If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how would you use it?

Assume that the future can change based on your actions, so any historical information that you bring along with you from the intervening 25 years may quickly drift out of the new realities history.

Edit: also assume that you can be given a healthy 21-year-old body if you want or take your previous self's place.

Further, identification will be provided for you if you were not born at that time.

Delphia,

Simple. Im ripping up the ticket.

Since my actions have knock on effects and the ticket is 1 way that means Id have to abandon my wife and child and given how much my actions would change things, effectively unmake my daughter.

The worlds fucked, I might be able to unfuck it but theres a better chance Id just create a different flavor of shit sandwich. But to know Id never hear “Dayyydeee come pway wif meeeeee” again.

Fuck it. Let it burn.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

We don't really know what would happen to this reality. It might just flicker and vanish away. But if you had a new daughter, she might be awesome too and without the time travel, would have never existed.

idiomaddict,

That’s cool and all, but they love this daughter now.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

What would your response be if you could take your family with you?

Delphia,

Id need seed money so Id get the lottery numbers for the biggest win shortly after I arrive, digital copies of the worlds financial newspapers for 25 years, some targeted stock info on companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Intel, facebook and other “Big Tech” and media firms. Knowing when to buy certain stocks and when to dump them would allow me to slow grow myself into someone that could have serious levels of control over a vast number of industries with far reach.

To make an impact with that reach, Id also have a serious SHITLOAD of research papers for anything related to green energy, cancer research and any other medical research that could save a shitload of lives. With 25 years of “leaps and bounds” in tech and medicine up my sleeve Id start a green energy company that knows which competition to buy and when, what “suggestions” to offer my researchers when I stop by for a visit. Same with biotech and medical research.

Given 25 years Id be a global renewable energy mogul who has done more to cure cancer (especially in kids) aids and a host of other diseases than any other man in history, controlling significant portions of the mass media in every first world country I could get my hooks into AND with the ear of very serious people in academic circles… Id be a fucking kingmaker with such an amazing public persona that to come at me would be career suicide for anyone in politics.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

You could theoretically also download every single patent that has been filed in the last 25 years and then go back and patent them earlier.

I'm pretty sure being able to release lithium ion batteries in 2001 would make a dramatic change in the world and make you a billionaire in and of itself.

Perovskite solar cells would be a great follow-up to that, and you could revolutionize computing by knowing how to make raspberry pi's.

Obviously as you work your way up the tech tree you need more and more money and more and more time but once you have the blueprints for the technology everything after that is money and manpower.

For instance, risc v is Open source hardware. You could quite easily develop the lithography processes needed to create the CPUs and be a thousand steps ahead of Intel in developing cutting edge top of the line computers. Combine that with releasing a modern Linux kernel with an OS to match for free along with the hardware purchase and you could completely destroy Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Apple and Google in a fell swoop.

In 1999 I think the fastest processors were at what 300 MHz, maybe 600 something like that, Risc V processors are commonly available today running at 1.85 GHz along with graphics abilities that would blow away anything that existed in 1999.

You would also need to redevelop flash storage and RAM to match, and it would probably be a good idea to roll out Wi-Fi as well, but if you had a billion dollars by the year 2000 and all of the equipment you could easily see these things being released by 2005 and not be beholden to any shareholders.

Delphia,

See I think that you’re thinking too “directly” which would make you enemies and draw too much attention. Coming out of nowhere with unproven ideas 20 years in the future… People are going to ask questions.

By owning my own green energy and biotech companies I could hire the people who would eventually make the breakthroughs themselves and drop breadcrumbs in front of them “You know I was reading your paper on blah blah blah and I’m by no means an expert but it seems to me like yadda yadda yadda might be worth looking into” because when I back the money truck up for the 3 leading researchers into Lithium Ion batteries in the world because I’m “Passionate about green energy” it stands to reason that we would make radical breakthroughs and patent them.

