Are you up for a trip through time? What if someone asked you that? You’d have a choice, return to 200 years ago, so that would be 1822, or zoom forward to 200 years in the future — 2222? Which would it be?
Remember, this would be a month-long trip. Then you could return to the present time.
Returning to 200 years ago would put you into early years of the United States, four decades before the Civil War. James Monroe was the President, the fifth. Abe Lincoln had just turned 13. What a time that would be! And just think, no telephones. No electricity. No cars. No internet!
Or maybe you’d rather leap ahead 200 years. See if gas and diesel engines really did go away, replaced with electric models. You could see how far we’d gone in Space. Maybe hop a cheap flight to the Moon. But then, maybe 200 years from now we humans had truly messed up our planet and a trip into the future would be more primitive than a trip to the past.
So what would it be for for you — go back, go ahead … or stay right where you are?
I would go to the future and study history. Then when I get back home I would know the future. Think of the investments one could make!
On the Oregon coast at the moment. If we have to be in the same geographic location we’d say past. Big problems though especially if you are a woman with basically no rights and treated as property. And what about food .. unless I can convince some native Americans that I’m not there to kill them with disease I might get lucky and live on salmon for a month.
As for the future I don’t have much faith there’ll be one worth living in.
I certainly would NOT go back 200 years in time, my family and I would be in bondage in GA. I like where my family and I are now!
Neither. I’d stay right in my time. DH is an historian and my English Lit encompassed Middle English to the present day, and my nursing degree the school was still showing movies (not DVDs) of cholera epidemics in the 3rd world. In Victorian England you weren’t considered a real mother till at least one of your children died. We’re not all going to be people of the upper classes- the lower classes had no vote, no job security, no antibiotics, no immunizations. Heck, in Jack the Rippers Day impoverished women could rent a chair in a room by the hour, with all the other women who had a few pence, and try to sleep in the room’s relative warmth until her hour was up and she was dumped back out on the street, hopefully to gain a quicky with someone who could spare her enough pence she could get another hour or two in the chair. We are both aware of how bad the past was and we’re not at all sure the future would be any better. Going to the future where all my loved ones are dead, just NOPE
Back in time and based on what I know now I would be king of the world. A benevolent king, but king nonetheless.
Ahead in time, see which stocks went up, and new inventions.
Back 200 years. I would like to see my ancestors that made me who I am.
At the age I am now, and as an early American history buff, I would go back in time. Life was hard back then, but I’d still like to live it and learn the realities first hand.
If I were young and wanted to grow unlimited wealth I would go forward, see what happened in my expected “normal” lifetime, and then make all the appropriate investments on return.
I’ll stay right where I
belong, in the here and now.
There might not BE a world in 200 years to “visit”. I’d go back 200 years and see if there’s anything that I could do to help ensure a better future.
Maybe 100 years to be a part of the greatest generation, other than Medical advancements, I think it would be safe enough especially if you could keep the knowledge of the current times in your being.
200 years into the future? I tho’t the oceans were going to take over in 20 years! (per Al Gore and company). The future looks exciting to me – (Jet-Jackson and the ever on-going wars – “Star style”!); the past compared to now, looks like an incredible amount of hardship – the present presents an unpredictable future!
In 1822 travel was solely by foot, wagon, or horseback so a 20 mile trip was an uncomfortable, all-day chore. Seeing the world before it got so densely populated would be amazing but very limited with travel so difficult.
By 2222 burning fossil fuels will be a distant memory. New power tech including fusion will make clean, unlimited energy a reality. Bio/med tech will make diseases a thing of the primitive past. 200 years from now age-related disease will be non-existent and the only thing people will die from will be accidents and old age. That means 120 years of healthy, vibrant living until the very end. And people will be populating the solar system by then with maybe even generation ships travelling to other solar systems.
The downside is that on the way to 2222, billions will die, mainly in the less developed 2/3 world, due to global warming-driven famine and disease. Beyond that sad fact, the future is very bright so “don’t stop dreaming about tomorrow” (Fleetwood Mac).
I’m shocked at the number of folks that would go forward. Read the book “Hot, Dry and Crowded” – that’s your future. No thanks
Forward. We know what happened back then. Disintary.polio,plague ice cold stinky outhouses, walk most everywhere plow fields by hand. We can read about history, could we go forward,see the future and be allowed to return and remember.Thats the part thats scary. I really dont think I’d care to see my date of death on my tombstone, know that me or any of my family was going to suffer painfully of some future disease. And going forward and not remembering it would also be a waste. I guess, 1Day@atime
Both options are pretty scary! Yikes!
The real scary part would be if you missed the “Rapture of the Saint’s” into heaven!
And were stuck with the Devil and his minions.
More interested in our past than the future. World is just too much turmoil now.
I’m sittin’ where I am in time. Not much to pull me back from the past and who only knows if there will be any place to visit in 200 years, the way ‘things’ are presently.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive. [ Ian Brown ]
Back for sure! Definitely not interested in what the world will look like in 200 years. I’m not too sure I want to know what it will look like in 20 or 50 years from now.