Wearable Technology in Fiction

Maybe the decade from 2000 to 2009 could be called the Dick Tracy decade. Mobile phone technology finally caught up with the Dick Tracy science fiction wrist phone of the early 1940s.

I suspect that when our grand children look back, they will view these times as a series of Digital Decades that will have come to comprise a Computing Century. I think computer miniaturization and mobility are the number one digital development for the past decade, but Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, blogs, Facebook and Twitter come in a close second.

Another piece of wearable technology from the golden age of science fiction is Isaac Asimov's "temporal field generator", which is a plot device used in Asimov's time travel story, The End of Eternity.

For Asimov's imagined time travel technology, most paradoxes are avoided by supposing that a new Reality is created if you go back in time and change the course of events. As long as you wear your "physiotime field generator" you will not be erased from existence by killing your own grandparent.

Noÿs asks: "And what if they make the Change while you’re there?”

Andrew replies: “It won’t catch me...my wrist generator keeps me in physiotime so that a Change can’t affect me, you see.”

We still have a long way to go in order to have a real "physiotime field generator", but wearable technology already includes some devices for monitoring and controlling physiological processes. Some people wear heart rate and blood pressure monitors.

In The Start of Eternity, during the early days of time travel there are no personal physiotime field generators. R. Nahan travels back in time to save Gohrlay, but he is "caught" in the Reality Change and erased from existence. Asimov imagined time travel technology coming into existence several centuries in our future, but he also played around with the idea of taking knowledge of time travel into the past in order to speed the development of time travel technology. Why did Nahan never get help from his future self? I blame the Huaoshy.

If time travel is possible, what would keep the past from being over-run by meddling time travelers? Asimov imagined a future time in which humans decided that time travel was a BIG MISTAKE, so they eliminated the technology. But if a technology is discovered once, can you really prevent it from being discovered a second time? A "sure fire" way to make time travel impossible is explored in The Start of Eternity.

Images. 1) The Dick Tracy "wrist radio". 2) A modern wrist phone. 3) Wearable heart rate and blood pressure monitor. 4) Time travel kettle (for image credits click here).

August Sennor on Time

August Sennor

"...nothing in a Reality made un-Real can be detected" - August Sennor

In Isaac Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, things are made un-Real by Reality Changes. However, what happens when something passes from one Reality into another? Where does one Reality start and the other end?

Asimov's basic strategy for dealing with time travel paradoxes is to assume that that there are multiple Realities, or time lines. If you travel back in time and change something, then you create a new Reality...sometimes. Asimov made a distinction between "micro-changes" and Reality Changes.

Even Eternals sometimes forgot the difference between micro-changes (small “c”) and Changes (large “C”) which significantly altered Reality. -the thoughts of Andrew Harlan in The End of Eternity

The Reality Change that is of most concern is the Change that destroys Eternity, the time travel machine itself. When that Reality Change takes place, the time travel kettle that carried Andrew Harlan and Noÿs Lambent back in time disappears. However, the two time travelers are protected by a field-generator, "surrounded by an aura of physiotime (an effluvium, so to speak, of Eternity) and therefore protected from any of the effects of Reality Change", as described by Asimov. They remain to live out their lives in the new Reality.

In The Start of Eternity I show R. Nahan traveling back in time. He repairs the positronic brain of R. Gohrlay, a change which is a "large C" Change. In the Reality where Gohrlay's positronic brain is irreversibly damaged, Nahan goes on to develop the technology for time travel. In the new Reality that is created by the time traveling Nahan, Gohrlay recovers her positronic brain functions and she goes on to lead the way in developing time travel technology. In that new Reality, there is no need for Nahan to travel back in time. Unfortunately for the noble time traveling Nahan, the "physiotime field-generator" has not yet been invented. According to the "logic" previously used by Asimov, I assume that the time traveling Nahan will disappear, just like the kettle did. However, can anything from the old Reality remain in the new reality?

The Foundations of Eternity

Clearly, according to Asimov, the effects induced in a new Reality by time travelers can remain after a Reality Change occurs. This seems like a recipe for miracles. A time traveler goes back in time, makes a change to the course of events, causes a new Reality to come into existence, then disappears. The cause of some events in the new Reality has disappeared.

In the case of Nahan and Gohrlay, Nahan uses nanites to repair Gohrlay's positronic circuits. The nanites themselves must disappear along with Nahan when the Reality Change occurs. However, I suppose that the nanites can leave behind some information from the future for Gohrlay in the form of alterations to her memory circuits. It seems miraculous...I wish that August Sennor were here to check my "logic". Asimov showed Sennor making the argument that time travel paradoxes are impossible because something always changes in Time so as to avoid any potential paradox. Unfortunately, even if that is true, it does not tell us exactly what is allowed for time travelers.

Time Travel

How does the universe "know" if the kettle is part of the old Reality or if it has become part of the new Reality? If Nahan writes his name on the wall, "Nahan from the 57th century was here", that inscription could exist as part of the old Reality, just as Cooper's magazine ad did, as a "micro-change". How does the universe distinguish between micro-changes and a Reality Change? I guess this is where we have to take Asimov's advice. Time travel as a plot device is supposed to be fun. Don't ruin it by asking too many questions.

Related Reading: Time Travel and Aliens

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