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Chris Scoggins, marginalist
Concerning my previous post, he sends me this email:
So if the typical person today couldn't hack it in 1000 AD (I agree that we probably can't) What is the furthest back someone from today could go and have a fighting chance to make ends meet?
I like the idea of walking into an LSE seminar in 1932 and making some nice points.
If we try going back further, I don't think 1700 would be so much easier for me than 1000. Even if I fell into London, patronage would be hard to come by and I would expect that I would end up earning the subsistence wage. Sorry guys, but I just don't know much useful: blogging starts around 2001. In most eras I would expect the subsistence wage, but after the late 1800s I could teach and write for greater pay and better working conditions. As for the start date for effective insider trading, maybe that is the late 19th century as well. You need some start-up capital: does anyone know the minimum market investment circa 1815 and could you sell short?
In most eras my best bet is to be a shyster of some kind.
I don't, by the way, think I would die in 1000, at least assuming I could avoid the plague and a few other maladies. Temporary aid is the natural human tendency, among the poor too, and it is unlikely I would be killed for being a witch. I would end up doing hard physical labor, just like most other people at the time. The economic lesson here is that complementarity really matters.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 11, 2008 at 12:59 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
If forced to do physical labor, it probably wouldn't be very hard considering that you would be considerably larger than most of your contemporaries in whichever century you choose.
Posted by: Bobar at Jun 11, 2008 1:05:00 PM
I think in 1700, enough knowledge is there to demonstrate a telegraph and people would immediately see the usefulness. Many of us know how a steam engine works, but a prototype would be more difficult to assemble on a laborer's wages.
Posted by: C L at Jun 11, 2008 1:07:12 PM
I think I'd pretty useful to Columbus in the late 15th Century. I'd make a good sounding board for Newton or Kepler too, once I picked up the language.
Posted by: DC at Jun 11, 2008 1:08:25 PM
I don't, by the way, think I would die in 1000, at least assuming I could avoid the plague and a few other maladies.
You likely wouldn't die. The plague, and other diseases like it, emerged as a result of expanding reservoirs of germs, which expanded because of increasingly globalized trade. The reason these things don't emerge today is because everyone's already touched everyone else, and those who couldn't hack it have already died. As someone living in a very globalized age and who's encountered more pathogens in one hour at BWI than your average Parisian would encounter in his lifetime, you'd have a good chance of surviving the diseases of trade.
Posted by: Stephen Smith at Jun 11, 2008 1:09:33 PM
"I like the idea of walking into an LSE seminar in 1932 and making some nice points. "
Best sentence I read today Tyler.
Posted by: Steve Horwitz at Jun 11, 2008 1:17:42 PM
Do a bunch of reading before you "go", hope you get plunked down in England, and try for the longitude prize :).
Posted by: Quantum Mechanic at Jun 11, 2008 1:20:27 PM
Tyler, I think you're drastically underestimating the advantage any of us would have going back to those times. As pointed out, you'll be significantly taller and drastically smarter than average, and I don't mean educated, I mean that your brain hasn't been malnourished it's entire life. What's the average IQ in 1000 AD England? It's impossible to prove, and I might guess 75, but I certainly wouldn't guess 100. As you walked around you'd start to see glaring deficiencies in the ways people lived their lives, such as, 'wow, none of these doors have proper locks on them' or 'i can't believe no one is boiling their drinking water'. Combine that with a conceptual understanding of markets and entrepreneurship and I can't fathom how you'd fail to be achieve anything less than fabulous wealth.
Posted by: John L at Jun 11, 2008 1:21:48 PM
"In most eras my best bet is to be a shyster of some kind."
Just like today! (I kid! I kid!)
Posted by: matt at Jun 11, 2008 1:22:24 PM
Michael Faraday made it with no capital or connections. Anyone remembering high school chemistry, physics, or math should be able to get a scientific career in the late 1700's/early 1800's.
And shorting stocks was easier, not harder, before financial regulations, although debtor's prison wasn't so great if you screw up.
Posted by: DK at Jun 11, 2008 1:25:16 PM
John says: "What's the average IQ in 1000 AD England?...I certainly wouldn't guess 100"
If the problem today (oft bemoaned by commnetators on education) is that everybody is above average, apparently in the past everybody was below average!
Posted by: tadhgin at Jun 11, 2008 1:29:38 PM
If you've been transported to 1830 or thereabouts, even an American high-school education gives you one incredible, timely, easy-to-exploit bit of insider data: ever heard of a sawmill in central California, built by a Mr. John Sutter? Go there.
