I would like to follow the lives of both Jesus and the Buddha.
I, too, would track my family history and would love to learn about each ancestor. I would like to watch my mother's parents when they first met and started dating as young teenagers.
Man, there isn't a lot I *wouldn't* want to watch. I mean, aside from actual acts of brutality, almost everything on every continent is interesting to me. (The brutality is interesting, I just don't know how much I could watch.) Most people and places become fascinating the more intimately you know them.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Oh, and dinosaurs. I have a thing for pterodactyls. ( I don't remember if that was possible...to follow before there were hyoomans.)
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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So many things, I don't know how I would choose! After following my own family for a while, probably take some time watching some people in ancient Greece and Rome-- did those events really play out the way the state-sponsored historians say they did? And I would look for mythological figures-- Oddysseus, Arthur, people like that.
I'd spend some time figuring out what happened to the Anasazi, and then I'd go find out what's really the answer behind some of the conspiracy-theory inspiring events, like JFK's assassination.
Of course, someone else would probably already have done all this 'cause I'm not very imaginitive and I could just read their report. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Oh, yeah, and I would totally go watch some really great concerts that happened before I was born. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I'd prove once and for all if Shakespeare was the author of the plays attributed to him.
It would also be interesting to search for King Arthur and see how much truth there might have been to the legends.
Oh, and I'd second the Pyramids (both in Egypt and in Meso-America) and Stonehenge, just because the question of exactly how they were built remains the subject of speculation.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I've got a thing for the history of the British monarchy. It'd be nice to get some perspective on guys who were only written about a couple hundred years after their deaths.
I'm also a little fuzzy on where different groups of settlers came from. I think it would be easier to get if I could see it in action.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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OH, also... I would want to watch myself when I was younger. I've always thought one of the coolest things ever would be to have a conversation with yourself, at a different age, and this isn't far off.
Posts: 58 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I too would like to find out more about Shakespeare---not so much whether he wrote the plays, but how fast and with how much deliberation whoever the author was wrote them.
I'd also see whatever I could find out about Jesus and some other religious figures, though I think that in the world of the novel actual miracles are invisible.
Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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First thing would be Jesus' life. Next thing would be the lives of all the major patriarchs in the Bible going back to Adam, assuming he was a real historical person. I would be all like "Abel, dude, look behind you!. Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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I, too, would check out Jesus to find out if he was a real historical person.
Then I would go back and watch the formation of Rome from the beginning. I'd need a few buckets of popcorn for that. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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We could also use it to be Peeping Toms on some of the great beauties of history, couldn't we? Did OSC say in the novel how long ago an event had to have taken place for the Pastwatch machines to view it?
Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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It does say that it's supposed to only work for things a certain distance past, but there's a scene were a guy does the "impossible" and shows the devastated rain forests by looking back very recently (like 15 minutes or something).
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I would want to go back and trace some of the great literary works, see what oral traditions and stories they stemmed from. Track Beowulf back to its origins, and the tales of King Arthur.
quote:Originally posted by The Reader: What, none of you would stop the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations?
Those assassinations were probably the best things that ever happened to those two men. Particularly Lincoln. It turned him from a highly controversial and contentious figure into a genuwine Amurrican saint.
Actually, for that reason alone, I might actually stop Booth.
What I'd really do is check out Sinai and see if I really have to be Jewish. I'm sufficiently convinced to act on it, but certainty would be nice.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I can certainly see the attraction in tracing your lineage (I imagine backwards would be an entertaining way to watch that, and the best way to find your ancestors).
In the spirit of the Pastwatch program in the book, I think my personal project would be to track the history of particular pieces of land throughout human history. Obvious examples were ones as mentioned before (Sinai, Jerusalem, Rome). But, I think it would also be just as interesting to watch a random location, and see how many people passed by it, how many took the time to look at it, how many changed it for better or worse.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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The Reader, the question posed in the OP was what would you watch, not what would you change. Not everyone who worked at PastWatch got a chance to actually go back and do anything, that was kind of a big deal.
