
If you traveled back in time to 1975 equipped with a modern laptop... - brickmort
http://alexjerez.net/back-in-time/
======
Udo
This weekend I game mastered a Cthulhu adventure where the characters are
caught up in a plot to bring an entire airplane full of technology back
through time to the 40s... :D

If you _knew_ you were traveling back in time the most useful thing you'd
bring there isn't the laptop with its capabilities but of course the
information on it would be world-changing.

I'm not talking about stock prices or anything that foolish - since your time
travel event would make the future from that point on uncertain again - but
imagine someone bringing Wikipedia back to the seventies. Or better yet,
research papers and engineering documents!

Personally, if I was unexpectedly transported into the seventies with my
laptop, the amount of useful information would probably be limited. But even
the (comparatively) few things on it could change the world dramatically. The
most pressing concern would be data durability though, so the first order of
business should be moving the data off the device onto contemporary media.

It would probably take _drastically_ longer to offload/convert the files than
the expected time-to-failure of the hard drives though, I'm guessing at least
one order of magnitude longer.

~~~
DanBC
> It would probably take drastically longer to offload the files than the
> expected time-to-failure of the hard drives though, I'm guessing at least
> one order of magnitude longer, maybe two.

They'd McGuyver it somehow. Display the information and take photographs?
Synch a cine-camera to a screen paging through information? While
simultaneously squirting information out a port.

~~~
Udo
That's true, especially if the operation is not longer confined to myself I
expect an impressive amount of jury-rigging could get through the documents
pretty quickly. The music stuff would take a bit longer, but it can be done as
well. So yeah :)

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anabis
> Ten deadliest natural disasters since 1900

> Rank Death toll (estimate) Event* Location Date

> 2\. 650,000–779,000 1976 Tangshan earthquake China July 1976

> 5\. 230,000 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami Indian Ocean December
> 26, 2004

> 6\. 229,000 Typhoon Nina—contributed to Banqiao Dam failure China August 7,
> 1975

> 7\. 160,000 2010 Haiti earthquake Haiti January 12, 2010

> 10\. 138,866 1991 Bangladesh cyclone Bangladesh April 29, 1991

I think about this scenario sometimes, probably won't be able to live with
myself without trying to lessen the deaths.

~~~
rdc12
But how would you attempt to lessen the death toll, if you told people you
would most likely be ignored or locked up in a loony bin

~~~
prof_hobart
After correctly predicting the first couple, I'd like to think that people
might start listening to you.

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bsaul
The problem for me would be that i have absolutely no idea on how one could
build that laptop. I wouldn't know how to build a transistor, i have almost 0
knowledge of electronics, people at that time probably knew more than i do.
So, except letting them tearing the computer apart to examine it, there's not
much i could do.

That's something i've always been bothered with : suppose that you'd be
teleported,naked, to ancient greece, how could you prove to them that you come
from the future ( provided language isn't an issue). In my case, the only
thing i could came up with were maybe some basic notion of how the human body
works, biologically. But that's very thin. I know a bit about general
relativity, quantum mechanic, physics, logic, etc. But i'm in now way
sufficiently advanced in any of those subjects to prove or demonstrate
anything to anyone.

~~~
Fuxy
Don't worry about it most complex circuits these days are in chips so not even
electrical engineers know much about how to build one.

Unless you build chips for a living it's very unlikely you could build
anything to the level of a laptop from today not to mention you need to build
the lab/clean room to manufacture the chips.

Technically if you know how the chip worked you could reproduce it with 1975
tech but it would be as large as hell.

The best thing you could do is guide their research in the right direction
since you already know the way and you could get them there quicker.

~~~
weland
I'm an EE and can confirm this. An EE who does something other than
microelectronics can generally understand how those circuits work, but is
generally unable to design a non-trivial one.

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iSnow
Let's see

\- No cell phone network, so no UMTS/EDGE/LTE connectivity

\- No Wifi

\- No USB peripherals

On the laptop

\- No RS-232

\- No Thinwire Ethernet jack

\- No modem jack

So, not a very useful thing to have back then, you couldn't connect it to any
printer (not that there were a whole lot of consumer-grade printers back then)
or storage. You could use it to replace a compute center with the size of its
SSD, but then, no way to connect it to any network.

~~~
trentmb
> So, not a very useful thing to have back then

Sure, if 1975 was the same as Idiocracy. Otherwise, you'd have a bunch of
brilliant people going to this man from the future and his fancy gadgets and
trying to figure how they worked and what society is like in the future.

EDIT: My two year old laptop does have a modem... is it still modern?