Posted by: Ben M at Jun 11, 2008 1:31:37 PM
Re Stephen Smith's comment - isn't it actually more likely that Tyler would cause a plague rather than die from one? Who knows what flu viruses or likewise he has built antibodies to that wouldn't have existed back in the year 1000 (regardless of where on the planet he landed)?
Posted by: Bonapart O Cunasa at Jun 11, 2008 1:34:46 PM
"If the problem today (oft bemoaned by commnetators on education) is that everybody is above average, apparently in the past everybody was below average!"
The average has trended upwards over the past century. Basically, people are getting a bit smarter. The average today is about 116 in 1900 IQ. (Think of it as being similar to inflation.)
Besides, a modern person would also be bigger, more attractive, and more resistant to disease. These are huge advantages if they don't get one killed.
Posted by: MK at Jun 11, 2008 1:40:34 PM
I disagree. We are taller and, on average, stronger, than
our forebears. Smarter? Who knows. But we have more
knowledge. Predicting a solar eclipse can come in handy.
We have less acquired immunity, having grown up in a cleaner
environment -- but we have strong immune systems due to
great nourishment growing-up.
(Fogel's Escape from hunger book is useful here.)
There is as much to say we would thrive, if transported
back in time, as we would find it difficult. Of course,
some of us would find ourselves in shackles, but...
Posted by: Red Crayon at Jun 11, 2008 1:53:48 PM
One thing I fantasize about every no and then is what I would do if I where transported back to 9/1/01, and if I could prevent the terrorists attacks, considering that I know certain information about the event, but not the specifics (such as the times, the exact airports/airplanes or the names of the people responsible)
Posted by: Jonathan Hohensee at Jun 11, 2008 2:09:36 PM
Another fun variation:
How far back would I want to go if I could choose a time to my maximal advantage? Too far and my modern skills become useless. Not far enough and my knowledge of the future isn't big enough to make a difference. What year would I do best? There are probably different answers to this question for different people.
Posted by: harryh at Jun 11, 2008 2:11:58 PM
I don't think there was much to invest in 1815 other than government bonds and canal issues, at least in the US. Real estate speculation was rife though. Shorting was around but it's legality varied. Naked shorts, unregistered securities, issuing additional stock surreptitiously at the discretion of the owner, were common.
Posted by: Lord at Jun 11, 2008 2:12:06 PM
One way of putting this is: you could probably do well until back about the time your profession appeared. This makes sense.
If you are an economist or a marketing professor, you'd better not go back to far. If you are an engineer, you can go back a lot further. And probably the best off are practicioners of the oldest profession...
Posted by: David Wright at Jun 11, 2008 2:25:36 PM
As with most of these mental games, the "when" often depends on "where." Do I get to pick the time and place, or just the time and I am left to my own devices to get to the place I want to be? 18th century onwards in England or Western Europe is a safe bet for most of us, a little earlier if you know some chemistry or engineering. By the time the 19th century rolls around most of us would be well-placed to take advantage of our historical knowledge: we know what will become "big", we might remember a few inventors or company names to seek out as investors, and we might even remember a few inventions that become much more practical for us to invent ourselves now that the basic chemistry and engineering work can be farmed out to a reasonably well-educated workforce.
What all of us carry around as common knowledge would be incredibly valuable by 1800 or so. What might have seemed like a toy to its inventor is something that we know will change the world in a decade or so...
Posted by: evgen at Jun 11, 2008 2:25:37 PM
If you get dropped in 1700, you have a full 70 year head start on inoculating people against smallpox using cowpox, thus making you the preeminent physician on the face of the earth.
I think maybe the best bet for a future-past person is to throw themselves to the mercy of the Royal Society. At the very least, one would be a novelty to them.
Posted by: Kyle B at Jun 11, 2008 2:31:18 PM
Quote harryh: "How far back would I want to go if I could choose a time to my maximal advantage?"
Perhaps the future would be the best place to be transported to. Even the poor in modern day America or Europe have cable tv, modern medicine and an overabundance in food. Arguably, it's better to be lower class today than upper class 1000 years ago. 1000 years into the future we might be greeted by a lavish social safety net, robot butlers, and a much extended lifetime to enjoy and peruse a millennium of intellectual thought, even though we may all be too ignorant to actually produce any marketable goods.