And I was just lucky enough to buy a lot of bitcoin when it was cheap and sell just before peak, I got out of real estate just before the crash in 08. I supported presidential /Prime Ministerial candidates when they announced they were running because “I have faith in you Mr Obama”

I dont need to make breakthroughs, I just need to make sure I surround myself with people who will make them and ensure I get myself a cut of the profits. Me being involved will have people lining up to pour their money into the pile.

Oh and while I’m at it Ill cozy up to that sick fuck epstein and sink his boat way fucking earlier.

SnipingNinja,

We have a very similar way of thinking.

JokeDeity,

Part of me thinks it would be hard to convince people you were from the future, but I think if you did all this, everyone would be certain you were.

teawrecks,

Was there a specific breakthrough you’re referring to with Li-ion batteries? Because they were discovered several decades prior to 2001. Maybe just getting manufacturing and mass production infrastructure up and running?

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Well yes, goodenough invented them in 1991, but the density increases that tripled their capacities and themanufacturing capabilities that decreased their cost to manufacture by a factor of 10 didn't happen until the mid-late 2000s.

There are also other battery technologies that you can release like glass batteries which are still being worked on today.

You could use modern tech to get a 30x increase in their ability per penny and corner of the market.

teawrecks,

I think taking over the tech industry like this might be the most difficult strategy to take over the world. Firstly, the only way all of that info fits in a backpack is either if you commit it all to memory (which no single human has ever done), or you load it all onto a hard drive and keep it secret the whole time you’re in the past.

Second, if you do manage to keep it secret, you still need to know it well enough to leverage it to convince the Intel’s and AMDs of the world to fund you to create these advances in technology. A random homeless person who magically knows how to execute EUV lithography probably isn’t going to be given the time of day to prove it.

If you can’t keep it secret, and it leaks, you’re now useless and the Intel’s, AMDs, etc. with more resources will kick you to the curb and do everything themselves.

The lottery/investing strategy is probably the more lucrative strategy, depending on how much of a difference the butterfly effect makes.

idiomaddict,

My dumb ass would put it on a blu ray or a flash drive or something unavailable to a normal person in 1999

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

I was assuming that the order of priorities would be to first identify the best lottery that you can win within like a 1-month period of your arrival, and then immediately follow that up with purchasing the best stocks that you possibly can purchase that will 500x your lottery winnings within the next 2-4 years.

Once you have those in place then acquiring capital via bank loans and Angel investors to do things like build and develop lithography machines to roll out your brand new processors and the flash storage and ram that runs it would be a comparative Cakewalk.

Obviously it would be much more difficult than just waving your hands but considering that you should be able to turn 15 or 20 million US Dollars into a billion+ dollars within 2 years then people should believe that you are some sort of vunderkind and follow you around and do whatever you tell them to do and hopes that some of your money will rub off on them.

teawrecks,

That’s fair. Basically pull an Elon, but instead of shit posting and ruining it all, you let your PR team make you president.

Protoknuckles,

If you got a camping backpack maybe you could bring them! That’s my plan.

GullibleOyster,

Chad

teawrecks,

Uh, no one said save the world. The assignment was to take it over.

Delphia,

Dont want to do that either if it means abandoning my daughter. If I was going to do it I’m doing it benevolently.

Roflmasterbigpimp,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e23d8e19-3399-4054-b83b-3cf7227976aa.jpeg

CADmonkey,

That’s kinda where I’m at. My wife is probably the entire reason I’m not either dead at my own hand or crazy. And meeting her was a complete accident.

tetris11,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

There is a subplot in the INVINCIBLE comics that follows this very premise, and chooses the same decision you do for the exact same reason

stolid_agnostic,

Do the whole Back to the Future thing and take back a list of lottery winnings, stock picks, etc. Just keep slyly moving things around at the proper times and you’d have no trouble becoming the next Bezos.

beebarfbadger,

I’d take the entirety of the USA’s military hardware. Nobody said how big the backpack was.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

You have to be able to walk 100 meters while holding onto the backpack, it has to be strapped to your back, and it has to be a commonly available backpack of a variety purchaseable in a store with the next 25 days.

