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.

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.

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.

captnanonymous,

The bag is full of post-1999 MTG cards that I will trade for pre-1999 MTG cards.

Thavron,
@Thavron@lemmy.ca avatar

A person of culture, I see.

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

Invent Apple Google and Amazon all at once. Yes, I know they all existed at that time but I would just do their best ideas before them.

veroxii,

New Pied Piper

Nath,
@Nath@aussie.zone avatar

Why not go with original ideas like Facebook, Uber, Bitcoin, YouTube and Reddit Lemmy?

JakenVeina,

Grays Sports Almanac

eluvatar,

Probably a backpack full of smart phones, go sell them and retire.

Then cry that it’ll be a long time until I can use USB C again.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

That's a good idea but I wonder if anyone would buy them? Obviously the technology inside of it would be a quantum leap for any tech company that could get their hands on it. AT&t or ma Bell or Motorola would all easily fall over themselves to hand you several million dollars for it just so that they could have their top researchers reverse analyze the equipment.

The downside to that issue though is that it would be very difficult to get in contact with the right people to sell these devices at the right price.

eluvatar,

I mean I could always post photos on Twitter and… Oh wait.

LastYearsPumpkin,

Any current smartphone would be the best digital camera that exists by a mile, even if they didn’t have Internet access.

sxan,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

That kind of technology is hard to get any value from. Nothing in modern phones is innovative, and most of it would be an obvious evolutionary step to any specialist in their field.

Mostly, though, the phones would be useless. Cellular networks were in their infacy, and none of the standards or technology existed to charge them. Reverse engineering anything in them would be hugely expensive, for little return.

Smart phones would be interesting, but far less interesting than the existance of a person who has access to future technology. I think op would dissappear into a government facility not long after trying to pawn their goods.

sciencesebi,

Information is power. A simple smartphone loaded with major historical decisions, sports results is enough to make you a billionaire. Take some tech textbooks to stay ahead of the game, maybe some newly developed medicine.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Given that the AIDS epidemic was still in full swing at the time, just being able to teach medicine makers how to make pRep would make you a billionaire just from the licensing fees.

sciencesebi,

What’s that? Profilactic?

You can just take back the experimental vaccine and save some people.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Prep is an anti-hiv pill.

If you engage in practices likely to expose you to HIV you should use prep.

If you have pRep in your system and you are exposed to HIV there is a high likelihood that the pRep will destroy the HIV and prevent the infection from ever taking hold.

Of course, it won't do anything to protect you from the other potential negative consequences of risky behaviors that would expose you to HIV, but considering that it helps protect you from one of the worst potential outcomes it's essentially a godsend.

SteveTech,

Just thought Kiwix seems like it’ll be handy here, it lets you download Wikipedia and some other websites, and they have an Android app to view them.

(They have a web version too, which I actually selfhost for if the world ends or something /s)

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

lntl,

A Lenovo P series with deepfacelab. I would work public perception of Dubya (and Jeb) to avoid the decades of war crimes.

gandalf_der_12te,

stock data

detalferous,

Bitcoin has outperformed stocks by about 100,000-fold. All you need is a fiver to invest at the beginning.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Note that that return is only for the early investors. If you are incredibly lucky and we have a very flush couple of years you might triple an investment in by 2030 now. But you are also very likely to just lose it All

TheGalacticVoid,

My phone, laptop, charging cables, ethernet cables, tons of SSDs to use with said laptop, Kali, and a bunch of cyber-sec resources.

Having a $2000 2023 gaming/workstation laptop would be an insane amount of computing power in 1999. Being able to use modern-day exploits and discoveries in 1999 would probably allow me to gather as much intel as I needed from my targets while not being discovered. If something gets patched by a Windows XP service pack, I’ll still have an endless list of exploits that work. Hell, I’d even have access to something like Spectre and Meltdown, and that’s something that still must develop organically.

LemmyKnowsBest,

I would have no inclination to take over the world. But if I could go back to that date, I would make a million different decisions over the next few years to steer my life in a much wiser direction.

val,

I’ve got no motivation to take over the world, nor am I sure it’s really possible in a life time. I don’t really have a non-boring answer to this hypothetical.

If the ticket is available anyway I’d happily take it, I’m single at the moment with no dependents and being younger and healthier would be huge. There are lots of ways to make money with the knowledge of future history, even if it’ll change when you start impacting it, and any one of them could make me wealthy enough to never have to work again in my life and do so wherever I please.

I’ve never really understood the need of the rich to continually amass wealth or how they spend it.

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