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18 thoughts on “Could a “Time Traveller” on Film Mean Future Day has Arrived?”
Xeno, the most ridiculous thing about it is that it’s a big as a d@mn brick. I’m prepared to believe that a “time traveler” might have a device capable of communication through time, but knowing tech as I do, it would not be a big device. Also, I don’t find it likely that if such a “time traveler” existed that she would be so stupid as to be communicating with the Future (or perhaps even the past) right in front of everyone on a movie set. Maybe it was a hearing aid, as some of the other naysayers are claiming, but one thing I am sure about is that the person in question was not carrying anything more advanced than what was available at the time. Trust me: FUTURE + TECHNOLOGY = SMALL.
I found it spooky. Recall that episode of Trek where Spock has to build a communicator with parts available in the time period? Something iPhone-sized may be the best this traveller could do, given the primitive state of our technology. 😉
That was “City on the Edge of Forever,” written by famed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison.
I suppose that is one good point: Perhaps the traveler is stranded, or maybe “roughing it”; however, I tend to think the chances of a traveler being stranded or “roughing it” on a movie set are quite small. It’s just a funny place to be for either of those conditions. But I do concede that it is rational possibility and perhaps not quite as absurd as I originally thought.
Also, think about how it is a sport for some people to survive in the woods with only some basic tools and their wits. Time travelers who choose to live in an era (tesla?) might have (self imposed?) restrictions on what toys they could carry… in case they get captured.
One thing I find odd is her fingers don’t seem to be in a logical position . If you try to bend your fingers in that position you quickly find that it is nearly impossible . At best her finger position the way I’m seeing it indicates she is positioning them in an awkward position . As if to reach for two buttons under the index and middle fingers . More like a walkie talkie or hearing device .She doesn’t seem to be talking even though it appears her mouth is open . I would say it is a hearing device . The only reason for the cell like positioning is because of the natural shape of the device . Made to fit in your hand . They did exists at that time in that size and shape . One in particular was a French Electric ‚ÄúCamera‚Äù
French Electric camera-styled hearing device
manufactured by the French Electric Co., was housed in an camera-style case.
Google >”Concealed Hearing Devices of the 20th Century”
My call is that “she” is definitely talking. One person making a comment said that film cameras were very loud back then and the walking figure holding something to her ear could have heard the camera, then turned to it and said, “What have we here?” She seems to be too far behind the man walking in front of her to be talking to him. Also, he doesn’t seem to know she is there.
I looked carefully at it again it does appear that she turned her head somewhat towards the camera and moved her lips like she was talking .Very strange !
This was or will be one of the first experiments in altering the past to judge the effects on the future. The film clip will be watch sometime in the future as the cell phone woman makes her way through time to appear in the film. One second the clip will not have the woman and the next second it will. The experiment will try to understand how a change in the past travels to the future and if it will have any disruptive or dangerous properties. The experiment is still going on. In the future they may elect not to send her into the past to see if she vanishes from the film and if all the post about it happening right now also vanish. Tricky stuff, you wouldn’t want to delete yourself in the present by altering the past.
I love the idea of multiple timelines. Part of me just can’t get past the notion that any change in the past due to time travel would create some kind of “colossal cosmic train wreck event” that would be impossible to hide or reverse. It could become known as “The Great Time Travel Incident”. But someone would have to travel time knowing what would happen. Maybe the act of traveling time causes such a devastating event in the past that the future can’t happen in the same way, cancelling out the time travel event that caused it in the first place. The conservation of energy law would be violated by removing or adding anything to the universe. My view is that the universe only exists in the present moment. If you could leave the present moment I doubt you would find our universe (at another point in time) just waiting for your arrival. Perhaps, you would find yourself at the center of a new universe you just created by your very presence or in some other universe that just happened to exist at that moment.
Some great food for thought, Arjay. Yes, I like to think that time is not what it seems. We see the universe through the filter of our minds and senses, but there may be something we just can’t grasp because of this. If we get a wiring diagram (connectome) of a brain and start to deconstruct it, we may find that time is something brains create.
Time is in the mind and a separate physical law that is ever changing > Space/Time . People talk about the “past” and “present” as if you can separate the two .But as we go through life we see both at the same time . Light is what we use to judge time and space . So the ” now ” as we know it is made up of the past ,present and future . We look out at stars that are in the past state . We see this as present time but we can’t see the actual present time of the stars .We see them by the light after it has traveled through time . So what is present time ? Our minds can’t comprehend real time . It is impossible because we have no real time input . Therefor our minds make do with present,past and future as we see it or perceive it . Light is the metronome of time and it is linked to a fluctuating time scale. So time is relative and bendable . That is a fact . We travel in time every day . Our nose is farther ahead in time then our heels 😉 Yes literally ! 2 different time zones ! You could say your nose is stuck in the future , according to your heels 😉 Light speed = time = minds sense of time/space 😉
Did someone mention Harlin Ellison(, Sam)?