No part of it can touch the ground, nor can anything attached to it other than your feet and shoes touch the ground, and everything that you have must be fully enclosed by the backpack, and you must cross through the portal on your own two feet.

lloydsmart,

Greys. Sports. Almanac.

CeleryFC,

The only correct answer.

Surp,
@Surp@lemmy.world avatar

Winning lotto numbers for years.

Mnemnosyne,

Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.

Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.

Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.

Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.

Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.

Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.

And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.

Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.

Scrollone,

It’s a really smart way. Very interesting, and I agree. It would probably be the best course of action.

I only wonder how quick the butterfly effect would have effects on your “future” documents.

For example, helping Al Gore win could drastically change the imminent future.

Mnemnosyne,

That’s why most of the stuff is technical or scientific information for the researchers; things that aren’t subject to change, just technical info. The money stuff I would hope to manage in less than 6 months from my arrival, because even in that short time I’d expect a lot to change by the end of it.

It’d just be a question of getting that initial funding off the ground with which to set up my research institution. After that, the few things I don’t release for free should cover expenses.

Sidenote since I didn’t address it in the original reply, taking over the world is impractical even with future knowledge, but as the person in charge of this outfit that would quickly be the world’s most advanced research tank, I’d probably have a lot of influence, which is the best anyone can practically hope for, I imagine. A lot more than the last 25 years of advancement would be needed to actually take over I figure.

Blue_Morpho,

Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on.

What use is that? Without the asml duv lithography machine, no one could duplicate it. And you’d have no motherboard to plug those chips into.

Mnemnosyne,

Honestly, I don’t know for sure since I’m not an expert; my reasoning was the hope that being able to examine the entire line of advancement would allow the necessary technical knowledge to be extracted and duplicated. I knew that just bringing the latest one would definitely do nothing.

Blue_Morpho,

If looking at a 5nm chip was all that was needed to make a copy, China would already be selling RTX 4090 clones.

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

All I remember from this comment section is the John Titor threads.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

A computer with lists of winning lottery numbers, stock prices by day of all major companies, archived copies of webpages or, preferably, scanned in newspaper articles of all world events from 1999 until now, and lists of every politician and individual with net worths over $300 million.

Also patents for LCD screens, the microchips in use in the 10’s and now, the efficient solar panels China cranks out if I can get a hold of that information, modern efficient wind turbines, etc. Also important scientific papers written between then and now, especially for Ozempic and Wegovy.

Also, this might be the one practical use for dumb shit like Chat GPT and its ilk, so we’re bringing along a couple of GPUs and copies of each major open source AI I can scramble up.

I use this information to:

  1. Hopefully prevent 9/11
  2. Become filthy fucking rich
  3. Infiltrate the elite and start bumping off motherfuckers one by one Count of Monte Cristo style
  4. Distribute my ill gotten gains to the masses and use the rest to stop climate collapse

ILikeBoobies,

Please don’t get rid of 9/11, without it we wouldn’t have WKUK

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

They are so talented they did not need 9/11 to have a hilarious TV show

ILikeBoobies,

9/11 was happening so they ran into a dorm room that could see the towers from the window

That room ended up being Timmy’s

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Okay, if it's that important just throw a party and introduce them that way.

If you need them to trauma bond, kidnap the fuckers, pistol whip them a little bit and then let them escape from their own ingenuity.

ILikeBoobies,

:O I could never hurt Timmy Weems

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

If you put it on a scale between bruising Timmys face with the butt of a pistol and saving 3,000 lives on one day and tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives in the interim between due to the post 9/11 increase in American policing and military actions in other countries, then not pistol whipping him would be a crime against humanity for which you should be tried at the Hague and hung.

KISSmyOS,

Why should I take over the world?
I’d bring ripped jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt with an unbuttoned flannel shirt on top and chill for a couple years until everything turns to shit again.

ILikeBoobies,

Yeah, chilling seems like a much better use of time

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Cobain would have been dead for nearly 5 years at that point

KISSmyOS,

I know. And he was still a legend.

