Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jun 1, 2020 20:50:38 GMT
Even though it's not as touched-upon as other elements of time-travel ISOTs like different laws or technological advances, student exchange programs between uptimer and downtimer schools are still likely to be set up. Though the specifics of these exchanges will vary depending on the times and places in question, considering that there's still room for certain overall tendencies (e.g. knowledgeable uptimer students piping up in downtimer history class or pointing out dated information in teachers' lessons in general), how might these experiences unfold in practice?
For example, maybe such an exchange takes place between some 2010s and 1970s schools (though by no means are these the only dates we can discuss here). In which case, I'm initially guessing that in addition to the usual catching up and updates to the curriculum they'd be tasked with doing, downtimer educators would also view and teach future history and developments through the lens of their Seventies sensibilities, namely showing their surprise at a black president or the ubiquity of computers and internet. On which note, any technology classes that downtimer schools set up would have to teach how to operate said devices in a more cumulative, step-by-step manner than their uptimer counterparts (due to the fact that uptimer kids have been raised alongside them, meaning that they'd need less professional instruction). Those are just some leadoff thoughts of mine, anyway--though others who participate are more than welcome to add to them.
Thank you in advance,
Zyobot
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jun 2, 2020 9:17:36 GMT
Zyobot , The big issue here I suspect would be the grandfather effect and I wonder how you would avoid it. News especially of natural disasters - although the butterfly effect might change meteorological ones there would still be factors like earthquakes, volcanoes etc is likely to change how much damage they do and hence lead to significantly different populations and economic bases. Ditto with a lot of economy and political issues.
To take a classic US example what happens if the US in say 1971 learns about Nixon and Watergate, which hasn't happened yet? Presumably it would prevent it happening as I doubt Nixon would be that foolish so if he still wins the 72 election that leaves him in power longer. Also given Agnew's OTL record he's unlikely to be selected as Nixon's VP so someone else would.
Similarly for Britain in the 1970's there are a number of issues that could be change by uptime knowledge, including industrial relations, membership of the EEC, the division of the Labour Party and election of Thatcher in 79, all could be changed, let alone later events.
Another one is that Israel is likely to be on very high alert in 1973, although an Arab attack could occur at some other time.
Unless your assuming the up-timers are going to a parallel universe I can't see how it would work as they would be wiping out their own time.
Steve
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Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jun 2, 2020 13:21:59 GMT
Zyobot , The big issue here I suspect would be the grandfather effect and I wonder how you would avoid it. News especially of natural disasters - although the butterfly effect might change meteorological ones there would still be factors like earthquakes, volcanoes etc is likely to change how much damage they do and hence lead to significantly different populations and economic bases. Ditto with a lot of economy and political issues.
To take a classic US example what happens if the US in say 1971 learns about Nixon and Watergate, which hasn't happened yet? Presumably it would prevent it happening as I doubt Nixon would be that foolish so if he still wins the 72 election that leaves him in power longer. Also given Agnew's OTL record he's unlikely to be selected as Nixon's VP so someone else would.
Similarly for Britain in the 1970's there are a number of issues that could be change by uptime knowledge, including industrial relations, membership of the EEC, the division of the Labour Party and election of Thatcher in 79, all could be changed, let alone later events.
Another one is that Israel is likely to be on very high alert in 1973, although an Arab attack could occur at some other time.
Unless your assuming the up-timers are going to a parallel universe I can't see how it would work as they would be wiping out their own time.
Steve
Yeah, I’m assuming a parallel universe. That’s generally the default assumption for time-travel ISOTs, I’m pretty sure. I am, of course, aware of the butterfly effect that’d alter the future in any case, but nonetheless think it important enough that the downtimers learn how the uptimers’ world came to be (hence why teaching uptimer history in addition to updating other subjects has its place in these scenarios). Plus, uptimers would probably casually toss around references to future events and phenomena that downtimers might be ignorant of, so maybe teaching downtimer kids at least the basics of that would save lots of explanation on the uptimers’ part. |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jun 2, 2020 20:38:41 GMT
Zyobot , The big issue here I suspect would be the grandfather effect and I wonder how you would avoid it. News especially of natural disasters - although the butterfly effect might change meteorological ones there would still be factors like earthquakes, volcanoes etc is likely to change how much damage they do and hence lead to significantly different populations and economic bases. Ditto with a lot of economy and political issues.
