We somehow manage to transport a person to the future or perhaps somebody from our time was transported back to the past, say we showed them all our technology, what we knew and what we could do and have done. How do you think people would've reacted during the 1500's? What would people have thought and felt about what the world was like today? I'd imagine it would be loud for them, too many colors and smells that would overload their senses in a bad way. The technology we have would certainly terrify them - we can create an explosive that can wipe out a small country, we fly birds that can travel faster than one's words would reach another's ears, we have a tiny device that has virtually every piece of information, knowledge and tool available to almost anyone at any time that we can place in a pocket or a bag. The great cities we've built would make them wonder if we were Gods or perhaps his angels, maybe this would make them think they died and went to heaven and that this is what it's like. Our music, humor and hobbies would likely completely baffle them. I don't even know how people would even begin to understand the most simplest of our technology and not run away from it all in fear. What do you guys think?
It is a good thing that time remains the precarious vehicle that accompanies realities in unfolding. You wouldn't want to mess with that too much. Hugs, Alex
I think it's my idea lol, https://www.writingforums.org/threads/my-the-holy-bible-screen-play.159643/ and that I better work out how on Earth I'm going to tell my version of The Holy Bible lol. It's just so hard. But I have the story, I just need to write it.
I feel like Hitler and Stalin would have loved for the ways that governments can watch it's citizens.
You should read Lamb by Christopher Moore. Premise: The Angel Gabriel resurrects Jesus's best childhood friend so that he could write a part of the Bible detailing Jesus's childhood. The only problem is, Biff, who is now resurrected into this day and age, is a bit culture shocked. My favorite part is this: “I've tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I'm having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someone's ass? Is "ho" always feminine, and "muthafucka" always masculine, while "bitch" can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be "stupid"? I'll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.”
Most of it isn't too hard to explain in terms of what it does as "Like an X, but.....", if the listener is open to having things explained to them. Guns are like bows, cars are like horse-drawn carts, even computers can be compared to books. It very much depends on the individual who's been transported back, and how well-educated they were. They'd probably freak out at travelling 500 years into the future with no warning--but then again, so would I. It's easy to slip into assuming people in older times were dumber than / inferior to us, but they were just as smart--just less educated on average, and adapted to a very different world that was more demanding in some ways and less in others.
To this day people drive out to desert AFBs and watch spy planes and drones fly around, while talking about sky people and ancient aliens and Brahma-astra and all that. You don’t have to look far. “Oh, it did a high g turn with a light on. Must be a god!”
We can’t even look at old technology like Stonehenge or the great pyramids without some of us thinking the gods were real.
This is not a hypothetical quandary. I was going to suggest the Brave New World, but for this we have no need for clever fiction. I believe this question has already been answered on more than one occassion. You should researcb memoirs of European explorers in the Americas as well as spice islands. Besides, we, in the modern, westernised world, are right in the heat of this issue, being ourselves on both ends. Corporations wanted to instal cameras in all trucks, which are workplaces, like shops. But, at the same time, they are far more intimate to those who drive them. Though I’m sur that this issue will come back in a more Orwellian form, for now it’s been utterly pushed into the ditch by self-driving-automated-vehicles. Again, you can read reports on those. If it were not for our outdated sensibilities, these machines would already be in full operation, because they are safer and more efficient.
There was one case in the past when television first came out in India. There was a nice tv soap about Indian mythology, gods etc, so the council put a tv set on the street, so that all the poor people who've never seen a tv in their life can watch it. What happened was that the people worshipped the tv as a shrine, because they thought the gods on the screen were real. They started bringing it gifts and stuff.
I think it highly depends on who we are transport (or when and where we are, or they are, being transport to/from)....
It's really a question that's been explored many times. Ice Man, Encino Man, Kate and Leopold, Blast from the Past, even elements of Captain America. It depends on how far into the past you're delving, how resilient/intelligent your traveler is, and how abruptly they're introduced to the modern world of the time of writing.
I did this on a small scale in the Eagle and the Dragon, though in a different era and not involving time travel. Someone from an isolated Neolithic civilization was picked up by some 1st century European sailors and pressed into service as a deck hand, without any common language, surrounded by things on the ship he didn't understand, making port calls at places like Alexandria at the height of its technological greatness... how did he feel about this brave new world of 2000 years ago?\ I also have an idea that has been kicking around for a decades, that I haven't put to pen yet. Mountain climbers in the Alps take shelter in a storm in a cave, and find a Roman soldier frozen in a solid block of ice. Excavated, the soldier is taken to a research institute where he is very carefully thawed out, but somehow, one by one, neurons begin refiring after a 2000 year nap, and the arrow wound in his shoulder begins to seep blood. Conflict: the head researcher wants to quietly let this breathing, heart-beating , but far from conscious specimen slip back into long overdue death so that he can be properly researched, others want to keep him alive, "kidnap" him, and eventually revive him. A little help from a Latin-speaking priest. Just thoughts. I thought he might end up as an interesting instructor at the Army War College at the end, after people quit trying to kill him, or let him die, and he masters English. Mmmm, his first totally unexpected car ride, electric lights, lots of bright shiny metal objects.
My tendency would be toward the shrug of the shoulders with technology. Maybe my caveman is an idiot? 'Well, I'll just walk to the beach, it is in Gods' hands and next time before you text her why not step down to your kitchen and tell her yourself? And I'm not really interested in the Babylonians, y'know, and if I wanted to shoot cowboys well I would do so with my arrow. As to knowledge, technology and your history I have my faith in dragons and the merboys of the ocean. Any problems like I said I refer to Thor and the guys up high. Night night.' Something like that..
I always thought an interesting take might be some sort of Viking or something who's simple but serious minded, and can see all the ways in which technology is actually harming us, convincing a family to live more plainly, becoming happier as a result. Anyway, there's a funny bit by Joe Rogan where he says if a person from Salem around the time of the witch-trials were transported to the modern day, he'd be terrified and think that people were all walking around possessed by "the looking glass" (cell phones).
This happens on a fairly regular basis in South America. This would also be extremely dependent on the person that you picked up. Bring a farmer from 1500 and show him our world, he'd likely be terrified. Bring Leonardo DiVinci, he'd likely be fascinated. He wouldn't understand the science of what he was seeing, but he'd likely understand that it's all technology.