~~~
yardie
It would still be too modern for 1975. IIRC most winmodems in laptops dropped
a bunch of ancient standards. If you can find the spec sheet it will probably
show 9600bps as the lowest negotiable rate. In '75, 300bps was probably the
max.

You'd have better luck using the soundcard than the RJ11 jack.

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hyperion2010
These questions are always fun, you don't even need to bring the laptop! One
of my favourite (and slightly insane) measures of all around knowledge is what
you would do if you suddenly found yourself living in the Roman empire circa
200AD (a question largely inspired by the wonderful book: Lest Darkness Fall).
In this case what would you do in 1975 using only the knowledge contained in
your brain. I'd probably try to jump start work on internet so that networking
would be fully integrated from the start and we wouldn't have these stupid
browsers.

~~~
chad_oliver
Yeah, I love that problem. If you want the maximum effect with the minimum
effort, introducing the printing press would be a good move. However,
technological change isn't really sufficient -- to do the most good, you'd
need to have a strong grasp of economics, politics, medicine, the sciences,
and (of course) most fields of technology.

------
declan
The original question was: "If you traveled back in time to 1975 equipped with
a modern laptop loaded with a development environment of your choice, what's
the first thing you'd do?"

There's a big difference between _accidentally_ traveling back in time with
only your laptop + dev environment while you're typing at Starbucks and
_intentionally_ doing it.

If accidental, I don't think the cached text or HTML contents of my MacBook's
filesystem would be that terribly helpful in predicting the future (though
having modern source code would be interesting, and of course there's the
hardware itself). My own knowledge of the last few decades would likely be
more useful.

If intentional and I have some time to prepare, then I can show up with
Wikipedia, stock prices, racing results (Back to the Future got this right),
scientific papers, etc. Wikipedia compressed is only ~9GB as of Feb 2014.
Perhaps then find some relatives and convince them I'm legit.

To offer proof of time travel, describe future events and publish the
uuencoded checksums-with-nonce in an NYT classified ad in advance. Both
checksums and uuencoding existed in the 1980s and they certainly could have
existed on the Unix boxes of the 1970s (maybe they did). Signing with a
private key would work after 1976 in the public literature, or 1973 for GCHQ,
but would probably be a bit too obscure for easy verification for another
decade or so, barring disruption of the timestream.

------
noonespecial
The laptop would be irrelevant to a large degree. You'd have seen the future
and know whats possible. This would shortcut immense amounts of r&d. Sometimes
just knowing that something _can_ be done is the hardest part of figuring out
how to do it.

Plus you wouldn't accidentally buy a Betamax.

~~~
sanxiyn
Indeed, 1975 means I would be the first person to think of the idea of
Polymerase Chain Reaction! That is Nobel Prize stuff, and even if I don't
remember the exact details the idea itself would be genius. That's just one
thing I thought of. Undoubtedly lots more.

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DanBC
I would create short simple demonstrations of all the patentable stuff. I'd
apply for as many patents as I could. This would either make Them decide that
software patents are not valid; or I'd be granted all the patents and I'd put
them in the public domain.

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mariuolo
It would be very useful to brute-force cryptographic codes.

~~~
dfox
DES is still well beyond the reach of one guy with a laptop, entire bitcoin
network is roughly what you need to bruteforce DES in few minutes.

~~~
oakwhiz
There exists at least one OpenCL implementation of a DES cracker - a modern
laptop GPU could certainly accelerate the process considerably.

~~~
dfox
Yes, that is why I related required computation power to bitcoin. But still
this considerable acceleration does not make it feasible with one laptop or
even high-end workstation.

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reidrac
I though that the whole point of the premise is that with the laptop you have
huge computer power that was not available in 1975, but I'm surprised most
comments don't find that interesting.

~~~
ghaff
Because it's not really. The laptop would be an immensely powerful computer by
the standards of the time, certainly. The Cray-1 came out in 1976 at 80MHz.
Not sure how it would compare (doing mathematical calculations) with a modern
laptop but I'd guess a few orders of magnitude slower.

Now that's a lot but let's assume our theoretical laptop from the future could
be assumed to be indestructible and we could rig up I/O for it, etc. without
any danger. Are there fundamental problems that we could solve using it that
were simply way beyond 1975 technology?

Maybe some crypto in use at the time by the USSR. (Possibly. I don't know
enough to comment intelligently.) I'm not convinced there were broader
scientific problems that this singular laptop would move significantly closer
to solving quickly.