Posted by: John L at Jun 11, 2008 2:33:31 PM
If forced to do physical labor, it probably wouldn't be very hard considering that you would be considerably larger than most of your contemporaries in whichever century you choose.
I am told that the skeletons of people who died ~ 100 years ago have denser bone than people alive today. Bone and muscle mass is laid down when needed – and it is not needed now. I do not know whether the bones, muscles would fully recover.
But unless you are a carpenter or a bricklayer, you would probably find yourself without any manual skill whatsoever. You would have far fewer useful skills than the average peasant.
As someone living in a very globalized age and who's encountered more pathogens in one hour at BWI than your average Parisian would encounter in his lifetime, you'd have a good chance of surviving the diseases of trade.
Is your smallpox inoculation up to date? What about typhoid? You are NOT exposed to many bacteria because houses, clothes, people, water etc are far cleaner today than back then, thus cleaning the germs out of the way.
And exposure to a new disease as an adult, is usually far more dangerous than exposure as a child. The fact that one of your ancestors survived contact with it is no guarantee at all.
Posted by: ad at Jun 11, 2008 2:43:55 PM
In 1700, if you could get your hands on the simplest spyglass, you could easily discover the planet Uranus within a few months. You don't even need to know where it is: just check out all the sixth-magnitude stars along the ecliptic.
There are no more than a couple thousand sixth-magnitude stars in the entire sky, so you would only have to monitor the positions of a small fraction of them. Find the one star out of a few hundred candidates that's moving.
You will win some modest fame and fortune and be able to quit your day job as a musician and devote yourself full-time to astronomy, as William Herschel did in real life.
Next, discover the asteroid Vesta, which will be somewhat tougher since it wanders quite far from the ecliptic, but quite doable in a year or two. Finally, invest in a slightly better telescope (two-inch lens should be quite sufficient) and spend a few years looking for Neptune and Pallas and Ceres.
Retire wealthy and honored.
Posted by: at Jun 11, 2008 2:50:01 PM
Knowledge of college-level math would ensure you know at least some things that haven't been discovered/proved as late as 1900. In 1700 you could preempt Euler, Gauss, Galois, Riemann, Cauchy, etc. and be the greatest mathematician of all time.
Posted by: Andy at Jun 11, 2008 3:24:06 PM
I think a modern American attorney could go as far back as the founding of the country, and perhaps back to the end of the use of Law French in English courts, say around 1680, and find work in the the legal profession, at least as some kind of clerk.
Posted by: t e whalen at Jun 11, 2008 3:34:27 PM
"I would end up doing hard physical labor, just like most other people at the time."
I think that you overestimate your ability to do the "physical" aspect. While generations of better nutrition will have made you bigger and healthier, your competitors will be accustomed to a level of grinding, literally back-breaking labor that you will simply be unable to sustain. They will have been doing it every day (religious festivals excluded) since childhood, and my guess is, within a few months you'll be so injured and hobbled that you'll be begging for alms on the cathedral steps.
Posted by: Scott at Jun 11, 2008 3:36:59 PM
If you're interested in gaining practical knowledge that could be of help in a situation like this, or more realistically, just interested in how "things" actually work, I'd start working through a book like "Caveman Chemistry: 28 Projects, from the Creation of Fire to the Production of Plastics," by Kevin Dunn. It's an all-chemistry-lab primer meets tour-through-history. It starts with charcoal, goes through ceramics, metathesis reactions, dyes, gunpowder, batteries, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and ends with plastics. It's a bit quirky, but the steps are all there, and it explains how to go about actually producing all of the items. It's a great book for showing students how chemistry is applied.
Having a thorough knowledge of price equilibriums is fine, but knowing how to make glass, gunpowder, and soap -- priceless, or rather, extremely utilitarian.
Posted by: Scott at Jun 11, 2008 4:04:57 PM
@harryh If you can remember current events well I would think just going back a year would be enough for you to make a fortune through betting or investing.
Posted by: joe at Jun 11, 2008 4:29:08 PM
The premise is difficult to understand, with going back to 1000 or sooner. I'd rather head back to 600 or even 300 BCE.
If I'm time traveling, it's pre-Dark Ages for me.