Cinner,

I would bring a laptop with a good CPU and GPU, an ASIC Bitcoin miner and 10,000 in cash in case for some reason the miner broke or didn’t work.

I would bide my time at pizza delivery jobs for 10 years paying rent living on ramen and buying small amounts of gold and silver coins. As soon as the first btc client was released by Satoshi I would start mining. I would be selling things on the cheap and performing services as much as humanly possibly. Id have a small gold and silver for BTC company, selling $50 gold coins for the equivalent of $25 in BTC at the time. I would not stop until I had at least 1,000,000 Bitcoin, or January 2017, whatever came first. As soon as the BTC rush of 2017 starts, I start selling my BTC en masse at the peak. Mail order, cash, in person, whatever. Claim what I need to on taxes. Sell the rest via an exchange before it’s regulated as a security and needs to be taxed.

Now I am a big time multi-billionaire and no one even knows my name besides my financial advisors and closest friends from my pizza delivery days who now work for me doing “whatever the fuck they want” work for 100k per year.

I keep investing in companies who sell the most in online communications services (zoom, Microsoft, etc), mask production, hand sanitizer, laptops, gold and silver, and whatever else I can remember. As a ride out COVID, I’ve increased my 5-10 billion to 20-30 billion.

Now I live a happy “do whatever the fuck I want” life at roughly the same age I am now, only now I have total freedom and power because of "20 years of hard work and foresight – I started as a pizza delivery boy, and you can too ;).”

tetris11,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

A modern desktop PC full with top of the line deep learning graphics cards.

I will flood the internet with helpful comments, exploits, anything that will take down the banking grid. I will sway online and print media discourse towards progressive politics. I will take down Murdoch media and ensure that he never again makes a cent spreading his rhetoric.

I will start a consulting company using my AI models as my employees and make unspeakable amount of money, whilst ensuring that large contracting firms never take off.

I will buy up large linear strips of country, and build railroads and rail stations everywhere, whilst building free accommodation above and below the tracks to ensure that the homeless always have somewhere to sleep, and to ensure that buy-to-let landlords can never return much on their investment.

I will crash weapon trading stock markets, exploit the emails of corrupt politicians and their billionaire donors. I will wage financial war on the 1% until the world gini index reaches 0.5

SnipingNinja, (edited )

Like the other person mentioned their family, I would say that about my friends and other relations. I don’t think it’s possible for me to redo my life in a way that my decade old friendships would be the same (or even better) than what they became. I don’t even know if I will feel the same about my friends if I decide to relive my life as memory is a precarious thing and I can’t rely on how I feel about them to last until I meet them again and live life interacting with them while trying to change the world.

I could consider a 21yo body but as a millennial I would end up overaged for the people who were important in my life to have any meaningful relation with them.

I have considered the scenario of reliving my life, correcting my mistakes and maybe making some massive changes along the way, if I could somehow guarantee keeping the things that matter to me the same.

I forgot to write what things I would do, so here are some ideas:

  • Investing is an obvious one which everyone else has also mentioned.
  • I would download all the open source stuff, all leaked files, maybe even scour the dark web for stuff
  • Buy NeXt to hire jobs as the CEO of my tech company (also any other corporations that I could buy back then, like Google)
  • I’ll create a note with ideas that were killed too soon or didn’t last due to tampering by big corps, and products which got enshittified and implement them when there’s no competition or wait for when I have enough money to not worry about people getting in my way.
  • I’ll create a note with mention of all the important events (multiple notes, encrypted, to prevent someone from using that information)
  • Put an offline LLM and other AI on my phone (along with very reliable chargers and replacement batteries).
  • (Kind of a sub point of above, but it got big) I’ll try to take a phone with replaceable batteries and sturdy design. It would be great if it could fit in that time, I’ll disable the touch screen to that effect and only use a stylus, and other changes to make it seem worse or maybe take a “bad” phone from the start. I’ll also claim it’s an experimental product if someone asks me about it.
  • A list of my favourite recipes, so that I can be a food trailblazer
  • Start my own music company and invest in artists which I know will be big in the future, give them better terms than my competition and use that roster to prepare for streaming. I’ll already have Jobs and Ive to design iPod and take over that period.
  • With RISC-V as my chip, I’ll buy one of the fabs which went under back then and use it to establish myself as a chip manufacturer and once I have built up enough lead in the fab business with knowledge gathered before going back I’ll open source RISC-V as an act of benevolence according to the world (I’ll discuss the future fab knowledge with the researchers I will acqui-hire with the fab, they should be able to create something in a few years with whatever knowledge I can provide, I’ll just have to act as a layman with more knowledge and if I go with my age they’ll think I’m a smart kid)
  • I didn’t mention crypto because that might change with the chip info I bring back, so I’ll see if that happens again and invest early and secretly to have enough of it to have a hand in that too.
  • I’ll also try to keep my identity hidden so that I can live the important parts of my life again as they were, and once I have lived those I’ll consider if I need to be known to the world.
  • I’ll prepare media organizations to fight disinformation
  • I’ll bring back innovations in renewables that I’ll slowly release into the world.
SnipingNinja,

