Dropped in 1980...
So, let's say you get thrown back in time. There is no hope of return to the time of your origin, but you take your future knowledge with you. How do you survive in the past if you get sent to the year... 1980?
This is a hard year because I'm realizing some of the boldest innovations that are based on the simplest scientific principles, like the telephone or the lightbulb, are already pretty well established. The things that are coming out around this time are computers, and that's beyond my current expertise to build. It might be worth my time to learn programming, so that I can anticipate big developments in the '90s like web browsers, instant messaging services like ICQ and MSN, and maybe even a service like iTunes, and then follow that up in the 2000s by inventing YouTube and Facebook (...although Facebook is simple enough in principle that I could probably invent a very basic version of it by around 1998).
But I'm still too early for all of that. I need to make a living in the meantime. I figure inventing something is the best option for someone who will probably land in 1980 with no money. Toy fads - Cabbage Patch. Transformers - that's one way to go, but I think the problem with those fad toys is that they aren't popular by virtue of their invention - how many toy lines must get made and put to market, and go unnoticed? It seems like it must be a perfect storm of timing, branding, and just luck, to have a toy product catch on. But if I blitz with all of the biggest toy fads of the 80s and 90s, one of them is bound to catch. Pogs? Tickle-me-Elmo? Yeah.
Finally, stock markets. I'd probably invest in Microsoft, Apple, IBM - assuming I don't somehow put them out of business. Relatively inexpensive investment in the 80s pays off in the late '90s with virtually any of those.
In the 2000s, when I'd be about 50 years old and, one way or another, a multi-millionaire, I'd find a way to convince Joss Whedon not to take Firefly to Fox, and not settle for doing less than five seasons of that show. If my wealth were substantial enough, I'd probably just fund the show. It would win multiple awards and as a producer I'd make millions in residuals.
I have thoughts of writing novels or graphic novels or film scripts of IPs that come out later. Don't know if I would. What I would love to do is be rich enough to befriend George Lucas and tell him his ideas for the prequel trilogy suck, and urge him to produce them in a less...casual way.
Leave a comment if you would like me to give you a year to which you will be banished.
This is a hard year because I'm realizing some of the boldest innovations that are based on the simplest scientific principles, like the telephone or the lightbulb, are already pretty well established. The things that are coming out around this time are computers, and that's beyond my current expertise to build. It might be worth my time to learn programming, so that I can anticipate big developments in the '90s like web browsers, instant messaging services like ICQ and MSN, and maybe even a service like iTunes, and then follow that up in the 2000s by inventing YouTube and Facebook (...although Facebook is simple enough in principle that I could probably invent a very basic version of it by around 1998).
But I'm still too early for all of that. I need to make a living in the meantime. I figure inventing something is the best option for someone who will probably land in 1980 with no money. Toy fads - Cabbage Patch. Transformers - that's one way to go, but I think the problem with those fad toys is that they aren't popular by virtue of their invention - how many toy lines must get made and put to market, and go unnoticed? It seems like it must be a perfect storm of timing, branding, and just luck, to have a toy product catch on. But if I blitz with all of the biggest toy fads of the 80s and 90s, one of them is bound to catch. Pogs? Tickle-me-Elmo? Yeah.
Finally, stock markets. I'd probably invest in Microsoft, Apple, IBM - assuming I don't somehow put them out of business. Relatively inexpensive investment in the 80s pays off in the late '90s with virtually any of those.
In the 2000s, when I'd be about 50 years old and, one way or another, a multi-millionaire, I'd find a way to convince Joss Whedon not to take Firefly to Fox, and not settle for doing less than five seasons of that show. If my wealth were substantial enough, I'd probably just fund the show. It would win multiple awards and as a producer I'd make millions in residuals.
I have thoughts of writing novels or graphic novels or film scripts of IPs that come out later. Don't know if I would. What I would love to do is be rich enough to befriend George Lucas and tell him his ideas for the prequel trilogy suck, and urge him to produce them in a less...casual way.
Leave a comment if you would like me to give you a year to which you will be banished.