In late 2000 a man calling himself
John Titor began posting messages on internet discussion boards, claiming that he was a time traveler from the year 2036 (his time travel machine was a 1967 Chevrolet). His mission had been to journey back to the year 1975 and make contact with his grandfather, who was a member of the engineering team developing the IBM 5100, but somehow he ended up in 2000 instead. The tale of John Titor is pretty familiar internet lore by now, and I'm surprised that I've only made
brief references to him before (though I have posted more about
other time travelers). Anyway, to make a long story short, John Titor, during the few months he spent posting messages on the internet (he 'traveled back to the future' in March 2001), made a number of specific predictions about the future. In a nutshell, here they are:
2004: Civil unrest develops around the US Presidential election.
2005: An American civil war begins in earnest:
"I would describe it as having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse. The conflict will consume everyone in the US by 2012 and end in 2015 with a very short WWIII."
2015: Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States. A world war proceeds that kills nearly three billion people
2034: First time machine built by GE
2036: Titor travels back in time to acquire the IBM 5100
Mr. Dark, on LiveJournal, does a
good job of debunking much of the illogic in Titor's vision of the future. However, he
also points out that we have arrived at the first stage of Titor's predictions: the 2004 election that is supposed to cause unrest that eventually flares up into civil war. Mr. Dark notes:
"it's been a week and no civil war has broken out, and only the most fringe elements of the left wing still dispute the outcome of the election, do you think we can officially declare the John Titor tale a hoax? Without this lynchpin, the story falls apart completely. If there is no 'civil unrest' over a 'disputed election in 2004', then there is no civil war. No civil war, no nuclear war. No nuclear war, no need to return to the past for some near-ancient IBM PC to solve some otherwise-unsolvable problem."
The creepy thing, however, is that this election
has produced an incredible amount of bitterness and division. Witness all the
maps of the New United States that people are sharing via the internet. But are we on the verge of a civil war? I don't think so. So it looks like Mr. Dark is right. John Titor is definitely a hoax (was this ever really in doubt?). Though we'll know with even more certainty at the end of next year when the all-out civil war has never materialized.
Comments
I'd reserve "incredible division" to describe an atmosphere of frequent mass protests, counterdemonstrations or -- see election of 1860 -- political dissolution.
How about this: I claim that I never traveled back in time. I also made some inaccurate predictions about the 2004 election. Therefore, my claim not to have traveled through time is a hoax and therefore time travel is real.
Now as for your proof that time travel is real. Of course it's real. We're all traveling forwards through time, one second at a time (except for certain portions of the population who seem to be moving backwards towards the middle ages).
People need to grow up, get over it, and they will. It's funny that in 2000, everyone made a big deal over the lack of a popular vote majority. Now that Bush has a strong margin of victory in that popular vote, it is suddenly no longer an issue of importance to the Democrats.
I'm not a super huge Bush fan by any means, but I certainly identify more closely with the Reps than with the whining Dems.
Let's move on!
1. Being wrong about one thing doesn't automatically prove you're wrong/lying about something else. Maybe the time-travel guy just has a bad memory for dates. Maybe the civil unrest just hasn't started yet.
2. It seems to me that the fact that jumping back and forth in time (in any other way than traveling forward 60 seconds per minute) completely defies logic should be a better reason to doubt its reality than the credibility or lack of credibility of people who say they've done it.
However, since you mention it, he did get 3 million more votes than Kerry, including the fact that Kerry beat Bush by over 2 million votes in NY/CA.
Beyond that, you are making my point by your desire to keep hasing it out, and trying to discredit the fact that he won the popular vote. Presumably, had he won the pop vote in 2000, this wouldn't have been an issue, now that he's won the pop vote, you make it about a lack of a landslide.
As I said, let's move on.
John Titor... oh, this kills me. My timeline for an old GURPS campaign keeps showing up in forums about this stuff, so I figured I'd say hi.
we'd all have it now!
imagine time travel is invented in 2034 as per above
someone buys one, likes it and goes back in time to patent it for themselves first, in 2033 say.
And so on until the cavemen have them.
I can almost imagine a race to get further back in time first and win the patent.
John.
But time travel in of itself isn't exactly an
innovative idea.
H.G. Wells I think published the idea in 1895 and I doubt the idea was new then.
Assuming the technology to build such a machine doesn't exist (originally) until 2034, the fact that GE can build one then means others can do so too.
Sooner or later and given it might be 2000, 3000, 4000 years later another time machine would be invented.
If it's ever possible to build, we would have it now.
The technology might not exist now, but it would (exist now) if time travel could ever go in a backwards direction.
As for the great degree of anger and distrust, I can't speak for any "fringe" groups, but I can speak about the rage and anger that has slowly been building among ordinary, working class people, as our jobs are being downsized, outsourced, etc. We, as a group, are obviously worker harder and longer, and falling further behind. That's not because we're "maxed out" on credit cards, but because we've lost health insurance,have no job security, and wages have steadily falloen behind the cost of basic needs.
Add this to a war that doesn't make sense. Sure, it was a strike against Iraq, which bombed the WTC...except that Iraq didn't do it. Then the war was a hunt for those weapons of mass destruction...which weren't there. OK, but we had to get Saddam. So we got him, but the war rages on. Oh, that's right, we're going after those hotbeds of terrorists: presumably, there are groups of terrorists sitting around somewhere, just waiting to be killed, perhaps being so helpful as to put signs outside their houses announcing "Terrorists live here". Sure.
All of this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg of the distrust, anger and resentment that has been growing among those hopelessly ordinary in cities, small towns and rural areas.
