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.

rhythmisaprancer,
rhythmisaprancer avatar

Reflecting on my own actions and the folks I met on the way, taking a better attitude would help a lot. I was young and had good conversations with different types of people but did nothing with that for close to another 15 years.

We had much of the information then, IMO. And I remember talking with much older folks who were willing to listen to teens/young adults about a variety of topics. I just wasn't willing to say anything. Even to my peers.

I would take a better attitude.

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

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

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 ;).”

Froyn,

Future weed.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

That's true, a big sack of super dank 30% seeds would go a long way. Funny thing is we'd be just as happy with some of those old strains, so you could win again by freezing seeds from true NL5, Skunk #1 and so on in 1999.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

Can I fill it with whatever I can think of or only things I actually have right now?

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Anything you can acquire, legally or not, and have in your possession on Jan 1, 2024.

If you end up incarcerated or dead between now and then, the ticket is null and void.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

Oh well, so much for filling my backpack with rhodium.

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

1989 would be better. 2000s were pretty terrible.

PeepinGoodArgs,

You have to prevent 9/11. Then you can still walk your grandma to the terminal when she flies to the Bahamas.

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

Prevent Gore losing

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

All you'd have to do is generate money with the information you brought back and then campaign for Gore in Florida like nobody's business. None of this hanging chads bullshit.

That and preventing 9/11 would completely and utterly change the world most likely for the better.

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.

Asudox,
@Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

A few useful books about electronics, devices and new inventions and all of the electronics I can fit into my backpack.

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.

Surp,
@Surp@lemmy.world avatar

Winning lotto numbers for years.

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

HobbitFoot,

On a more ethical side, bring designs for a solar panels with today’s efficiency and ways to build in a home smart grid. Also bring methods to raise capital so you can start with owning most of the company. I can try to bring better battery technology as well, but I might have to settle for lead acid batteries at first.

By 2001, California’s electricity prices are going to spike. Being able to take people’s homes off grid at this time is going to bring a ton of money and demand for your solar panel solutions. By the total recall of Governor Davis in 2003, I should be flush with cash and expanding significantly. California pays for the development of the technology as it becomes cheap enough to deploy to the rest of the country.

By 2007, most new homes will be built with solar power because it is cheaper in the long run. You even see air conditioners being designed to run in reverse to handle minor heating needs. While my company makes a lot of panels, I license a lot of the technology out, both to encourage mass adoption and to keep away anti-trust issues.

Electricity costs drop along with coal and natural gas demand. This leads people to start buying electric vehicles as the second car for the family as people can’t afford the gas but they can afford the electricity. The Prius is initially sold as a plug-in version.

By now, we’ve seen peak oil and peak carbon output. The only vehicles sold today that use gas are hybrids.

HobbitFoot,

If I want to be really unethical, some samples of Covid-19 and the instructions on how to make one of better vaccines.

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

Not a bottle of Vodka and Champagne, I mixed both of those to excess the last time around - never again

sciencesebi, (edited )

How the fuck do you take your self’s place? You’re either a your current age trying to identify as a baby or you’re a baby which doesn’t have the mental capacity to remember having the historical info.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

It's simple. Say for instance you were 30 years old in 1999. You would just slot into your 30-year-old self and have an opportunity to make new decisions loaded with information about a highly likely future.

However, if you were a baby in 1999, you probably would not want to take your own life over so you would choose the new body option, and lead a completely new life separate from your old one.

sciencesebi,

But how is there not a 24 year difference and 2 of you? Makes 0 sense

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Have you ever seen the TV show quantum leap?

That's what I'm talking about. Your personality, the wave state of your brain that makes you "you" would take over your former selfs body.

Once again though, if that doesn't work for you, you could just have a new body.

If going back to 1999 would put you into you infant or toddler's self, then the appropriate choice would be to get a new body.

sciencesebi,

Ah so you basically reset your life. No thanks

ccdfa,

I have some crazy news for you. Not everyone is 21. Believe it or not, but there are people who are older than that (I’m one of them! Boo!)

sciencesebi,

I misread OP. I was under the impression that you reset as a 21 yo

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