To take a classic US example what happens if the US in say 1971 learns about Nixon and Watergate, which hasn't happened yet? Presumably it would prevent it happening as I doubt Nixon would be that foolish so if he still wins the 72 election that leaves him in power longer. Also given Agnew's OTL record he's unlikely to be selected as Nixon's VP so someone else would.
Similarly for Britain in the 1970's there are a number of issues that could be change by uptime knowledge, including industrial relations, membership of the EEC, the division of the Labour Party and election of Thatcher in 79, all could be changed, let alone later events.
Another one is that Israel is likely to be on very high alert in 1973, although an Arab attack could occur at some other time.
Unless your assuming the up-timers are going to a parallel universe I can't see how it would work as they would be wiping out their own time.
Steve
Yeah, I’m assuming a parallel universe. That’s generally the default assumption for time-travel ISOTs, I’m pretty sure. I am, of course, aware of the butterfly effect that’d alter the future in any case, but nonetheless think it important enough that the downtimers learn how the uptimers’ world came to be (hence why teaching uptimer history in addition to updating other subjects has its place in these scenarios). Plus, uptimers would probably casually toss around references to future events and phenomena that downtimers might be ignorant of, so maybe teaching downtimer kids at least the basics of that would save lots of explanation on the uptimers’ part.
OK thanks for explaining. I would expect that a fair amount of down-time people, including a fair number of leaders won't really understand the significance of that or, especially in the more autocratic states, act on the assumption that unless they change things X would happen anyway. Hence probably a fair amount of 'preventive' actions which are likely to see a number of people suffering unpleasant 'accidents'.
In terms of the exchanges what nations would you assume are taking part? It might be difficult to foresee say someone from 2020 China going to 1970s China under Mao.
One of the biggest changes will be in information availability - or lack of it for the up-timers when they get down-time.  However another one will be social changes. Especially more widespread acceptance of many forms of sexual identity in 2020 compared to 1970, at least in the developed world.
Steve
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Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jun 2, 2020 21:14:55 GMT
Yeah, I’m assuming a parallel universe. That’s generally the default assumption for time-travel ISOTs, I’m pretty sure. I am, of course, aware of the butterfly effect that’d alter the future in any case, but nonetheless think it important enough that the downtimers learn how the uptimers’ world came to be (hence why teaching uptimer history in addition to updating other subjects has its place in these scenarios). Plus, uptimers would probably casually toss around references to future events and phenomena that downtimers might be ignorant of, so maybe teaching downtimer kids at least the basics of that would save lots of explanation on the uptimers’ part.
OK thanks for explaining. I would expect that a fair amount of down-time people, including a fair number of leaders won't really understand the significance of that or, especially in the more autocratic states, act on the assumption that unless they change things X would happen anyway. Hence probably a fair amount of 'preventive' actions which are likely to see a number of people suffering unpleasant 'accidents'.
In terms of the exchanges what nations would you assume are taking part? It might be difficult to foresee say someone from 2020 China going to 1970s China under Mao.
One of the biggest changes will be in information availability - or lack of it for the up-timers when they get down-time. However another one will be social changes. Especially more widespread acceptance of many forms of sexual identity in 2020 compared to 1970, at least in the developed world.
