If time travel was possible, would you move 'permanently' to a different era? - General Discussion Discussion

I'd consider it. I don't care for nonsense like "social conservatism". I just have an interest in history and would like to see the world as it was centuries and millennia ago. How people lived. Ancient China, medieval Europe, the Roman Empire and so on. If I managed to fit in well enough and enjoy it, I'd probably stay. Though I might take brief trips back to the future (heh) to enjoy the benefits of things like modern dentistry.

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[–] samoanjoes (51915) 6 months ago

Hey, I had no idea you were back.

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[–] Kawada_Kira (7282) 6 months ago

Hi! I wouldn't say I ever actually left, as such. Never made a conscious decision to leave or anything. Just, life has been difficult and I haven't been online much. But yeah I'm here. Might be some long gaps between me posting but I don't intend to leave permanently.

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[–] samoanjoes (51915) 6 months ago

Great that you're here anyway. Hope everything works out for you.

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[–] overseas7 (3578) 6 months ago

👍 in my case I would add that I would observe and follow the evolution from hominids to homo Sapiens.

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[–] jriley555 (7097) 6 months ago

Its always an interesting thing to speculate about. Realistically, if we actually went back in time, we might well transmit lethal viruses. We'd also have to learn the native language, including English if we went back further than, I suppose, the 15th Century.

I'd like to check out about 8-9 Mya, to see the ape at the chimp-hominid split (which I have a pet theory was rather gibbon-like, with a slightly larger brain)

It would be fun to bop around all over the place, past & future. I expect great things, huge peaks in valleys ahead for humanity, in the long run. We tend to be a slash-and-burn species - some day that's really going to bite our descendants in the ass - it might only be in a century or two. Many aspects of our current culture, regarding diet, footprint, the province of the individual vs the state, will be tried & tested over the coming ages. This will definitely change. There will be wars, pestilence, famine, invention, progress, social evolution, the primacy of sustainability coming to the fore - all of it. That's my view.

I didn't dig the OP message about the 'virtue' of conservatism, though in terms of vulgarity I suppose I do sympathize. Most of the progress made in US society happened in the decades previous, laying the groundwork for woman & gays later on, hardly a hallmark of 'conservatism'. You'd almost have to be a white male (as I am myself) to be so complacently naive. Also, the 70s was still a time of dying in Vietnam, genocide in Cambodia, rightist slaughter in Indonesia & South & Central America.

In its favor, I had no trouble getting laid during the 70s.

Something else to consider - since I would have a hard time sharing even contemporary cultural currency with a 20-30 year old, I can imagine conversation out of our own time, even with language skills - would be very challenging, along with very interesting.

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[–] Anotherday (7591) 6 months ago

No. There's no era that is better. Just people thinking the grass is greener.

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[–] MaximRecoil (4153) 6 months ago

"You will put up with the so-so food"

What are you talking about? The food was better back then, not worse. As time passes most products get worse, not better, because manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to increase their profit margins, and those ways don't usually include quality improvements. A couple of fast food examples are:

McDonald's used ground chuck instead of ground beef; they cooked their burger patties in the traditional way (hand-flipped on a flat-top griddle instead of cooking both sides at once in a clamshell griddle like they do now), and they fried their french fries with beef tallow instead of 100% vegetable oil like they do now.

Kentucky Fried Chicken's founder "Colonel" Harland Sanders was still alive and he was famously a stickler for quality. When he was still alive you got the real original recipe, which was a rather expensive blend of herbs and spices, including such things as tellicherry peppercorns, which are better and more expensive than the typical variety of black pepper. Things were drastically cheapened after he died, to the point that their recipe now is mostly just salt, MSG, and an ordinary type of black pepper.

"the movie theaters with poor sound quality"

Again, what are you talking about? Optical soundtracks sounded awesome, plus the picture was awesome too because every movie was shot on film and all theaters showed actual film prints.

"and people smoking basically everywhere"

That's a plus.

"Would you join them in the 70s? Or find a different era to call home?"

If I could relocate to a different time period it would be the 1980s. The main things I'd miss would be the World Wide Web, modern computers and software, and DVDs/Blu-rays.

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[–] Ticketsplease (4024) 6 months ago

Sound was not better than now. It probably wasn't 5.1, let alone the huge setups we now take for granted.