Harlin Ellison wrote more than 1,700 “short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, …” He wrote works of “criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media …” He has written or edited 75 books.
Ellison also “won … more awards for imaginative literature than any other living author – including multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgars.”
What kind of personality produces so much well-acclaimed creative literature?
As a boy Ellison ran away from home countless times. “Not because of anything bad with my family — it was just, I had a wanderlust,” Ellison says. “…. After a while, my mother said, ‘I’ll pack you sandwiches. Would you like peanut butter-and-jelly?’ Sometimes I’d get as far away as Kansas City and wind up working as carny and then … in jail, and get sent home. And I’d go back to school and I’d do very well, and then I’d run away again, and I’d … [go] way up into Canada and work in a logging camp.”
By the age of 18 years, he worked as a “tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker … in New Orleans, [a] hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House”.
He once attended Ohio State University, but only for 18 months. He was expelled for hitting a professor who criticized his writing. And, for the next 40 years he sent the professor every story he ever published!
He joined a gang once to write a story about gangs.
He served as a creative consultant for The Twilight Zone series and Babylon 5. He was also hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on the first day after Roy Disney overheard Ellison joke about “making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.”
“He married Charlotte Stein in 1956 but they divorced four years later. … In 1961, Ellison married Billie Joyce Sanders, …, but they later divorced. … [I]n 1965, he married his third wife, Lory Patrick, but they later divorced. … In 1976, Ellison married …, Lori Horowitz. They later divorced. … On September 7, 1986, Ellison married Susan Toth (his fifth wife), whom he had met in Scotland the year before.”
In 1969, Ellison was the Guest of Honor at Texas A&M’s first science fiction convention, where he referred to the A&M’s “Corps of Cadets” as “‘…America’s next generation of Nazis…’, inspired in part by the continuing Vietnam War.” Although A&M was no longer solely a military school, the student body “was predominantly made up of cadet members.” The school didn’t hold a science fiction convention for a few years after that.
Ellison wrote the short story, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” It first appeared in Galaxy Magazine in December 1965. The story won the 1966 Hugo Award for best short story, and the 1965 Nebula Award.
“The story is one of the most reprinted short stories in the English language (not just in science fiction) and has been translated into numerous foreign languages.”
This creative short story begins by quoting Henry David Thoreau’s historical work “Civil Disobedience”:
“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men …, but as machines, with their bodies. … they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; … They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. …”
Ellison says, “There is nothing hypocritical about me. I don’t do that. When I tell you somebody is a scumbag, I tell them that to their face. But when I tell you somebody is a good guy, I would tell them that to their face, too.”
This is the kind of guy he is, authentic and honest.
—- — —- —-
In the autumn of this year, Ellison announced to the world that he had written his last book and had attended his last convention, because he’s dying.
About his dying he says, “I’m not afraid of death, and there is not one iota of suicide in me. All I want to make sure is that when the paper comes out, it says, ‘Harlan Ellison died in his sleep.’ You’re talking to, essentially, a pretty happy guy. No, not ‘pretty’ happy — that’s television talk. I am inordinately happy. I am wonderfully happy. I am Icarus-flying-to-the-sun happy. I have led a magical life. I have led exactly the life I would wish to lead. I have led the life I guess that everybody in their heart of hearts wants to lead.”
If I were to describe the restrictions on time travel it would be this > Imagine you are connected mid point to a rubber band that is stretched between point “A” and Point “B” . “B” being the future “A” being the past , Present being the mid point .If you try to propel yourself into the future towards “B” you are restricted in proportion to your forward movement by a compression in front of you and a pulling from behind . The harder you push forward the more you are restricted . Essentially the same in the reverse .You can change your time but the future in front of you is repelled ( compressed ) away from you . Even if you looped it around you get the same result . The other time zones are unaffected in relation to themselves . In fact your time Zone would be relatively unchanged . There would be ( perceived )changes externally though . You would see time changes outside of your zone . But you would have no contact with them other than observing them . Like looking at a star . That avoids paradoxes . You can’t change others future or pasts only your own . And your own time difference only by external observation ( you would see time/space differently ) A star might seem older or younger then it should be . So you really change nothing except for your observations . Not anything that really changes you or others physically . But it’s a matter of your perception really 😉
You know that is entirely possible ! Open mouth , holding something to her cheek ! Toothache ! That would explain it wouldn’t it 😉 Not as probable as an old women traveling in time , talking on a cell phone , just as they are shooting a major motion picture though ! 😉
Xeno, the most ridiculous thing about it is that it’s a big as a d@mn brick. I’m prepared to believe that a “time traveler” might have a device capable of communication through time, but knowing tech as I do, it would not be a big device. Also, I don’t find it likely that if such a “time traveler” existed that she would be so stupid as to be communicating with the Future (or perhaps even the past) right in front of everyone on a movie set. Maybe it was a hearing aid, as some of the other naysayers are claiming, but one thing I am sure about is that the person in question was not carrying anything more advanced than what was available at the time. Trust me: FUTURE + TECHNOLOGY = SMALL.
