From: jwkenne@attglobal.net   
      
   On 2014-05-02 08:04:33 +0000, Jymesion said:   
      
   > One scenario I keep returning to involves a Chronoscope. (One of the   
   > reasons I can't let it go is because it seems to be full of   
   > possibilities, but I've never found a decent story to write involving   
   > one.) I long ago concluded that it'd be incredibly boring punctuated   
   > with moments of intense excitement.   
   >   
   > Imagine it -- you've invented a device that let's you look back in   
   > time.   
   >   
   > And then imagine what you'd do with it.   
   >   
   > Great historical finds! Yeah, except no one would believe you unless   
   > you revealed the details of its construction so other people could   
   > verify that it's real and it works as you claim.   
   >   
   > Once others know how to build one, what do they need you for? You'd   
   > become nothing but a footnote, just like the people who develeped the   
   > Xerox machine and the transistor.   
   >   
   > I, at least, would use it first to gain wealth. Lost treasures come to   
   > mind first.   
   >   
   > Tracking something would entail going from the earliest known record   
   > of it, you have to backtrack to who told the person who wrote it down,   
   > who told them, who told them, etc., and then when you've found the   
   > person who actually saw it, you'd have to track them back to that   
   > point in their life. Even if your device allows you to speed up the   
   > passage of time that you're watching, you can only go so fast if you   
   > have to maneuver to keep a person within your screen, and you'd have   
   > to slow down to listen every time they have a conversation which might   
   > be about what you're looking for.   
   >   
   >   
   > The whole point to this is I realized today that there's something   
   > that, in a way, simulates that. Geoguesser.com is a Google 'game'   
   > which shows you a random place on Earth, and you have to guess where   
   > it is. By following the road, you eventually reach a town where there   
   > are signs.   
   >   
   > But it can be agonizingly slow -- I had a few minutes to kill during a   
   > download. Each click advanced me no more than a couple of hundred   
   > feet. I'd only gone, at most, a couple of miles before my download was   
   > complete. I guessed at random and found it was a road through a   
   > national forest. There's no way of knowing how much longer it would   
   > have taken for me to get somewhere recognizable.   
   >   
   > It's an odd thing for me to find anything that simulates one of my SF   
   > scenarios.   
      
   Didn't Asimov shoot the Chronoscope plot in the head decades ago?   
      
   --   
   John W Kennedy   
   Having switched to a Mac in disgust at Microsoft's combination of   
   incompetence and criminality.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)