Posted by: The other Eric at Jun 11, 2008 4:46:39 PM
i'm not sure why people are assuming folk from the past were physically inferior, even if malnourished and/or smaller than moderns. those people were tough as nails, because they had to be. do you know what pioneers, peasants, etc., went through throughout the ages? you're average soft american would die from such living conditions and/or work in days (ever seen (e.g.) tiny nepalese porters running up and down mountains with 100s of pounds on their backs, wearing just flip flops and some rags against pretty serious cold?).
Posted by: dj superflat at Jun 11, 2008 4:47:08 PM
I think a typical American working at the start of the 20th Century would do far better than a typical American at the start of the 21st. Those people would have a far better understanding and experience in basic skills that would be useful as well as a much better understanding of science then medievals would have. Today, most of us lack those simple skills simply because we never needed to know them.
The biggest obstacle to success is that the time voyager would not have a support network in terms of patronage, financial backing, and protection. These would be critical in Medieval Europe, or indeed in most highly stratified societies.
What is needed then, are times and places when "men of ability" are allowed to rise quickly. The windows of opportunity are few and far between, and are generally very dangerous. But I can think of several eras when someone today could succeed, provided they have enough daring, enough historical knowledge, and either military or trade skills.
1) The Spanish Exploration of the New World. Especially if you can speak Spanish, and can pass for being an orthodox Catholic, then 1500-1530 is a good time. Most of the conquistadors and initial immigrants were self made men. A basic knowledge of geography and history would allow you to know where the riches are to pillage in the New World. Either sign up under Cortes or Pizarro, or try to beat them to the punch. Just keep in mind both tended to be lucky in the exact time they encountered their adversaries. However, chances are good to get a nice landed estates and some titles provided you're a good leader.
2) 1700-1840 when European merchantmen really started to open up the Pacific. Perhaps I've read too much James Clavell, but there is plenty of money to be made as a trader. If you don't have the initial sailing skills, you can sign up and learn them before striking on your own. Problems here are bad weather and pirates. You could have all the skills needed to succeed, and still succumb to bad luck.
3) If you are in America in the 1840's, do what you can to get as much hardware supplies and be near San Francisco when the Gold Rush happens. Sell mining supplies to the miners, and you'll make more than 90% of them.
4) For that matter, anytime there is a speculative boom, you will make a fortune if you buy early and sell before the mania ends. French stocks for New World trading, Tulipmania, whatever.
In short, once a market economy has developed and you know where the boom spots are, you can use your historical knowledge to advantage. You basically eliminate risk because there is no uncertainty as to what will happen.
Once again, I think "inventing" things is not a path of proven success. The principles of steam power were known well before James Watt. He didn't invent the steam engine as much as improved on earlier, but flawed designs. The problem here is not so much science, but engineering and what materials are available. If you are a knowledgeable engineer with practical experience, then you can probably invent some things a decade or so before they are done, but probably not much earlier. If you lack those technical skills, you'll probably fail. And let's not forget that inventing something doesn't mean you are the one who benefits from it. Nikola Tesla could easily have come from the future and that explains why he was such a great inventor. But it still won't prevent Thomas Edison from sticking the knife to him.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at Jun 11, 2008 4:59:39 PM
You're right, you would die, and fast at that if you were unwilling to change trades, use your baselevel knowledge of how things work.
Oh, right, you don't have any, everything is available on google or manufactured somewhere else. Sorry, I forgot. Most people today don't have the first clue how to grow, harvest, preserve food. Find clean water, build anything, etc. etc.
I would hope that you had enough high school science to bring great advances in healthcare, sanitation and basic engineering, but hey, if your attitude is such that you would want to live in the same cushy conditions as you do today and wouldn't be willing to apply other knowledge and skills, then yes, you are correct you would not survive long at all.
Posted by: mud at Jun 11, 2008 5:08:21 PM
I think if you go back with a decent background in engineering-related math and physics, it would be straightforward to make yourself very useful (once you reached a major city, and once you knew how to speak the language, details, details). The problem is not that your skills wouldn't be very valuable, but that the niche is pretty small: a noticeable proportion of modern people are computer programmers and the like, but centuries ago only a very few people could support themselves as navigators and surveyors and military engineers and so forth. On the other hand, such people were also often in significant force-multiplier roles, probably more than the median mathworker today. E.g., a navigator makes a very valuable difference when he increases the chance of a ship arriving where it intends to.