The technology used to build the laptop would be more interesting than using
it. Even if we lacked the tools to build the tools to construct 2014 ICs etc.,
the laptop would reveal a lot about architectural choices and directions, i.e.
you can't really drive CPUs above 3GHz or so; you go multicore. (I assume
smart semiconductor engineers could figure out that sort of thing from the
physical device.)

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aaron695
Assuming we are not being silly and

A. Pre loading the laptop with data. (A book on how to make a laptop has more
value than a laptop, so this isn't allowed)

B. Diverting from the question ie you obviously have total amnesia other than
how to use the laptop.

Trying to beat going to a superpower and selling it to them. They couldn't fab
the silicon for generations still I guess but they probably would get amazing
ideas.

Also the software would be copyright free and advanced. The C compiler I
assume would have some cool incites. Similarly if they know it's from the
future(?) they could just accept standards without screwing around.

You might be able to use it to pawn the stock-market. Hire a mathematician.
Since we are not being silly and using current information I'm unsure if
mathematicians back then could just use addition processing power to make
money? This might not work.

You could crack a lot of encryption for years, a good black hat team might be
able to monetize this.

Spitballing - Easy to photoshop(gimp)images, blackmail ability? Illegal and
easily caught so.... Use it on the stockmarket? Guess this is kinda possible
today, possible to even print it back then?

I'd guess most value is in the algorithms on it. Patient troll your way to
m/billions.

------
amoss
So it is 10 years before GNU and 15 years before Linux... It is also in the
era that Microsoft are convincing people that software should have copyright
for the first time.

Create the open source movement in a time when there is no dominant,
entrenched, competitor. Try out a timeline where an OSS operating system
arrives before its commercial competitors in the late 70s.

~~~
walterbell
This would require motivated students with access to university computers.
Would the universities own code created on their systems? OSS likely wouldn't
be permitted for employees of most companies that could afford computers in
the late 70s.

Also need to find Chuck Peddle and tell him to either avoid Jack Tramiel or
not to quit Commodore.

~~~
vidarh
> Also need to find Chuck Peddle and tell him to either avoid Jack Tramiel or
> not to quit Commodore.

My first thought was that that this was the perfect time for 8-10 year of a
ton of 6502 based home computers coming out and dominating the home computer
market. And I know 6502 assembler... And had a development environment more
advanced than anything they had. And the knowledge of what would be popular.

And when 1985 comes around, I have a version of AROS sitting on my laptop,
that while still not a perfect reimplementation of AmigaOS at present, could
still boot and run on Amiga hardware... And would leapfrog several years worth
of OS development. And I'd have ten years to go through it and make changes to
make it more amenable to e.g. memory protection. The big question at that
point would be: Snap up Amiga before Commodore had the chance (assuming the
timeline was not ridiculously altered at that time), or let them go ahead, but
try to prevent Commodore's ridiculous face plant.

But in the meantime, I'd have until 1980 to prepare an alternative to MS-DOS
and prepare to try to get into IBM at the right time and try to
undercut/prevent Microsoft from getting the deal...

------
valevk
Pack a copy of Wikipedia and all major news sites on the harddrive. Also all
free papers from academic research and conferences.

~~~
ekianjo
Evopedia will do nicely for that.
[http://evopedia.info/](http://evopedia.info/)

------
mixmastamyk
Not much, there'd be nothing to connect it to. Hopefully you brought some docs
and/or connector cables to keep ya busy.

Maybe you could invent the Web early, and "do it right".

Probably could load the laptop with games and buy some MSFT stock, that's
probably the best bet.

------
junto
I'd store all of the stock prices plus lottery and sports results from 1975
onwards on it and encrypt the whole thing.

Then I'd start buying stock and lottery tickets. Then once the internet was
invented I'd start leaving odd time traveller hints across the web so those
guys who recent ran that study about internet time travellers could then have
some positive results.

My first priority would be to obtain an identity. Assuming I know when and
where I am travelling to I would travel with the details of someone who had
very recently died who suited my purposes and would take over their identity
on arrival before any death certs are issued and social security records were
updated.

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zvrba
Seek out Bill Gates, show him what he had accomplished and also demonstrate to
him all of the security bugs of today and their consequences. On live
examples, coded in C++ in the IDE. This to make him consider security from the
design stage.

------
Xophmeister
1975 is before my time, but to the best of my knowledge -- backed up with a
quick Google -- computers of the time are recognisably similar to computers of
today, obviously modulo technological advances. Whereas, if you were to go
back a bit further (e.g., pre-silicon, etc.) then people, even experts, would
probably find a modern machine somewhat mystical. Anyway, what if we turned
things around: What would we think, today, of a computer owned by a time-
traveller from 2055? Will there be another "quantum leap" \-- possibly quite
literally -- like ICs, that will make it an intractable wonder, or will it be
basically recognisable?