I think I'd start with the conspiracy-theory stuff: JFK assassination, Roswell UFO crash, stuff like that. Actually, depending on the results of that second one I might get sidetracked trying to verify/debunk other alien/UFO reports.
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I haven't read the book in a long time, so I forget if this is within the rules or limitations of the technology...
...but I'd want to go back and see early solar system and universe events (in time-lapse of course!) to get a better idea of how our planet came to be. I'd love to watch the birth of the sun, or how the moon got to orbit us, or what the asteroid belt was before it was what it is now, any big rocks to crash down on our planet, and when that big black obelisk came and taught our ancestors how to use blunt weapons.
And I'd go back and see the first people to play bagpipes and uilleann pipes, because they're so freaking complicated.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I would like to track down Socrates and see what he was really like. Then I'd track down George Lucas and convince him that another couple of drafts of Episode I might be a good idea.
Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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But in Pastwatch you can only watch, not interact (well, not unless you WANT to change your own existence and the world you live in.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote from Lisa--"Those assassinations were probably the best things that ever happened to those two men. Particularly Lincoln. It turned him from a highly controversial and contentious figure into a genuwine Amurrican saint."
It's always a little jarring when we actually sort of agree. I think that Lincoln had some fairly serious shortcomings as a commander in chief, and that those were demonstrated by how he handled the slave issue, as well as the fact that he directly ordered Sherman to burn Atlanta to the frequin' ground.
question for Lisa--Where does you anti-Lincoln bent originate, if I may make so bold?
[ December 04, 2007, 11:14 PM: Message edited by: steven ]
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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I would want to follow Nikola Tesla's life. I'd also want to follow the Basque and learn about their origins.
Posts: 175 | Registered: Jan 2005
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If I worked at Pastwatch I’d like to know first how is it possible to time travel (even if it’s only information passing through). I think that would be quite interesting
Beyond that, there surely are lots of interesting things and events to be witnessed in human history, and the ones that would clear debated points in nowadays “conflicts” would be on the top of my list. Many such events were noted above.
I’d mostly like to witness any “divine intervention” in action, if it were possible.
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I would need to know what Richard III was really like and, as a corollary, what happened to the princes in the tower.
Posts: 2762 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: God blocks divine intervention from being shown to Pastwatch, duh.
You see, if that were the case, and all the rest of the "information" were available using scientific principles, than the blocking itself would be "divine intervention" !
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How could you tell? Would the pillar of fire have a black rectangle covering it up and the meteor that hit Sodom be pixelated?
Posts: 1029 | Registered: Apr 2007
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quote:Originally posted by steven: quote from Lisa--"Those assassinations were probably the best things that ever happened to those two men. Particularly Lincoln. It turned him from a highly controversial and contentious figure into a genuwine Amurrican saint."
It's always a little jarring when we actually sort of agree. I think that Lincoln had some fairly serious shortcomings as a commander in chief, and that those were demonstrated by how he handled the slave issue, as well as the fact that he directly ordered Sherman to burn Atlanta to the frequin' ground.
question for Lisa--Where does you anti-Lincoln bent originate, if I may make so bold?
<shrug> I'm an Objectivist. The first time I heard that someone pointed out to Lincoln that the Constitution doesn't bar states from seceding, and he responded with, "It doesn't say they can, either", I realized that he was a thug and a bully.
Even during the feudal period, the right of removal was generally respected. Tyrant Abe couldn't even do that.
Since then, I've read books about him, and it's just appalling what he did to this formerly free nation. There were always blackguards who wanted to imperialize America, but he was the one who finally succeeded.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The right of removal wasn't generally respected in the feudal period, it just usually wasn't possible to do anything about it. If the one being removed from had a larger army and no other pressing concerns, they certainly did disrespect it.
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