Poll: So, lets say you got the time machine.

[Reaper69lol]

Hey guys, recently, i watched back to the future 2, and I got asked a question by one of my friends. " If you had to choose whether to travel to any point in the future, or the past, and you was only allowed to do it once, as in once you are there, no going back. where would you go?"
I chose, past, because really I miss the good ol days... when everything was easy and nice and all i wanted was my ps1.
So, what would you guys pick and why?

 

[Absimilliard]

I'd go the future, write about life in the year 2010, get some cybernetic transplants, and seeing as I would go a long way into the future, get myself a time machine. After that, I'd pretty much try to be The Doctor, and see as much of creation as I could...

 

[ThePostalGamer]

Past.

Whether I'm allowed to make physical contact with or be seen by my other self or not, I AM going to go back and correct as many mistakes as I can.

Why didn't I just talk to *insert name of female schoolmate* way back in *insert 200X date here*? GAH. *punches self in face*

 

[Kollega]

I'd destroy the time machine. Because if i used it - even to travel into the future - i'd end up with:

A) Hitler winning World War 2...
B) Star Wars being created by Ed Wood instead of George Lucas...

...or even *shudder* both.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Future.

I think I'd jump forward 50 years or so. For the most part things are always getting better. Forget all the doom and gloom, the future will be cool, no doubt about it.

 

[AlphaOmega]

Past to kick my 14 year old in the balls and tell him to be more outgoing, so Im where I'm at now when im 15.

Which would mean in the trend I'd be like Sexyness Incarnate by now.

 

[SnipErlite]

Past first, to give some good advice to my younger self (concerning yes, women).

Then future to see what kick-ass stuff gets invented.

 

[CoverYourHead]

To the future, to tell people I'm from the past and receive all the press coverage for it. I'm sure there'd be a lot of perks to it.

 

[L9OBL]

the past cause it's cooler and less complicated. maybee i'd go to fuedal japan and becom the worlds largest samurai? (i'm 6ft the average samurai was 5ft2in(ish)

 

[sephiroth1991]

I'll go back to the 50s, simpler time a better time.

I do it for the music

 

[ethaninja]

If I went into the future, I would probably die as soon as I got out. If I went into the past, I would love to visit all those places real time. Probably steal and take medicine with me and some survival tools

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Future - I just have to see if Futurama was right.

 

[hannan4mitch]

NOTHING
If you've ever seen the episode "White Tulip" from Fringe (if you haven't, Hulu it), time travel is extremely complicated both technologically and logically (logic in time travels is avoiding paradoxes), also, adverse reactions of time travel can modify the world so much, life itself could not exist. (so don't go to the past)

 

[Absimilliard]

Future - I just have to see if Futurama was right.

You'd immediately prove them wrong on one account. In one of the episodes' intro it's stated that "you can't prove it won't happen"...

 

[Instant K4rma]

The past. I would go back to the 60's. I would really like to see the whole hippie movement for myself. My friends and family always tell me that I'm a "hippie child" and that I was born 30 years too late. I have the long hair and everything. My dad always tells me that if I threw on some tie-dye, I would fit right in with the 60's hippie culture.

I've always been fascinated by the 60's culture (aside from the drug use) and would really like to see it for myself.

 

[FalloutJack]

The future, for me. That way, if I run head-long into the TARDIS, the Doctor can't flag me for changing established history.

 

[Quaxar]

I'd destroy the time machine. Because if i used it - even to travel into the future - i'd end up with:

A) Hitler winning World War 2...
B) Star Wars being created by Ed Wood instead of George Lucas...

...or even *shudder* both.

That is probably the sickest historical change I've ever heard and I don't want to immagine what had happened, if that guy actually made it! Star Wars by Ed Wood... the horror...

OT: the future. Far, far future. Not so far that I'm in danger of being eaten by Morlocks, but far enough to buy a plethora of miraculous inventions with my 21st century money (I'm pretty poisitive such well-conserved antiques will be valuable then, yes?).

 

[Red Right Hand]

I would definitely go to the 60s, and move to San Franscisco for the great Acid Wave. Lots of drugs, sex and music. Definitely my style.

 

[Red Right Hand]

The past. I would go back to the 60's. I would really like to see the whole hippie movement for myself. My friends and family always tell me that I'm a "hippie child" and that I was born 30 years too late. I have the long hair and everything. My dad always tells me that if I threw on some tie-dye, I would fit right in with the 60's hippie culture.

I've always been fascinated by the 60's culture (aside from the drug use) and would really like to see it for myself.

I think you would really enjoy this then, it's an exerpt from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He considered this speech his greatest work.

Spoiler

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era ? the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time ? and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights ? or very early mornings ? when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle ? that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting ? on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark ? that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

EDIT: After reading that, I just realised how much I love Thompson's work. If you haven't read the book then you should definitely go read.

 

[Reboare]

The future definitely. It would be fascinating to see how society progressed and the myriad of scientific advances. The past would just be boring and with the possibility of my actions leading to paradoxes, if they can actually occur, it would be a tad risky.