As someone who’s super interested in science and what it means for society, I look to the future with a combination of awe and dread.
Awe because of all the incredible possibilities technological advancements might bring to humanity, dread because the same scientific process that brings us those advancements is also warning us constantly that broadly speaking, we’re on a path to destruction.
So, given the opportunity to peek into the future, what might I do?
For five minutes you get transported 30 years into the future, you sit in front of a computer, what information to you look up? from AskReddit
Let’s see what the big brains at Reddit think.
1. Year by year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021.
If possible, I’d try to save that file and send it to my phone.
Probably do that for 2022 all the way to 2051.
– petrichorInk
2. The list.
Biggest companies founded in the 2020s
List of presidents
And major world events
Three tabs, three google searches and hopefully a pen to write them on my hand and hope it transfers back
– MovingOnward2089
3. Taking stock.
Google 4-5 stocks that went to the moon, and etch that sh*t into your arms along with 5-10 duds. Who cares if you come home with 2nd-grade Pencil War Day injuries, you’re about to theoretically live forever.
Snap a few photos of the injuries, and go to the police to report being jumped by a homeless guy that held you down and etched some weird sh*t into you under threat of death while reciting latin. Now you have a cover story for then the SEC wants to know how you knew BCRX and four other stocks were going to the moon. “A homeless guy carved it into me, and honestly, I took it as a sign.”
Now produce tapes of the therapy where you rationalize it to your therapist as a coping mechanism and the therapist tells you that you’re absolutely not handling the trauma well. “I also dropped all this money into these stocks that were meh, so I guess I just got lucky.” Don’t finger any of the guys they bring into a lineup because 1, that’s gross, and 2, that’s mean, but let it slide as an unsolved case.
– HotHamWaterBath
4. Sports ball?
I’ve always wondered if “If you could go into the future, what would you look up blah blah” questions were answered with “sports scores” prior to BttF 2. It is the WRONG answer. So were people always wrong, or did the movie start that trend?
Even extremely rare horse bets pay out like what, 50:1?
With a single winning lottery ticket you can turn $1 into $300million.
– utspg1980
5. Finally!
See if GTA VI came out yet.
– szmatt0628
6. Rumors of wars.
Who won WW3 and to see if top sites like Reddit and Youtube survived
– redditorseth
7. The opportunist.
Look up the biggest financial fiasco in the last thirty years.
You now know how to get on the ground floor of something that’s going to make a bunch of people really rich and the exact knowledge of when you can get out without getting wrapped up in the aftermath.
– Joss_Card
8. My fate.
I’d check to see when/if I died.
I’m 59, now, and the oldest men in my family history last to about 85. My son-in-law works pretty hard on our family tree so I’m pretty sure he’d update it if me or my wife died.
It’d be a pretty quick check.
– 1tacoshort
9. Live in the moment, in the future.
I think I might look at social media et al to see what people are nostalgic about and miss from 30 years ago and try to enjoy it more when I go back.
– Waffuly
10. Take it all.
B*tch. I’d steal the computer.
Who wouldn’t want a computer 30 years more advanced than anything we have right now.
A library computer would probably be more powerful than any gaming laptop we have now
– Nauticalfish200
11. Why limit yourself?
I’ll just take my 8 TB drive and copy the entire content of Wikipedia to it, return to my timeline and spend the next 20 hours reading it and making a fortune by the second
– keima99
12. Yeah, except…
You need, at minimum:
• A compatible port (my guess is the average computer will have 0 ports by then)
• An OS that has driver support for a 30 year old drive
• An OS that has a file system that works with your drive
• An OS that has has support for physical external drives at all
• Data Bloat to have not rendered 8TB unhelpful.
• Wikipedia to have avoided, for three decades, the sh*tty trend of of making internet content sh*tty java nonsense that can’t easily by indexed.This plan is not going to work.
– TheGlennDavid
13. Out of order.
not in any order:
stocks, US Presidents, sport events, bitcoin, which area has been nuked, danger zones to not live in and figure a way to transport it when i get back to the past.
beat the sh*t out of bully Biff and marry my his gf, Lorraine Baines, give her implants, own a hotel / casino and live the life.
maybe run for president or something along the way
– [deleted user]
14. Science!
Scientific achievements in the past 30 years, and keeping track of the science behind the best ones. Jump start our progress toward the most efficient or just coolest technology.
Even if I can’t get everything about them, I could tell scientists which technology to look into more closely.
– NachoElDaltonico
15. …science.
What areas are most livable due to climate change.
– I_wear_foxgloves
Yeah, see, that kind of bummer dichotomy is exactly what I’m talking about.
What would YOU do?
Tell us in the comments.
The post People Discuss What They’d Look Up If They Could Go to the Future appeared first on UberFacts.