Before Newton, you know how some key things about making sensible ballistics tables, or of course making sense of planetary motion. And before Oughtred, you how to make and use a slide rule. And I'm not an expert on the historical technology of surveying, cartography, or navigation, but I'd guess that you could have a very fruitful meeting of minds with practitioners of those fields, both teaching them enough things to keep their attention, and getting a useful level of skill yourself in weeks or months, not years. You could also write a really influential book by regurgitating calculus and classical mechanics, or perhaps write a comparably influential book about structural mechanics by attacking the problem with calculus. Not everyone cares about making a mathematically ideal arch, or about the theory of vibrations, but some people who do care care a lot: even a single percentage point price/performance improvement in a big project is a big deal.
After Newton the average modern engineer won't have an overwhelming mathematical advantage over all the locals, but will also no longer need to struggle to be understood by impatient landed gentry. The Royal Society and its imitators give you a well-qualified audience predisposed to pay serious attention to technical work. Make your way to the Royal Society and hit them with statistical mechanics and thermodynamics and the equivalence of heat and work, or the germ theory of disease and Pasteur's sterilization experiment, or Mendelian genetics, or comparative advantage, or basic electrical demonstrations. I'm pretty sure it should be possible to leverage stuff like that into a decent academic or consulting position in that time and place.
Posted by: William Newman at Jun 11, 2008 7:02:27 PM
For everyone arguing that knowledge of math and science is the key to success - I think you are underestimating the role of class in these times.
You will probably not know enough conventional wisdom to pass a sniff test in any time before the early 1900's. Also consider how the mainstream viewed certain types of discoveries - eg Galileo.
I don't think that you would be able to burst onto the scene and proclaim some hugely advanced truth - they wouldn't be able to understand it. To even have a shot you would have to walk everyone through the incremental steps to get you to the 'ah ha' moment - and that is only if you can ever get anyone to listen to you.
I personally don't think that a modern American would be able to deal with the vast amounts of physical labor that would be involved:
1) There is no in door plumbing or running water.
2) Electricity isn't available - everything is done by hand: cleaning clothes, carrying water, etc.
3) You will probably not be able to afford meat, at least not much - is your metabolism capable of handling an all starch diet?
4) You will need to walk everywhere you go.
5) You will need to deal with all of the aches and pains we pop pills for today.
6) Pollution is going to be much worse - what effect will that have on your health?
Posted by: Chris at Jun 11, 2008 7:33:41 PM
Greg Clark argued in Farewell to Alms that pretty much any reasonably intelligent man with a good work ethic and low time value could have become rich in England during the period 1200-1800.
Posted by: ziel at Jun 11, 2008 8:11:05 PM
Greg Clark argued in Farewell to Alms that pretty much any reasonably intelligent man with a good work ethic and low time value could have become rich in England during the period 1200-1800.
Posted by: ziel at Jun 11, 2008 8:11:29 PM
Unconsidered, so far, is the problem of language. Presuming you do not want to be a hod-carrier (do you know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw?), you would gravitate toward an intellectual center. How's your Latin? Greek? Prior to 1900, a working knowledge of both was assumed. If you don't have that knowledge, you lose! I'll give you that there were those who rose without it, but there are those who teach at major Universities without degrees. Mostly very successful businessmen, a billion bucks buys a bit of credibility, but a B.A. is a basic entree to society these days just as knowledge of "the classics" was before the 20th century.
*IF* you do have a working knowledge of "the classics," then you are golden. You know how light works, you know the germ theory of disease, you (since you read this blog) know how money moves, you know at leasst the theory of movable type, most improtantly you have at least the theory of elements, you (probably) know that gunpowder has a ratio of 75% saltpeter to 15% charcoal to 10% sulfur.
The possible pitfalls (presuming an European landing, similar caveats apply elsewhere):
Are you white? In Europe an Asian or African lacked a certain credibility.
Are you Christian? Catholic? Can you "play one on TV?" How flexible are you on the subject of religion? Do you even know what the "Fifth Monarchy Men"believed?
Jews were not well regarded until the 20th century and forget pagans and heathens (moors). The first country to grant religious freedon to *every* religion was our own and that not until 1789.
I recommend L. Sprague DeCamp's "Against The Fall of Night" as a primer to anyone seriously contemplating alternative history, along with H. Beam Piper's "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen."
Posted by: apikoros at Jun 11, 2008 9:54:35 PM
Asprin, refrigeration, Vulcanized rubber, and refining aluminum would be nearly invaluable in any age and all are simple to develop. Can you imagine outfitting an dark age army with forged aluminum/steel armor and ethanol powered aluminum rockets (delivering Greek fire warheads)?
