If You Could Go Back in Time??

[bucktalk]

I think most would agree 2020 has been a pretty rough year so far with COVID, protest, climate change and other world events. But if you could live back in time, what time in history would that be?

Just shooting from the hip, I think I'd want to live in the late, late 40's into the late 50's. It seems like, perhaps, that was a pretty decent time to be livin life.

And you?

[poe]

Fun question!

Any time period without Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, tik tok, etc. would be worth trying. I would probably go back to late 80s and early 90s.

[Bill Robertson]

I actually love the technology of today. I don’t think I’d want to change times. Just what I did when I was younger in my time.

[Stew]

Take me back to Queens borough New York City on 14-June-1946.

[mugofbeer]

See the world before there were people - or many of us.

[mugofbeer]

Take me back to Queens borough New York City on 14-June-1946.

I smell a Humphrey Bogart detective movie.

[oklip955]

I would like to see Oklahoma before the land run when it was just prairie and woods. And that for just a day and not when its tick season.

[jerrywall]

I actually love the technology of today. I don’t think I’d want to change times. Just what I did when I was younger in my time.

I feel you. I've realized a long time ago that I really don't want to live without some basics and a good AC is one of those, but there's a lot of other technology that I'd miss. And it's not like I could be seeing new TV, movies, or books. I mean, it would be fun to visit points in the past, but I can't think of a time I'd want to live. In the words of the great ones...

"The best place to be is here. The best time to be is now."

[Jersey Boss]

Take me back to Queens borough New York City on 14-June-1946.

I get you Stew. He wouldn't be missed

[stlokc]

Well, the correlating question to this is: would we have a memory of the time we came from (2020) and could we use that memory to stop some tragic world event? Could you go to 1925 and murder Adolf Hitler for example?

Otherwise, there are plenty of times I’d love to visit, but i think it would be too hard to live long-term in an era where we were missing some things we take for granted now, for example, instant access to information. Would any of us now have the attention span or patience to live pre-internet, or pre-TV, or pre-radio? I’d like to think I would, but once the novelty wore off, I don’t know...

[AP]

Just in terms of advancements in health, medicine, equality, economics, I can't imagine living in any other time period. The world is the best it's ever been. There is still a ton of work to be done, but poverty is lower than it's ever been, medicine is better than it's ever been and people are living longer, more of this country have equality (I would imagine the only people wanting to go back to the '40s are white, hetero, and cis-gendered).

People tend to romanticize the past for some reason.

[Pete]

^

Exactly right.

Despite our current challenges and fears, the world keeps getting better simply because we know more.

If I could choose another time, it would be in the future and not the past. And I am arguably one of the most sentimental people around, but I'm also not nostalgic in thinking past eras were better.

For every romanticized notion about days gone by, I can provide dozens of negative counterpoints.


Here is a small yet shocking example: When I was in grade school (in other words, not some unimaginable distant past) it was a felony for people to marry outside their race in Oklahoma and many other states. And it took a Supreme Court ruling to force change as there was no movement toward this in those states. It's unbelievable to think about.

Give me the now and the future.

[jerrywall]

Would any of us now have the attention span or patience to live pre-internet, or pre-TV, or pre-radio? I’d like to think I would, but once the novelty wore off, I don’t know...

The wife and I just spend a long weekend at a cabin in the woods with no internet, cell reception, or tv service. We did watch old movies in a VCR and the sheer number of times I wanted to pull out my phone and look up an actor or such was crazy, and spending a few days like this really tells you how much you start to depend on having ready access to information and entertainment all the time. The break from news, facebook, etc was nice, but like you said, it's a novelty and not how I'd want to live.

[Tritoon]

Now, with a new political administration.

I'm just tired of chaos and lies, I want don't want a president who tries to make the news or that feels the need to insert themselves into everything.

I was pretty happy under Bush, Clinton(well besides monica), W, and Obama. My concern is not political party related.

[Edmond Hausfrau]

I love the here and now, even after 4 plus months of quarantine. I've seen a space shuttle land like an airplane, a computer go from the size of a room to the size of my ear, travelled the globe in the time it took my grandmother to board a steamer and get out of N.Y. harbor. I have access to information at my fingertips, can see relatives in video in realtime, can order cooking ingredients from a village in Tuscany and have it delivered overnight to BFE Oklahoma. What's not to love? I'm not one for nostalgia but as Pangloss said, this is best of all possible times, the best of all possible worlds.

[Teo9969]

The wife and I just spend a long weekend at a cabin in the woods with no internet, cell reception, or tv service. We did watch old movies in a VCR and the sheer number of times I wanted to pull out my phone and look up an actor or such was crazy, and spending a few days like this really tells you how much you start to depend on having ready access to information and entertainment all the time. The break from news, facebook, etc was nice, but like you said, it's a novelty and not how I'd want to live.

My wife is healthy bit older than I and it drives me insane some of the questions she asks. I just want to scream "YOU HAVE THE WORLD AT YOUR FINGERTIPS PLEASE ASK GOOGLE!!!"

To Pete's observation that we know more now than we ever have - this is absolutely true, but if we're not careful then I think from an information management perspective, ~2000 to ~2050 is probably going to be "the golden age" for a good long while. Reason being, I just don't think we're ready to deal with the wealth of misinformation that the internet is. Younger generations may never understand the cost of information in their lifetimes and if we don't find a way out from under that weight in the coming decade or so, I think the road back is going to be a long winding path

[brian72]

I’d go back to the 1978 OU vs Nebraska game and tell Billy Sims to HANG ON TO THE BALL BABY!!!!