I found it spooky. Recall that episode of Trek where Spock has to build a communicator with parts available in the time period? Something iPhone-sized may be the best this traveller could do, given the primitive state of our technology. 😉
That was “City on the Edge of Forever,” written by famed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison.
I suppose that is one good point: Perhaps the traveler is stranded, or maybe “roughing it”; however, I tend to think the chances of a traveler being stranded or “roughing it” on a movie set are quite small. It’s just a funny place to be for either of those conditions. But I do concede that it is rational possibility and perhaps not quite as absurd as I originally thought.
Also, think about how it is a sport for some people to survive in the woods with only some basic tools and their wits. Time travelers who choose to live in an era (tesla?) might have (self imposed?) restrictions on what toys they could carry… in case they get captured.
One thing I find odd is her fingers don’t seem to be in a logical position . If you try to bend your fingers in that position you quickly find that it is nearly impossible . At best her finger position the way I’m seeing it indicates she is positioning them in an awkward position . As if to reach for two buttons under the index and middle fingers . More like a walkie talkie or hearing device .She doesn’t seem to be talking even though it appears her mouth is open . I would say it is a hearing device . The only reason for the cell like positioning is because of the natural shape of the device . Made to fit in your hand . They did exists at that time in that size and shape . One in particular was a French Electric ‚ÄúCamera‚Äù
French Electric camera-styled hearing device
manufactured by the French Electric Co., was housed in an camera-style case.
Google >”Concealed Hearing Devices of the 20th Century”
My call is that “she” is definitely talking. One person making a comment said that film cameras were very loud back then and the walking figure holding something to her ear could have heard the camera, then turned to it and said, “What have we here?” She seems to be too far behind the man walking in front of her to be talking to him. Also, he doesn’t seem to know she is there.
I looked carefully at it again it does appear that she turned her head somewhat towards the camera and moved her lips like she was talking .Very strange !
This was or will be one of the first experiments in altering the past to judge the effects on the future. The film clip will be watch sometime in the future as the cell phone woman makes her way through time to appear in the film. One second the clip will not have the woman and the next second it will. The experiment will try to understand how a change in the past travels to the future and if it will have any disruptive or dangerous properties. The experiment is still going on. In the future they may elect not to send her into the past to see if she vanishes from the film and if all the post about it happening right now also vanish. Tricky stuff, you wouldn’t want to delete yourself in the present by altering the past.
We may be having a variation of this conversation for the 20th time. If only we had an El-Aurian to let us know which time line was correct. 😉
I love the idea of multiple timelines. Part of me just can’t get past the notion that any change in the past due to time travel would create some kind of “colossal cosmic train wreck event” that would be impossible to hide or reverse. It could become known as “The Great Time Travel Incident”. But someone would have to travel time knowing what would happen. Maybe the act of traveling time causes such a devastating event in the past that the future can’t happen in the same way, cancelling out the time travel event that caused it in the first place. The conservation of energy law would be violated by removing or adding anything to the universe. My view is that the universe only exists in the present moment. If you could leave the present moment I doubt you would find our universe (at another point in time) just waiting for your arrival. Perhaps, you would find yourself at the center of a new universe you just created by your very presence or in some other universe that just happened to exist at that moment.
Some great food for thought, Arjay. Yes, I like to think that time is not what it seems. We see the universe through the filter of our minds and senses, but there may be something we just can’t grasp because of this. If we get a wiring diagram (connectome) of a brain and start to deconstruct it, we may find that time is something brains create.
Time is in the mind and a separate physical law that is ever changing > Space/Time . People talk about the “past” and “present” as if you can separate the two .But as we go through life we see both at the same time . Light is what we use to judge time and space . So the ” now ” as we know it is made up of the past ,present and future . We look out at stars that are in the past state . We see this as present time but we can’t see the actual present time of the stars .We see them by the light after it has traveled through time . So what is present time ? Our minds can’t comprehend real time . It is impossible because we have no real time input . Therefor our minds make do with present,past and future as we see it or perceive it . Light is the metronome of time and it is linked to a fluctuating time scale. So time is relative and bendable . That is a fact . We travel in time every day . Our nose is farther ahead in time then our heels 😉 Yes literally ! 2 different time zones ! You could say your nose is stuck in the future , according to your heels 😉 Light speed = time = minds sense of time/space 😉
Did someone mention Harlin Ellison(, Sam)?
