'There's No Future in Time Travel'

This quote was graffitied on a schoolyard wall the other day, and aside from being a witty and dare I say, intelligent piece of vandalism, I decided it was also an interesting comment on the nature of time travel. The author of said grafitti may have thought it was just a clever bit of wordplay, but after some consideration, I disagreed. I realised that there would in fact be no future - or past or even present - in a world where time travel were possible. If, at some point in the space-time continuum, humankind were able to manipulate the conventions of time (such as H. G. Wells' Time Traveller does), it would eradicate our preconceptions of the past, present and future.


If the general public could travel between time periods as easily as we can travel between time zones, we and our ancestors would be directly, and already, affected. I have an example to clarify. For many years my brother and I were baffled by a story our parents told us. Prior to buying our current house they found the names of myself and my brother written alongside each other on the wall of what is now a bathroom. Ours being a fairly old house, we naturally attributed this to the supernatural. However, later on I rethought this; about what it meant, and who may have written it. I conceived of a theory that I believed provided a satisfactory explanation: it was in fact myself and my brother who wrote our own names on the wall, before we were born.


My theory was originally that in my own future, time travel will be invented and I will use it to go back to my house prior to the 1990s, and send a small message to myself, a hint that time travel will be invented. Years later, I now reject my own theory, and denounce it as highly improbable.


In a reality where time travel is at any point possible and accessible, I believe periods in time would become nothing more than 'places' to visit. It would be as logical to say 'Im going on holiday to London 1960' as it is to say 'Im going on holiday to Madagascar.' Just as in A Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is possible to have dinner at the 'Restaurant at the end of the universe' in a reality where time travel is common technology the past and future would be virtually indistinguishable to the present. If the present isn't the only point at which you can exist, who is to say there is a present at all?


To return to my childhood theory, I denounce it on the grounds that if my future self, who I highly doubt is involved with special intelligence of any sort, had access to time manipulating technology then anyone could. If that were the case I believe that we, and those before us, would all have encountered time travellers ourselves. The graffittied message I saw may not have meant to put across such a message, but it is certainly an interesting statement. Then again, maybe it was written by a time traveller with a motive - but thats impossible. Isn't it?

Etep