Forgot to mention in the edit, so adding as a new comment:

I’ll bring back my story ideas and complete them and publish them as books, it’ll let me pretend that I have an active imagination as a writer and that I just got lucky with the lottery and used it to put money in tech that fascinated me and just was good at imagining tech.

I’ll do a fast forward course of comp-sci to present RISC-V based on that and use common terminology to explain it as much as possible.

Clbull,

I would bring Wednesday 6th January 1999’s winning lottery numbers, five books chronicling the last 25 years of British history, history of businesses, history of the tech industry between 1998 and 2023, modern military history, and the history of Blackrock. Also I would choose a healthy 21-year-old body.

The plan is… win the lottery for some immediate starting capital, make well-informed investments, effectively become the Warren Buffet of Britain and weasel my way into the world elite, befriending figures like David Cameron, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, etc. I would make timely investments into new startups like Facebook, Twitter, etc, jump on the Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum bandwagons early and make it my aim to become the richest man in the world. With that wealth I’d then buy more shares in Blackrock, Blackwater and Lockheed Martin, seemingly be at the top of my game as head of a PMC. I would assist in conflicts that maintain the status quo as best as I could.

I would also do a tonne of work with African military forces, make loads of private investments in African firms and , and beat China to the punch.

With the exception of Blackwater, I would not aim to be a majority shareholder in any of these companies. I’d keep maybe… 5 to 10 percent of shares in the really successful companies, lose a bit of money in falls to not arouse too much suspicion, but I would otherwise climb to the top of the PMC ladder and put my fingers in as many NATO pies as possible.

That’s what I’d do if my aim as a time traveller was to take over the world. In actuality, I’d rather just win the lottery, diversify my investments and retire comfortably. I don’t desire world domination.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

I assume I get ID for a person born in '78 if I choose the adult body? I was born, but very young.

Hard drives of data compatible with old computers, and a few modern laptops for good measure. Maybe some electronics equipment too in case I really need to interface with something obsolete or proprietary. Some period-appropriate cash to live on before my first “job”. The 2000’s won’t know what hit them.

I’m not going to be able to take over the world (shit, even taking over Afghanistan proved to be too hard), but I sure as hell can be a shadowy hacker figure that steers the course of history. I’ll probably avert 9/11 assuming I can get up and running fast enough, and try to steer China towards reform and detente with the West. Russia’s probably intractable. I wonder if I could tip the Florida election towards Gore, in order to get global warming taken care of faster. Giving a bump to renewables research could also help things along.

Edit: So, there would be a lot of phases to this, as I gradually shift from being anonymous to a hot item. Once I reach some point at or after present day, I’ll publish my archives so the world can decide for itself, and I’ll leave proof early on that it’s genuine, for example as hashes of data in things like newspapers that are well archived. Then I’ll dismantle my cabal and retire.

pewgar_seemsimandroid,

4 copies of windows nt 3.1 and tell as many people as possible that in the future electronic pulses will block heated seats in cars and olny unlockable if you pay an extra 4000

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