Steve
Well, not everyone in the world is exactly an AH historian who thinks about these hypotheticals and considers the ramifications to a detailed, in-depth extent . As such, I think we'd need news outlets and governments to remind the public that parallel universes are involved here, introducing the Average Joe to the notion of different timelines and the butterfly effect's ability to completely diverge them with the right PoD. Naturally, schools will have to drill this into students' heads as well, meaning that at least an overview of certain AH concepts should become part of a curriculum for at least the time being. In terms of which specific nations participate, I suppose I'm looking more at Western liberal-democratic societies (namely in North America and Western Europe). And, of course, developed Asia-Pacific nations like Japan and South Korea, which have seriously skyrocketed in wealth, advancements and prominence since the 1970s. Given their more autocratic and crackdown-happy leanings, I don't think that Maoist China or Soviet Russia would make great places for exchange programs involving twenty-first century students, and downtimers in the midst of an inverted situation would also be in for a hard time during their stay (assuming that they're allowed to attend uptimer institutions at all). Children living in the midst of downtimer communist states won't adapt completely to their new surroundings in post-communist ones that have since adopted capitalism and some measure of liberalization, I don't think. Onto technology's role in student life, I've also thought a bit about how temporary lack of internet access would render uptimers' devices mainly useless with some exceptions (though this might change once downtimer societies set up the proper infrastructure and start receiving electronics shipments). For that reason, I've a feeling that uptimer students would be rather antsy and/or bored for a while, even if orientation programs teach them how to live without their smartphones for a few months' time. If, however, ASB waves a magic wand that allows uptimer IoT devices to function normally even within downtimer lands, then that shouldn't be a problem for them. Unfortunately, downtimer students attending uptimer schools--even apart from the inevitable culture shock--will have their own fair share of tech trouble once they're tasked with learning how to use a mobile phone, search the internet, look out for computer viruses, and so on without visiting tech support every five seconds (and even then, the staff would probably be busier than usual as soon as the downtimers start arriving). |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jun 3, 2020 17:39:31 GMT
Zyobot , Well I thought of one potentially unfortunately down side of this. If the up-timers bring a lot of their media with them its probably going to include Jackson's Lord of the Ring's film. In which case that could butterfly away the OTL BBC radio series in the early 80's. Which is the thing that got me into both fantasy in general - which I previously derided - and Tolkien. Mind you since he lived until 2-9-73 he could have some comments about it as well. Steve
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Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jun 4, 2020 21:54:48 GMT
Zyobot , Well I thought of one potentially unfortunately down side of this. If the up-timers bring a lot of their media with them its probably going to include Jackson's Lord of the Ring's film. In which case that could butterfly away the OTL BBC radio series in the early 80's. Which is the thing that got me into both fantasy in general - which I previously derided - and Tolkien. Mind you since he lived until 2-9-73 he could have some comments about it as well. Steve
Wouldn’t uptimers be able to bring OTL copies of butterflied media back with them, though? In which case, maybe your younger self still gets wind of said radio series and as such, still develops an interest in fantasy (though I couldn’t tell you the specifics beyond that). So long as we’re talking about media, though, I assume that more...unsavory future productions get scrubbed ahead of time. Even if it’s more than happy to at least receive the Original Trilogy, to mid-1970s Lucasfilm probably won’t bother with the Star Wars Holiday Special, which has since gone down in history as a wacky, cringe-inducing train wreck of a movie that probably should’ve never been filmed in the first place. Also, what role might more immediately pertinent media play when it comes to ISOT-inducer changes in schooling? Technology in the classroom should prove a fundamental leap from what downtimers from decades before are used to, both in terms of how they alter the curriculum with online assignments and research projects, and the myriad distractions they provide in class (if you catch my drift). On the flip side, maybe in the instance that ASB magically allows them to function in downtimer lands, uptimer students can use their phones ajd computers to fact-check downtimer teachers who promulgate dated information or miss important details of uptimer history. For example, maybe some 1970s history teacher who claims that FDR’s 523 electoral vote landslide in 1936 was the biggest of its kind gets corrected by an uptimer kid who notifies them about how Reagan won with 525 electoral votes in 1984 (though that’s more in absolute terms than in percentage-themed ones). |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jun 5, 2020 11:45:10 GMT
Zyobot , Well I thought of one potentially unfortunately down side of this. If the up-timers bring a lot of their media with them its probably going to include Jackson's Lord of the Ring's film. In which case that could butterfly away the OTL BBC radio series in the early 80's. Which is the thing that got me into both fantasy in general - which I previously derided - and Tolkien. Mind you since he lived until 2-9-73 he could have some comments about it as well. Steve
Wouldn’t uptimers be able to bring OTL copies of butterflied media back with them, though? In which case, maybe your younger self still gets wind of said radio series and as such, still develops an interest in fantasy (though I couldn’t tell you the specifics beyond that). So long as we’re talking about media, though, I assume that more...unsavory future productions get scrubbed ahead of time. Even if it’s more than happy to at least receive the Original Trilogy, to mid-1970s Lucasfilm probably won’t bother with the Star Wars Holiday Special, which has since gone down in history as a wacky, cringe-inducing train wreck of a movie that probably should’ve never been filmed in the first place. Also, what role might more immediately pertinent media play when it comes to ISOT-inducer changes in schooling? Technology in the classroom should prove a fundamental leap from what downtimers from decades before are used to, both in terms of how they alter the curriculum with online assignments and research projects, and the myriad distractions they provide in class (if you catch my drift). On the flip side, maybe in the instance that ASB magically allows them to function in downtimer lands, uptimer students can use their phones ajd computers to fact-check downtimer teachers who promulgate dated information or miss important details of uptimer history. For example, maybe some 1970s history teacher who claims that FDR’s 523 electoral vote landslide in 1936 was the biggest of its kind gets corrected by an uptimer kid who notifies them about how Reagan won with 525 electoral votes in 1984 (though that’s more in absolute terms than in percentage-themed ones).