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[–] MaximRecoil (4153) 6 months ago

"Sound was not better than now."

First, even if that's true, it doesn't mean that the sound was poor like you claimed. Second, the sound was analog, and there are tons of people who prefer analog recordings and analog playback to digital. Why do you think vinyl records are outselling CDs these days?

"It probably wasn't 5.1"

First, the number of channels has nothing to do with sound quality. Second, there were movies with 6-channel soundtracks in the 1970s. The 70mm Star Wars (1977) blowup prints that some theaters showed had a 6-channel soundtrack for example. Third, multi-channel soundtracks are a novelty, like 3D. I couldn't care less about them. I don't even care about stereo (2-channel) when it comes to movie soundtracks; mono (1-channel) is perfectly fine.

"let alone the huge setups we now take for granted."

What "huge setups" are you talking about?

By the way, if you're about 20 years old like you claim, I highly doubt you've ever even heard an optical soundtrack, so LOL at you thinking you know stuff. You don't know stuff.

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[–] 123Guy (6314) 6 months ago

Sound is way way way better now. I don't even think that is disputable as long as we ignore personal taste and stick to science.
Vinyl disc's are not outselling streaming digital.
I've been working with audio for 40 years, and embrace tech IF it is better, and digital is definitely better in every way.
I still own a 16 track analog tape recorder, and many digital ones, and I will NEVER use that analog ever again. Far far far too much work for such inferior output. No need to deep dive the science details, but lesser frequency response (tape and vinyl) does not a good recording make. And that faulty garbage coloration called tape saturation is easily recreated digitally IF desired.

Far as movie projection goes, again ignoring personal flavor choices, digital wins again. Some can argue film provided higher dynamic range capture, and while slightly true, that one aspect is easily offset by good lighting and camera work, and all the minuses of film add up quick making it a worse experience. Flutter, inconsistency, print variations, scratches, dust, wear, breaks, flame outs, cost, duplication, storage and more. Yuck.i hope we never go back. I've seen 3 film and imax film projections in the last decade and been disappointed by all 3.

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[–] MaximRecoil (4153) 6 months ago

"Sound is way way way better now. I don't even think that is disputable as long as we ignore personal taste and stick to science."

What good is "scientifically better" if it doesn't sound better? A movie soundtrack has no use beyond vibrating human ear drums and being interpreted by human brains as "sound," so personal taste is all that matters.

"Vinyl disc's are not outselling streaming digital."

So? Neither are CDs, and CDs are better than the vast majority of streaming digital files, since they are just CD audio that's been compressed with a lossy codec. The lowest common denominator will always choose convenience over quality. I compared apples to apples, i.e., vinyl records and CDs are both physical media formats, neither of which you can obtain instantly just by clicking a link, and neither of which can be played on a glorified walkie-talkie. Vinyl records are currently the best selling physical media format for audio.

"Far as movie projection goes, again ignoring personal flavor choices, digital wins again."

Digital video looks like a wax museum. The only way it looks decent is if they use tricks to make it look as much like film as possible, including using scans of actual film grain to use as an overlay in post production.

"Flutter, inconsistency, print variations, scratches, dust, wear, breaks, flame outs, cost, duplication, storage and more."

If I had my way every shot-on-film movie released on home video would be transferred from a well-used theatrical film print; dust, scratches, speckles and all, along with some subtle clicks and pops from a slightly dusty optical audio track. That makes it look and sound like a real movie to me (since most movies I saw in a theater were in second-run theaters with well-used prints), rather than a YouTube video. My favorite thing to watch on my projector is an amateur 1080p scan of a very well-used The Empire Strikes Back 35mm film print. On the other hand, I hate the look of the official Star Wars trilogy Blu-rays.

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[–] [deleted] 6 months ago

I'd consider moving into the future. I think civilization might be about to take a step back or two in the near future, but long term things have tended to get better over time. Of course, there's no guarantee that'll always be the case.

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[–] moviechatterer (13597) 6 months ago

No , contrary to all the bitching and whining and pining for the old days and moaning about snowflakes and woke stuff,
right now is as good as its got , and probably as good as its gonna get imo

*maybe* I'd move a couple years forward , in the hope the package delivery companies have managed to get their technology up to 90s level and record the GPS coordinates of whichever doorstep they dumped your package on.

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