
Ask HN: If you woke up tomorrow and it is 18th century, what would you do? - aqw137
Hypothetical question, you woke up tomorrow and it is 1718 or it is 1018 or 318 BC? And you have your knowledge (just knowledge, you can&#x27;t bring anything with you to the past), what would you do, how would you use your knowledge?<p>(assume the language is not the issue and don&#x27;t worry about the grandfather paradox)
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petecox
(Wake up where? You mention the grandfather paradox but 1718 is precisely 70
years before my country is invaded/colonized by the British. My very presence,
as a 'European' on the continent of Australia would tear a rip in the fabric
of space-time.)

So presumably I'm back in my ancestral homelands of Britain and Ireland.

But language _is_ an issue.

(revival efforts aside) Norn, Cornish and Manx are several of the languages of
the Crown that have gone extinct since 1718. I would catalogue these
endangered languages and stress the importance of preservation and
multilingual education - which is a theme in 21st C society in the case of
Welsh, Basque, Catalan etc.

And the 18th century brought education to deaf children into modernity. The
interventionist in me would unify fledgling British, French and Martha's
Vineyard efforts into a common variety so that the world's hearing impaired
can communicate in the same language.

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tomohawk
This is practically the same question as asking if you woke up tomorrow and an
EMP had gone off, effectively putting us back to 1718, what would you do? The
first thing would be to try to survive the 95% die off of population that
would occur because the number of people would be completely unsustainable at
that technology level.

The 2nd thing I'd do is kick myself for not doing everything I could to get
the government to finally harden the electrical grid and other infrastructure
before catastrophe struck.

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noonespecial
Start writing down every damn thing I could remember. I can barely remember
the skills I had in college I haven't used. It would fade pretty fast amid
daily life as a serf.

Bonus: If my writings survived, I'd make Nostradamus look most insignificant
indeed.

Seriously though, this is one of my very favorite road trip games. Your family
can keep their punch-buggies, we do this.

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edmonddantes80
It reminds me Mark Twain's novel " A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court" part when he convinced the people that he cause a Solar eclipse and
gain a position as a principal minister of the King.

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zerealshadowban
Immediately kick off the industrial revolution, with an accelerated path to
large-scale power-generation, electrical devices, and information technology.

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Domark
I’d roll out the cotton gin!

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gayesthomo
First, it would be personal tragedy. I'd never voluntarily go back in time.
EVER! That said, I'd go ahead and invent modern real analysis (along with the
rudiments of abstract algebra) and give the math aficionados of 18th century
run for their money. If nothing I'd write simply mind-blowing political and
science fiction that takes place in the future (every day life in 20th and
early 21st century.)