Don't believe it? Just take some time, come into the factories, stores and restaraunts where these people work, and listen. Listen to the whole cross-section of ages, political affiliations, religious beliefs, and you are going to hear distrust at best, and more often, anger/rage.
and even those who vote for a person won't like everything they do
No leader can make everyone happy
and when an election offers (as they envariably do) two people both of whom you'd hate to have lead you it becomes a choice of who you hate the least.
As I see it both had things going for them and both had things against them. Socio-economics and policies aside, it's what you see and what you ignore that in the end dictates who you vote for.
As for Civil unrest, I think most people have got over it and are trying to get on with their lives.
There will always be disagreements of course, thats what politics is about and that why you get a chance to voice your opinion on a national level every four years.
And if thats not enough, be happy that Bush can't be voted in for a third term.
Maybe he was from the Ukrainian goverment and did not want to tell us.
Can't believe that some people actually believe this.
The bottom line: given the ease of creating a hoax on the internet, anyone trying to maintain a shred of real skepticism HAS to take that into account. In the absence of any incontrovertible proof for or against something, then the easiest explanation is likely the best. Have we seen many certifiable internet hoaxes? Yes. Have we seen many certifiable time travelers? No. Therefore any belief in the latter bears the greater burden of proof. If we can only speak on likelihoods, then the greater likelihood is that this is all a very well-organized hoax.
All evidence brought forward thus far can be easily replicated with spare radio parts, graphics programs, word processors and a reasonably through knowledge of theoretical physics. This doesn't PROVE it's a hoax, not directly. But considering the relative ease of creating such a hoax, it does sweet F.A. for proving its truth.
Not to mention that the innocent Brazilian guy getting shot 7 times in the head and once in the shoulder smells awfully like a Waco type event to me, if you take that to mean the police fucking up.
Civil unrest? Maybe not in America but it could be here if it doesn't calm down soon...
Mark
Short of using it too smash the legacy machine into bits with his IBM and rewriting the code from scratch on a nice new 64 bit unix server, there is no other application for the IBM machine.
Whats the point of all the time travel for an IBM box that will do you no good, when you could just use a unix box which he must have access to if hes sticking the legacy code on, and slap on a quickly coded communication protocol wrapper to grab the code?
I mean he doesnt even have to re-engineer the legacy system, just slap an emulator on the UNIX box, it aint like its hard, a child of 10 could emulate a 1970's IBM processor.
*sigh*
I did find what he wrote about a Civil War (and I haven't read much) interesting and a year ago I would have laughed it off as being too stupid but now it's interesting in light of what's happening in the south. I read that he gave 2005 for the beginning of the Civil War. It's not something I think is probable but the people in the South have been treated so badly and then with photos w/captions in the press making it worse and the disgusting comment by Barbara Bush to the media...She said "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."
It's just interesting to think about.
Considering what I'd say if I went back to a couple years after my birth and wanted to tell everyone something without sparking off nuclear war or change history, it seems pretty well thought-out, even if the writing was very poor and the 'science' put it over-the-top.
On the other hand, I can't help but see a clear possibility of a rural vs. city war. The cities are fairly evenly mixed, so the remainder of the two sides that survived being cut off would 'cancel' (kill) most of the other out. The rural areas could handle fighting small bands of armed ex-city-dwellers.
The divisions run deep and strong in this country. Yes, it's rare for a population to be homogenized like they are in the US, but it doesn't mean that it couldn't snap and get bloody. If you look at recent events, it's clearly just a terrorist attack or a storm away in most of the country... The oil and the vinegar are clearly beginning to separate.
The predictions were vague enough to describe any number of things, but pointed enough to leave doubt, identical in style to Nostradamus but without the religious twist.
pathetic duds
Done. 😊
G
He more or less claimed to have diverted Y2K. They key to this claim is imbedded in his posts, and is related to his 1998 FAXs to Art Bell, which were apparently read on-air. These FAXs are usually not included in the Titor material found online.
"Since I will eventually be leaving this worldline, I could easily tell you all sorts of things that would happen in the next few years. Unfortunately, your worldline is already 2% different from mine, and there's no way to give you absolute facts about future events. When the day comes for my prediction to be realized, it may happen or it MAY NOT. In fact, the information I give you will allow someone to affect the outcome based on the prediction itself.
If what I say does happen, then your ability to judge your environment is crippled by your acceptance of me as a prophet. If I am wrong, then everything I have said that might possibly have made you think about your world in a different way is suddenly discredited.
I DO NOT WANT EITHER.
You are able to change your worldline just as I am. Can you stop the civil war before it gets here? Sure. Will you do it? Probably not."
He clearly never wanted to be taken seriously, and never once made it a point to convince anyone that he was telling the truth.
So what was the point?
The point behind his "story" was to get people to think differently about their lives. To not take the precious things for granted, and to be independent thinkers instead of mindless cattle.
So please stop taking this stuff so seriously, his story should only be taken as a metaphorical truth.
We're halfway into 2008 but the economy has suddenly dropped in the States and people are just starting to realize that there was a depression growing all this time.
As for the 2008 summer Olympics prediction...
With all the crap that's going around with it I don't think many people are going to call it 'official'; as in the true spirit of how it should be.
I might not believe that John Titor existed but it's very possible a person from this past (2001 or whenever he appeared) saw all the crap that was going on back then and made a pretty accurate prediction of what will go wrong if we continued with the path we were on.
Whatever the 'truth' of it, I very much believe we should have been more focused on "Hey, we need to change things" rather than "zomg FAKE!!!1"