Damn I was most of the way through a reply then managed to hit something that wiped the post!!  Try again.
On the 1st point how many people now know about the 1980's radio version? Other than people who listened to it or those still about who actually made it. Their unlikely to be students going into the past in such an exchange scheme. Which is a pity as its markedly superior to the films and if a young me had only seen them I could well have continued to see modern fantasy as a trivial category, not worth wasting my time on as I had considered it for the previous decade.
In terms of a massive modernisation of education possibly especially as much of the western world. especially the Anglo-sphere was a lot more welcoming to new technology and ideas then. However its going to need a hell of a lot of very expensive and complex equipment and not just in schools and a lot of people needing training to both use and maintain it. Also unless the up-time world is going to given the relevant knowledge of how to produce and maintain all this for free the down-timers are going to be aware their making themselves very dependent on the up timers.
Yes a student could make such a point but a teacher could respond that he's wrong because that happened in his universe, not the current one where it hasn't happened yet and if the teacher is aware of the basic idea of the butterfly effect its something that could easily not occur. On purely factual matters up-time students could present a lot of information but its going to be very difficult to teach anyone if lessons are continually being interrupted by students pointing out that in their universe X rather than Y is the case. You would really need to have the entire cireculmem updated and agreed upon before the course started. Also there are two other issues here: a) A lot of students making such interruptions are probably going to rely on sources such as wiki which may not be to convincing to down-time teachers, especially when they hear that anyone can write anything on wiki. Or on books that haven't been printed yet so unless the student can supply a copy there's no way of checking how reliable a source is.
b) Many issues are matters of opinion. For instance last night on the Military History Visualized channel a video on whether or not the Vietnam was was winnable [by the Americans] or not. Apart from the fact that in a short video - ~20 minutes - he didn't mention some issues, [such as the efforts for fairly free fire tactics on alienating a lot of the population] or only briefly on others [such as the large scale corruption that crippled S Vietnam] he could only touch on actual military matters. He did conclude it might have been winnable but made clear that was his opinion.
There could even be cases where the down-timers could counter suggestions from the up-timers that they knew better because they had actually experienced what happened rather than what some distant person 30-40 years later who may have had a vested interest said happened.
All in all its a very complex issue.
Plus it raises the point as to while I could see a case for down-time students going to 2020 what would up-time students actually expect to learn by a stay in a 1970 school/college?