Posted by: nelsonal at Jun 11, 2008 11:31:54 PM
Some have alluded to this, but your best chance of success with a modern general education but no specific skills is to join the British Navy from early 1700's on. First, they took foreigners, so your strange accent wouldn't bother them. Being literate, and specifically math literate, would get you into the skilled rates with reasonable alacrity. The initial work was hard, but kids did it also, so it's likely your modern softness would harden without killing you.
And your generic education would possibly give you breakthroughs in two areas.
1) Once you get a rep as an old salt, people may listen to you in terms of sanitation and cures for scurvy. Caveat: The admirality was very slow to implement stuff that was known in these areas for almost 75 years, but at least *your* ship would make significant combat readiness improvements, which in turn means more booty, and everyone likes that.
2) If you can develop what Bowditch did before he did (about 1810 or so), which only requires high school math, but a lot of free time (countless hours of tedious calculations), your ship will literally be able to run circles around the competition. By bringing mathematics to the art of navigation, Bowditch was able to sail his ships safely in waters and fog conditions no one else dared. This made his backers a fortune, which in turn made him a fortune.
final caveat. You probably need to be a dude to make this plan work, but a small breasted woman could probably pass, IIRC at least a few did.
Posted by: Kolohe at Jun 12, 2008 1:01:37 AM
I should add, since I see my comment also implies that you're caucasian.
I think you could even get away with not being white, as long as you were *early* enough in the 1700's. Stereotypes didn't really solidify until the close to the turn of the 19th cent, and then not really ossify until the victorian age, so you could probably get away with being an interesting exotic, vice a scary exotic or a 'savage heathen.' (see for example Pocohantas)
Posted by: Kolohe at Jun 12, 2008 2:22:35 AM
I'd start the Secret Cult of Rationality.
Posted by: Eliezer Yudkowsky at Jun 12, 2008 2:52:10 AM
If "complementarity really matters" then libertarianism must be fatally wrong.
Posted by: John H at Jun 12, 2008 9:10:45 AM
If "complementarity really matters" then libertarianism must be fatally wrong.
Posted by: John H at Jun 12, 2008 9:10:51 AM
Travel far enough back to the past and you become the Typhoid Mary of the era.
You bring with you all the modern, mutated viruses, bacteria, germs. As the people you contact start dying, you get that good old Typhoid Mary rap and instead of a nice state sponsored sanitarium, you get the barbed end of a crossbow bolt. Anytime before 1918 would probably be sufficient for you to become a "plague" vector.
Posted by: CK at Jun 12, 2008 9:20:26 AM
A technical 19th century man could reproduce civilization from scratch. If you want to outfit yourself for travel into the past, learn what your ancestors a few generations back knew.
Posted by: pwildfire at Jun 12, 2008 9:34:40 AM
The University of Bologna, my hometown, got an official charter of recognition from the Pope in 1088 (had surely been around a while, but semi-underground given hostility from local clergy): it was revolutionary because it taught (mostly Law) to anybody with money to pay tuition (mostly 2nd sons of noblemen, who just before then had precious little choice but to become fighters or priests). I have (just barely) enough Latin (the language used in all University business, as so many of the students AND teachers were from all over Europe), Roman history, and general classical education, to become a teacher there; and enough "modern" Bolognese dialect (the kind my grampa spoke) to probably learn the 11th century variety better than most other teachers and students, helping with everyday life.
As a professor, I could teach circles around the competition, whose idea of lecturing was to read from a book to a slumbering class (many tomb headstones from the early centuries of the University prove it well;-) -- I'm an experienced presenter and teacher; sure, I'd have no Apple Keynote to help me, but I'd make a few "posters" with diagrams &c to serve as equivalent of "slides" during my lectures, and probably revolutionize teaching techniques and approaches.
