time travel
STEI...@red.rutgers.edu
I all this discussion of how an unprepared time traveler could survive
and/or make a fortune in the past, there's one point people seem to
largely miss. Until quite recently in historical terms, your
opportunities in life depended much more strongly on your social rank
and connections than they do for us today. Even if you did have
the technological knowledge to make a big advance, it would be quite
possible that you would not be given the opportunity to put it into
practice except in the role of advisor to some powerful personage
(guild master, local noble, etc.). You would get few of the profits,
have no control, and be in danger of being more or less dumped if
your patron thought that you were no longer needed. You would probably
find patrons much less excited by possible technological advances than
you would expect, and you would find great reluctance of people to get
involved in any way with a "stranger", i.e. someone they haven't grown
up with and whose family they don't know. There would be some avenues
open (e.g. the Church), but not nearly the freedom we would tend to expect.
Lou Steinberg
uucp: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!steinber
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arpa: STEI...@RUTGERS.EDU.ARPA
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