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Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jul 10, 2020 13:55:10 GMT
Wouldn’t uptimers be able to bring OTL copies of butterflied media back with them, though? In which case, maybe your younger self still gets wind of said radio series and as such, still develops an interest in fantasy (though I couldn’t tell you the specifics beyond that). So long as we’re talking about media, though, I assume that more...unsavory future productions get scrubbed ahead of time. Even if it’s more than happy to at least receive the Original Trilogy, to mid-1970s Lucasfilm probably won’t bother with the Star Wars Holiday Special, which has since gone down in history as a wacky, cringe-inducing train wreck of a movie that probably should’ve never been filmed in the first place. Also, what role might more immediately pertinent media play when it comes to ISOT-inducer changes in schooling? Technology in the classroom should prove a fundamental leap from what downtimers from decades before are used to, both in terms of how they alter the curriculum with online assignments and research projects, and the myriad distractions they provide in class (if you catch my drift). On the flip side, maybe in the instance that ASB magically allows them to function in downtimer lands, uptimer students can use their phones ajd computers to fact-check downtimer teachers who promulgate dated information or miss important details of uptimer history. For example, maybe some 1970s history teacher who claims that FDR’s 523 electoral vote landslide in 1936 was the biggest of its kind gets corrected by an uptimer kid who notifies them about how Reagan won with 525 electoral votes in 1984 (though that’s more in absolute terms than in percentage-themed ones).
Damn I was most of the way through a reply then managed to hit something that wiped the post!! Try again.
On the 1st point how many people now know about the 1980's radio version? Other than people who listened to it or those still about who actually made it. Their unlikely to be students going into the past in such an exchange scheme. Which is a pity as its markedly superior to the films and if a young me had only seen them I could well have continued to see modern fantasy as a trivial category, not worth wasting my time on as I had considered it for the previous decade.
In terms of a massive modernisation of education possibly especially as much of the western world. especially the Anglo-sphere was a lot more welcoming to new technology and ideas then. However its going to need a hell of a lot of very expensive and complex equipment and not just in schools and a lot of people needing training to both use and maintain it. Also unless the up-time world is going to given the relevant knowledge of how to produce and maintain all this for free the down-timers are going to be aware their making themselves very dependent on the up timers.
Yes a student could make such a point but a teacher could respond that he's wrong because that happened in his universe, not the current one where it hasn't happened yet and if the teacher is aware of the basic idea of the butterfly effect its something that could easily not occur. On purely factual matters up-time students could present a lot of information but its going to be very difficult to teach anyone if lessons are continually being interrupted by students pointing out that in their universe X rather than Y is the case. You would really need to have the entire cireculmem updated and agreed upon before the course started. Also there are two other issues here: a) A lot of students making such interruptions are probably going to rely on sources such as wiki which may not be to convincing to down-time teachers, especially when they hear that anyone can write anything on wiki. Or on books that haven't been printed yet so unless the student can supply a copy there's no way of checking how reliable a source is.
b) Many issues are matters of opinion. For instance last night on the Military History Visualized channel a video on whether or not the Vietnam was was winnable [by the Americans] or not. Apart from the fact that in a short video - ~20 minutes - he didn't mention some issues, [such as the efforts for fairly free fire tactics on alienating a lot of the population] or only briefly on others [such as the large scale corruption that crippled S Vietnam] he could only touch on actual military matters. He did conclude it might have been winnable but made clear that was his opinion.
There could even be cases where the down-timers could counter suggestions from the up-timers that they knew better because they had actually experienced what happened rather than what some distant person 30-40 years later who may have had a vested interest said happened.
All in all its a very complex issue.
Plus it raises the point as to while I could see a case for down-time students going to 2020 what would up-time students actually expect to learn by a stay in a 1970 school/college?
...Yeah, that's true. As said before, informing the public about the butterfly effect and its potential to veer the TL permanently off-course from the direction is was originally slated to head in will be crucial here. Which also means telling uptimer kids that what happened in the future that they came from isn't destined to happen now, because the factors that originally led to it happening were thrown off-kilter too much.
However, as it concerns changes to the curriculum, I'd nonetheless maintain that with the changes and newly gained knowledge from over the years, downtimer educators will still have to incorporate material about certain OTL happenings into their lessons. For example, 1950s economics classes would do well to cover 1970s Stagflation, which the economics community of the time seems to have ignored or discounted up until it actually, you know, happened. It's still the product of another history that hopefully won't manifest this time around, yeah, but it also serves as a lesson for what can happen if they don't play their cards right. The same probably goes for those taking political science classes so that they know about important cases that they'd have had no obvious precedent for without uptimer intervention, namely Bush v. Gore as it applied to the OTL 2000 election (yes, I'm aware of strictly Electoral College wins also having occurred in the nineteenth century). This is a phenomenon that I expect to take place in just about every class concerning just about every discipline, even in less clearly 'history-adjacent' ones (i.e. computer engineering classes briefly covering the Y2K problem that panicked the world IOTL 2000).
