{"id":41,"date":"2015-01-28T20:42:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T19:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=41"},"modified":"2015-05-04T23:55:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T21:55:49","slug":"visit-from-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/visit-from-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Visit from the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is time travel real? According to Hollywood, we’ll know nine months from now, when a young Michael J. Fox steps out of<\/a> a specially converted automobile and grabs<\/span> a sports almanac<\/span> and a hoverboard.<\/p>\n

According to Internet folklore, other time travelers have already lived through 2015. The best-known of them, John Titor<\/b>, described this year as a turning point in human history.<\/p>\n

John Titor is one of the Internet’s most persistent mysteries<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Titor is one of the Internet’s most persistent<\/span> mysteries. Claiming<\/span> to be a soldier from the year 2036, he frequented online forums from November 2, 2000 to March 21, 2001 to discuss time travel. He answered any question asked of him; these numbered in the hundreds.<\/p>\n

Titor said his grandfather had helped to build and program one of the first portable<\/span> computers, the IBM 5100<\/a>, which had the unusual ability to translate between various computer languages. Titor claimed he’d been sent back to 1975 to talk to his grandfather and obtain<\/span> one of these machines in order to help fix a Y2K<\/span>-type problem that would occur in 2038. He had stopped over in 2000\u201301, on the way back, to visit his family, including his two-year-old self.<\/p>\n

Proof was there<\/h2>\n

So far, this sounds like a funny story, but Titor made some effort to demonstrate that it was real. He posted photographs and professionally drawn schematic diagrams<\/a> of his “dual singularity engine”. He referred to hidden functions in the IBM 5100 that only the designers knew about. He predicted<\/span> several things that did indeed<\/span> happen a few months or a few years later: an experiment at CERN (2001), the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (2002\u201305), a problem with the space shuttle (2003), the first taikonaut<\/a> (2003), communications resembling<\/span> Skype (2003) and YouTube (2005), and, according to one interpretation, a missing skyscraper in New York City (2001).<\/p>\n

The Year 2038 problem<\/a> is very real. For example, setting the date<\/a> on some Android phones to later than 3:14 a.m. on January 19, 2038 will make them inoperable<\/span>. (Do not try this yourself!)<\/p>\n

In his time, Titor said, society was still recovering<\/span> from a world war that had killed nearly three billion<\/span> people. The survivors<\/span> had come together in a post-consumerist, post-narcissist society, focusing on the family, community, reading and talking face to face. “We time travel to solve problems,” he wrote. “A great deal of effort is going into repairing the environment and infrastructure.”<\/p>\n

The world war, he said, had taken place in 2015<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The nuclear war, he said, had taken place in 2015, following ten years of civil unrest<\/span> and an urban-vs.-rural<\/span> conflict in the United States. This is where Titor’s story starts, um, teetering<\/span> in a big way. Interestingly, though, he said the war was ultimately caused by the US government lying, eroding<\/span> the constitution and intruding<\/span> on people’s privacy.<\/p>\n

Titor explains the discrepancy by saying that time is not linear; it branches off<\/span> like a tree. His future is not necessarily our future. He would not be able to return to the exact same “worldline” he’d left, though he could still influence it. He compared it to standing between two mirrors and seeing a near-infinite number of reflections of yourself; when you move, the reflections move, too.<\/p>\n

Titor also refused to disclose<\/span> any information (for example, from future sports almanacs) that would allow someone to personally profit or to stop something from happening.<\/p>\n

This was very clever. It meant that, although his story could not be proven, it could not be disproven either. This aura of mystery earned his story a huge following<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Who was John Titor?<\/h2>\n

For years, people have tried to figure out<\/span> who John Titor might really be. In 2003, Larry Haber, a Florida lawyer, registered a John Titor Foundation<\/a> on behalf of<\/span> Titor’s family, whom he has never met in person. A man named Oliver Williams, intrigued by the story, collected Titor’s writings from various forums and published them at johntitor.com<\/i><\/a> for others to study. In this fascinating interview, recorded a year ago, both deny being or knowing Titor, but say the story has followed them for more than a decade.<\/p>\n