Harlin Ellison wrote more than 1,700 “short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, …” He wrote works of “criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media …” He has written or edited 75 books.
Ellison also “won … more awards for imaginative literature than any other living author – including multiple Hugos, Nebulas and Edgars.”
What kind of personality produces so much well-acclaimed creative literature?
As a boy Ellison ran away from home countless times. “Not because of anything bad with my family — it was just, I had a wanderlust,” Ellison says. “…. After a while, my mother said, ‘I’ll pack you sandwiches. Would you like peanut butter-and-jelly?’ Sometimes I’d get as far away as Kansas City and wind up working as carny and then … in jail, and get sent home. And I’d go back to school and I’d do very well, and then I’d run away again, and I’d … [go] way up into Canada and work in a logging camp.”
By the age of 18 years, he worked as a “tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker … in New Orleans, [a] hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House”.
He once attended Ohio State University, but only for 18 months. He was expelled for hitting a professor who criticized his writing. And, for the next 40 years he sent the professor every story he ever published!
He joined a gang once to write a story about gangs.
He served as a creative consultant for The Twilight Zone series and Babylon 5. He was also hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on the first day after Roy Disney overheard Ellison joke about “making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.”
“He married Charlotte Stein in 1956 but they divorced four years later. … In 1961, Ellison married Billie Joyce Sanders, …, but they later divorced. … [I]n 1965, he married his third wife, Lory Patrick, but they later divorced. … In 1976, Ellison married …, Lori Horowitz. They later divorced. … On September 7, 1986, Ellison married Susan Toth (his fifth wife), whom he had met in Scotland the year before.”
In 1969, Ellison was the Guest of Honor at Texas A&M’s first science fiction convention, where he referred to the A&M’s “Corps of Cadets” as “‘…America’s next generation of Nazis…’, inspired in part by the continuing Vietnam War.” Although A&M was no longer solely a military school, the student body “was predominantly made up of cadet members.” The school didn’t hold a science fiction convention for a few years after that.
Ellison wrote the short story, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” It first appeared in Galaxy Magazine in December 1965. The story won the 1966 Hugo Award for best short story, and the 1965 Nebula Award.
“The story is one of the most reprinted short stories in the English language (not just in science fiction) and has been translated into numerous foreign languages.”
This creative short story begins by quoting Henry David Thoreau’s historical work “Civil Disobedience”:
“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men …, but as machines, with their bodies. … they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; … They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. …”
In an interview with Jayme Lynn Blaschke
http://www.sfsite.com/07a/he107.htm
Ellison says, “There is nothing hypocritical about me. I don’t do that. When I tell you somebody is a scumbag, I tell them that to their face. But when I tell you somebody is a good guy, I would tell them that to their face, too.”
This is the kind of guy he is, authentic and honest.
—- — —- —-
In the autumn of this year, Ellison announced to the world that he had written his last book and had attended his last convention, because he’s dying.
About his dying he says, “I’m not afraid of death, and there is not one iota of suicide in me. All I want to make sure is that when the paper comes out, it says, ‘Harlan Ellison died in his sleep.’ You’re talking to, essentially, a pretty happy guy. No, not ‘pretty’ happy — that’s television talk. I am inordinately happy. I am wonderfully happy. I am Icarus-flying-to-the-sun happy. I have led a magical life. I have led exactly the life I would wish to lead. I have led the life I guess that everybody in their heart of hearts wants to lead.”
Ann, that was beautiful. Thanks for the inspiration, once again. 🙂
Thank Mr. Ellison
If I were to describe the restrictions on time travel it would be this > Imagine you are connected mid point to a rubber band that is stretched between point “A” and Point “B” . “B” being the future “A” being the past , Present being the mid point .If you try to propel yourself into the future towards “B” you are restricted in proportion to your forward movement by a compression in front of you and a pulling from behind . The harder you push forward the more you are restricted . Essentially the same in the reverse .You can change your time but the future in front of you is repelled ( compressed ) away from you . Even if you looped it around you get the same result . The other time zones are unaffected in relation to themselves . In fact your time Zone would be relatively unchanged . There would be ( perceived )changes externally though . You would see time changes outside of your zone . But you would have no contact with them other than observing them . Like looking at a star . That avoids paradoxes . You can’t change others future or pasts only your own . And your own time difference only by external observation ( you would see time/space differently ) A star might seem older or younger then it should be . So you really change nothing except for your observations . Not anything that really changes you or others physically . But it’s a matter of your perception really 😉
Maybe it was just a toothace??
You know that is entirely possible ! Open mouth , holding something to her cheek ! Toothache ! That would explain it wouldn’t it 😉 Not as probable as an old women traveling in time , talking on a cell phone , just as they are shooting a major motion picture though ! 😉