On a related note, I'd certainly think that downtimer historians would devote time to examining how uptimer history turned out the way it did, even though once again, it's not something that'll repeat exactly this time around. Collaboration with their uptimer counterparts would no doubt prove invaluable to understanding how the USSR stagnated and broke apart in the early OTL 1990s, or how first black POTUS was elected to office in 2008.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jul 11, 2020 9:20:10 GMT
Damn I was most of the way through a reply then managed to hit something that wiped the post!! Try again.
On the 1st point how many people now know about the 1980's radio version? Other than people who listened to it or those still about who actually made it. Their unlikely to be students going into the past in such an exchange scheme. Which is a pity as its markedly superior to the films and if a young me had only seen them I could well have continued to see modern fantasy as a trivial category, not worth wasting my time on as I had considered it for the previous decade.
In terms of a massive modernisation of education possibly especially as much of the western world. especially the Anglo-sphere was a lot more welcoming to new technology and ideas then. However its going to need a hell of a lot of very expensive and complex equipment and not just in schools and a lot of people needing training to both use and maintain it. Also unless the up-time world is going to given the relevant knowledge of how to produce and maintain all this for free the down-timers are going to be aware their making themselves very dependent on the up timers.
Yes a student could make such a point but a teacher could respond that he's wrong because that happened in his universe, not the current one where it hasn't happened yet and if the teacher is aware of the basic idea of the butterfly effect its something that could easily not occur. On purely factual matters up-time students could present a lot of information but its going to be very difficult to teach anyone if lessons are continually being interrupted by students pointing out that in their universe X rather than Y is the case. You would really need to have the entire cireculmem updated and agreed upon before the course started. Also there are two other issues here: a) A lot of students making such interruptions are probably going to rely on sources such as wiki which may not be to convincing to down-time teachers, especially when they hear that anyone can write anything on wiki. Or on books that haven't been printed yet so unless the student can supply a copy there's no way of checking how reliable a source is.
b) Many issues are matters of opinion. For instance last night on the Military History Visualized channel a video on whether or not the Vietnam was was winnable [by the Americans] or not. Apart from the fact that in a short video - ~20 minutes - he didn't mention some issues, [such as the efforts for fairly free fire tactics on alienating a lot of the population] or only briefly on others [such as the large scale corruption that crippled S Vietnam] he could only touch on actual military matters. He did conclude it might have been winnable but made clear that was his opinion.
There could even be cases where the down-timers could counter suggestions from the up-timers that they knew better because they had actually experienced what happened rather than what some distant person 30-40 years later who may have had a vested interest said happened.
All in all its a very complex issue.
Plus it raises the point as to while I could see a case for down-time students going to 2020 what would up-time students actually expect to learn by a stay in a 1970 school/college?
...Yeah, that's true. As said before, informing the public about the butterfly effect and its potential to veer the TL permanently off-course from the direction is was originally slated to head in will be crucial here. Which also means telling uptimer kids that what happened in the future that they came from isn't destined to happen now, because the factors that originally led to it happening were thrown off-kilter too much.
However, as it concerns changes to the curriculum, I'd nonetheless maintain that with the changes and newly gained knowledge from over the years, downtimer educators will still have to incorporate material about certain OTL happenings into their lessons. For example, 1950s economics classes would do well to cover 1970s Stagflation, which the economics community of the time seems to have ignored or discounted up until it actually, you know, happened. It's still the product of another history that hopefully won't manifest this time around, yeah, but it also serves as a lesson for what can happen if they don't play their cards right. The same probably goes for those taking political science classes so that they know about important cases that they'd have had no obvious precedent for without uptimer intervention, namely Bush v. Gore as it applied to the OTL 2000 election (yes, I'm aware of strictly Electoral College wins also having occurred in the nineteenth century). This is a phenomenon that I expect to take place in just about every class concerning just about every discipline, even in less clearly 'history-adjacent' ones (i.e. computer engineering classes briefly covering the Y2K problem that panicked the world IOTL 2000).