~~~
scaramanga
Well CPU's will be only a few orders of magnitude faster than they are now.
Moore's law is ending. Quantum computers probably won't be any faster.

I'd be hoping for interesting software :)

~~~
restalis
I bet the software will start to resemble an actual engineering, not like our
Moore's law era where the hardware capabilities expanded too fast and the
software programmers got a lot of rope for too cheap of a price to value it
properly! ...and that the number of cores in a processing unit being close to
the number of neurons in a brain maybe?

------
abootstrapper
This is easy. Sell the laptop to IBM. Put the money in an interest earning
account. Return back to future and enjoy your money and all of the
technological advances made by IBM reverse engineering the laptop.

------
6d0debc071
If I travelled back in time with a laptop, loaded with the development
environment of my choice, and nothing else besides.

Well, you could make things quicker but you'd still be limited by the hardware
of the time. The big thing would just be being in before certain things were
made - so as to fix the problems with them before they became as entrenched as
they are now. The internet with decent routing, always on encryption....
Public private key distribution built into the browser. Email that's not a
horrible cludge protocall - that sort of thing.

~~~
vidarh
> Well, you could make things quicker but you'd still be limited by the
> hardware of the time.

But a lot of it is down to knowing what is possible. E.g. we know internet
access via late 70's level home machine is _possible_ with a few KB for a
trimmed down IP stack and SLIP (because it's been done by now).

We know the basic concept behind the www. Creating a trimmed down web that'd
be feasible to make available by 1980 would not be all that hard - it's not
really a hardware/speed problem, but about maturing ideas (e.g the basic ideas
had been around since at least Vannevar Bush's Memex idea, published in 1945;
and in more fleshed out forms adapted for computers since the 60's).

You'd be limited by networking. Or rather, primarily by uncommon it was. But
by the early 1980's, non-internet systems like GameLine, Quantum Link etc.
that were to become America Online, started appearing. Arriving with the
knowledge that the internet would become dominant, and even a rough idea of
how internet protocols works, and the knowledge to go seek out people that
could help you with the appropriate standards etc., you could get into that
market years before, and be in a much better situation by e.g. being prepared
for TCP/IP and the web becoming dominant.

------
saevarom
I hope you would remember to bring your charger

------
marak830
Enjoy 2 years of showing it off, then be really bored while my msft stock
builds and im waiting for a replacement haha.

------
scottydelta
I would carry some of my favorite tv series and watch it there and then kill
myself in the absence of internet :P

------
brokenparser
I'd tell them how horrible the "modern" laptop is and how we'd have to turn
things around in order to prevent wasting away all that research for decades
to come.

I'd show them this video:
[http://vimeo.com/71278954](http://vimeo.com/71278954)

------
code51
If you brought back Wikipedia and related research papers about all major
technological advances, it'd be so boring for researchers that most of them
would probably get depressed and leave their profession.

With this depressing state of mind, new research would just slow down instead
of speeding up.

~~~
walterbell
Some researchers would be motivated and energized to avoid the Wikipedia-
described future. Especially those not in it! Those listed in Wikipedia would
get more attention and competition.

------
Aardwolf
Since it's probably faster than supercomputers of the time: lease its
computing power for money

------
simgidacav
A copy of this thread.

No seriously, I think I'll bring all the information referred to the
environmental damage we created since then, plus the information required to
understand the technology of the laptop itself, including some peripheral, an
ethernet cable and a second laptop.

------
ajuc
I would be jailed and executed becaus having no documents, weird speech
patterns, and spohisticated technology means I'm American spy.

If I landed in nineties instead I would be rich thanks to Apple and Google
stocks, and mostly bitcoins.

------
csixty4
Yeah, I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this. I'd ditch the laptop,
buy some cowboy boots and a powder blue leisure suit, then look up Nolan
Bushnell's number in the phone book.

------
lawnchair
This reminded me of the book 'Replay' by Ken Grimwood

~~~
MatthewWilkes
Starsea sounded shit.

------
cocoapriest
I would throw away that laptop and instead meet Jobs & Gates and invest into
Apple & Microsoft.

------
mcv
I'd keep the laptop secret and buy Apple stock. And write Tetris for the Apple
II.

------
mellisarob
what use would it be there without the additional features that assist
resulting in mere productivity? it would be waste of resources unless WiFi and
other facilities are available back then

~~~
johnsteve
I totally agree with you there.

------
malkia
Well I'll show them how it works in the cloud...