Net of physical issues with plagues and illnesses, &c, I'd expect to fit right in and prosper AND help civilization's development -- e.g., I could also get opportunities to instigate, and maybe invest some of the savings from my tuition income in, trends and technologies I know are up-and-coming (such as mechanical water-mills for working hemp canvas and later silk, where Bologna was the world leader a couple of centuries later... or food processing technologies, where a dim trace of Bologna's early technological lead still remains in Enlish in the name of a cheap well-known cold-cut...). Hey, I could be the instigator behind the Legge Paradisa, whereby Bologna became the first State to abolish slavery (technically serfdom), inflicting a grievous blow on the power and wealth of rural-based aristocrats and easily concentrating all political power in the _city's_ few prominent families... thinking of all that was happening in Bologna around the 12th and 13th centuries, maybe a few travelers from the future WERE in fact around to nudge things?-)
Posted by: Alex Martelli at Jun 12, 2008 10:54:29 AM
You likely wouldn't bring plagues, if you weren't sick when you went. The bacteria and viruses you bring would be the ones that are commensals for you, not pathogens at all. Would they attack other people? Possibly, but not with any certainty. Could they even survive on other people? A very different personal ecology, people who don't bathe often, who eat very differently, who already have very-well-developed populations of bacteria efficiently consuming the resources....
Say you're taller than other people but you need to eat a lot more. In a lot of circumstances you'd be considered a glutton. That's a disadvantage. How critical it is depends on the population:food ratio. Come in when there's no food shortage because of bumper crops or a recently-fallen population and it might not matter so much.
Teaching people about sanitation is probably not going to work. Everybody knew that you get sick from drinking contaminated water, and most water was contaminated. The accepted solution was to drink watered wine etc. You put wine in the water and wait for it to disinfect, and then you can drink. People who can't afford wine get sick. What would you tell them? Clean up their water supplies? Boil the water?
Changes mostly didn't come from great ideas. Like, guns and artillery depended on improved metallurgy, something you don't know how to do. Likewise steam engines. A steam engine built a couple of decades before Watt wouldn't have worked nearly as well.
If you can recognise penicillium maybe you could try curing sick people using moldy bread or something. Would they believe you? Unless they believe you're a medic they won't want to eat your moldy breaad. In general, if you want people to believe you aren't just some illiterate (no latin) raving madman, you have to be able to show them something good starting with no resources.
You might do well with optics. If you an make a small loop of almost anything, you can make a water-droplet magnifying glass. If you can get some pieces of clear glass and the materials it takes to polish them, you may be able to make a crude microscope. Leeuwenhoek parlayed that into a career, much later. It took good glass and good polishing. Maybe too hard. Somebody suggested a reflecting telescope, that has possibilities. Camera obscura, maybe. The trick is to meet some need your customers perceive. You have to understand the customers well enough to see what they want and don't have.
Would there be enough use for jam that keeps a long time, in a clay jar with a layer of beeswax on top? Expensive, but probably doable. Did they already do that, as a small-volume luxury item? I dunno. If anybody sees you do it, can they do it too and compete with you? Sure. That's why they had guilds. Could you start a guild? No.
So OK, if you found yourself in 1000 AD your first task would be to graduate out of the role of "raving madman who doesn't speak the language". And your second task would be to graduate out of the role of "raving madman". After that it would get easier, but your chance of using modern technology to take over the world would be very slim.
Posted by: J Thomas at Jun 12, 2008 11:09:13 AM
I would go back as far back as I could go to make a living as a Science Fiction writer. Think of all the technology that we know about today that would create great science fiction stories; if you could remember your history of when things were invented you could almost become a seer with your predictions.
Posted by: Bruce at Jun 12, 2008 2:20:20 PM
"1000 years into the future we might be greeted by a lavish social safety net, robot butlers, and a much extended lifetime to enjoy and peruse a millennium of intellectual thought."
Yeah, but if the comments on this thread are any indication, you'd be the town idiot in the future. Clearly, the theme of many of these posts is that the farther are into the future, the more superior you are. Thus, you'd get there and be an incompetent laughingstock. Doesn't sound terribly appealing.
Posted by: 12345 at Jun 13, 2008 4:30:53 PM
12345, you'll seem like an incompetent laughingstock any time you go somewhere you don't know the groundrules. When you're a fish out of water. And that necessarily happen 1000 years in the past, and 1000 years in the future unless for some unknown reason things get real stable -- which would probably have side effects you wouldn't like at all.
Posted by: J Thomas at Jun 13, 2008 5:03:14 PM
In 1000 A.D., I'd go into trade. Trade was regarded as unchristian non-work, hence why the Jews had to pick it up. Lots of opportunities for arbitrage, hedging etc. Finance, (lending, clearing, checks) is also a good oportunity.
The best opportunity would be to sell out to the royal powers as a Nostradamian seer.
Posted by: Oskar Shapley at Jun 15, 2008 10:04:35 AM