On a related note, I'd certainly think that downtimer historians would devote time to examining how uptimer history turned out the way it did, even though once again, it's not something that'll repeat exactly this time around. Collaboration with their uptimer counterparts would no doubt prove invaluable to understanding how the USSR stagnated and broke apart in the early OTL 1990s, or how first black POTUS was elected to office in 2008.
Agree with the point your making. I wasn't saying there wouldn't be reference to 'future events' but more that they wouldn't be a one sided acceptance of what up-timers were saying. Its going to cause a hell of a lot of complications and vigorous debate shall we say. Its not a black and white issue but far, far more complex than that.
The year 2k point is a good one as it should be possible with 'new' i.e. from 1970 onwards, to largely resolve that then by adding extra bytes for the date fields in new codes. Which would save a hell of a lot of work and near panic in the late 90's which I remembered too well as people belatedly suddenly started trying to resolve all possible problems.
One nasty point with Obama's election being reported is that I fear some bigot might try and prevent that with a gun or other means. 
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Zyobot
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Post by Zyobot on Jul 11, 2020 17:15:28 GMT
...Yeah, that's true. As said before, informing the public about the butterfly effect and its potential to veer the TL permanently off-course from the direction is was originally slated to head in will be crucial here. Which also means telling uptimer kids that what happened in the future that they came from isn't destined to happen now, because the factors that originally led to it happening were thrown off-kilter too much.
However, as it concerns changes to the curriculum, I'd nonetheless maintain that with the changes and newly gained knowledge from over the years, downtimer educators will still have to incorporate material about certain OTL happenings into their lessons. For example, 1950s economics classes would do well to cover 1970s Stagflation, which the economics community of the time seems to have ignored or discounted up until it actually, you know, happened. It's still the product of another history that hopefully won't manifest this time around, yeah, but it also serves as a lesson for what can happen if they don't play their cards right. The same probably goes for those taking political science classes so that they know about important cases that they'd have had no obvious precedent for without uptimer intervention, namely Bush v. Gore as it applied to the OTL 2000 election (yes, I'm aware of strictly Electoral College wins also having occurred in the nineteenth century). This is a phenomenon that I expect to take place in just about every class concerning just about every discipline, even in less clearly 'history-adjacent' ones (i.e. computer engineering classes briefly covering the Y2K problem that panicked the world IOTL 2000).
On a related note, I'd certainly think that downtimer historians would devote time to examining how uptimer history turned out the way it did, even though once again, it's not something that'll repeat exactly this time around. Collaboration with their uptimer counterparts would no doubt prove invaluable to understanding how the USSR stagnated and broke apart in the early OTL 1990s, or how first black POTUS was elected to office in 2008.
Agree with the point your making. I wasn't saying there wouldn't be reference to 'future events' but more that they wouldn't be a one sided acceptance of what up-timers were saying. Its going to cause a hell of a lot of complications and vigorous debate shall we say. Its not a black and white issue but far, far more complex than that.
The year 2k point is a good one as it should be possible with 'new' i.e. from 1970 onwards, to largely resolve that then by adding extra bytes for the date fields in new codes. Which would save a hell of a lot of work and near panic in the late 90's which I remembered too well as people belatedly suddenly started trying to resolve all possible problems.
One nasty point with Obama's election being reported is that I fear some bigot might try and prevent that with a gun or other means.
Once more, I think you bring up some fair points. Though whatever drivel propagated by moralists and demagogues throughout time can probably be ruled out as objective garbage (or only partially true, but riddled with exaggeration, cherry-picking and logical fallacies at best), more logical and fair-minded dialogue between the more cerebral subsets of the uptimer and downtimer populations would probably be worth exploring. Both as it relates to what certain downtimers who join forums like these would add, and the findings and insights that university academics would no doubt exchange when the dust settles and everyday cross-time interaction starts to take shape. I expect, for instance, the contributions of more free-market economists like Milton Friedman to be scrutinized by mid-20th Century economists living in an era where World War Two wasn't that long ago and the US came out of it pretty much on top of the world with its continued New Deal economic policies. Vigorous debate between downtimer Keynesians and post-Reagan neoclassical economists is bound to materialize, I'm sure--with downtimers who examine major uptimer events like 1970s Stagflation and the 2008 recession coming up with their own interpretations driven in part by much different, more dirigisme-friendly outlooks.
I expect similar scrutiny and discourse to arise over political developments over the years as well. As one example that I offered in the '2012 Lower US To 1952' thread, I'd deduce that OTL future presidents like Bill Clinton will receive considerable criticism from Fifties historians, pundits and political analysts--and not just for the Monica Lewinsky scandal or perjury when testifying to Congress (e.g. bringing attention to his purported role in abetting outsourcing to China, a move that definitely hasn't aged well in the years since). Maybe similar suspicion among Fifties intellectuals will arise when it comes to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the former being the one who ushered in the Reagan Revolution that has become his namesake and all. Somewhat on the opposite side of the aisle, I likewise anticipate that even if they're amicable to certain measures meant to reign in the Robber Barons and provide meaningful social welfare, people from the early 20th Century would find today's governments to be ludicrously big, bureaucratic, and frankly overreaching, and their opinions would reflect their more 'ruggedly individualistic' worldview appropriately.
Sadly, you're probably right about people from the time-span we've turned towards discussing hurling hatred at Obama over his racial background. If the more nativist elements of the right acted up with conspiracies about how he was born in Kenya or how Michelle was secretly a man, then it's probably safe to say that the Jim-Crow Southerners would flip out a thousand times worse. Knowing that, we can probably count on a wave of extreme hate crimes, surging KKK membership and at least one attempt to assassinate Obama to follow in cases where he comes along for the ride and finds himself dealing with pre-Civil Rights America in some capacity. Whether it's his 2012 self who's still the sitting president or his current 2020 self who's now a former president, he and his family will no doubt have to watch their backs if they're not sent to a time at least as recent as the 1970s. Then maybe he could sit down for a polite interview with a polite and reputable downtimer journalist(s), or maybe some talk show host Johnny Carson (whose ilk seemed less vapid and more respectful than today's mainline late-night comedians anyway, but that's neither here nor there).
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Jul 12, 2020 10:00:22 GMT
Zyobot , Actually I wasn't meaning the older Obama making a trip to the past but the young one, who since he was born in 1961 would be~9 years old in 1970.
Although that raises an interesting possibility in terms of celebrities making trips, possibly both ways, for commercial/entertainment/cultural purposes. How much could a still alive and reasonably young Elvis or Frank Sinatra for instance make in a tour of 2020? Or an elderly but still alive Tolkien seeing what his son did with his notes and Jackson's films and commenting on them? Muhammad Ali v Tyson Fury in a boxing match possibly? That route might be more successful in cultural and commercial terms as down-time celebrities would be known and otherwise unobtainable to 2020 but probably some personalities going the other way.
In terms of how down-timers would react to people like Reagan to give an example I could see a fairly mixed reaction. Yes he did 'win' the cold war with the Soviets but between the related sometimes poorly directed military spending and the massive tax cuts for the very rich he drastically increase the national debt. Similarly his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, and his notorious comment about chips are likely to go down like the proverbial lead balloon among the people from 1970.
There is likely to be a reaction against the size of the US government but don't forget many of those people were around when an active government helped millions during the depression, organised the victory in WWII and managed numerous successful programmes. There will be a fair number of people concerned about the failure of some later programmes in terms of attempts to end poverty and how things have got worse for many people in recent decades. Plus while racists will be appalled by progress in racial equality others will be dismayed about how far there is still to go. Both are likely to be repulsed by the extremes of some groups calling for 'rectifying' the problem in the modern day.
In terms of Trump he may do a little better in terms of his sexism and racism being more acceptable to people in 1970 but his crudity and sheer stupidity is likely to go down poorly in 1970 as his so blatant lying.
Steve
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However another one will be social changes. Especially more widespread acceptance of many forms of sexual identity in 2020 compared to 1970, at least in the developed world.
Try again.