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This may be Titor
- Thread starter Judge Bean
- Start date
Judge Bean
Senior Member
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- 1,257
This may be Titor
The easiest answer is that it is a true story-- he has something to do with time travel. For example, he is the right age to actually be the grandfather of someone of Titor's alleged age, and he had something to do with the creation of the IBM 5100. He was in fact crucial to the invention of the personal computer.
So he may be the subject rather than the author of the story. I have toyed with the idea that the entire Titor text is itself a timetraveler, in the sense that it has been transmitted through time, its details deliberately distorted, in order to establish contact or transfer information to someone. It is more plausible to me that you could move electronic text through time than bodies, at least in the earliest stages of time engineering. If this is the case, then Titus could be the "target" individual: either he is meant to decipher the text or he is spotlighted for attention.
It makes more sense to me that he is highlighted. Think of it this way: a government agency of the future needs to "prompt" a certain individual in the past in order to obtain the necessary advances in technology. This can be done by contacting him directly or by showing others who he is. Titus is in very fine health, by the looks of him in the photos, and it has been 30 years since his invention. It is open to many possible interpretations.
Titus is also apparently someone who might be attracted to a timetravel story on the internet. He is among that broad class of potential target-audience members that we have discussed on the forum in the past.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the story is now four years old. The recurring theme of computer technology in the Titor story (internet; IBM; Y2K) points to it being important to whatever interpretation you choose. At the time of the Titor advent, which is actually 1998, Y2K was looming and Titor supposedly leapfrogged over the millennial deadline on some sort of mission. Later, he alluded to the averted disaster. The Y2K "bug" was said to have been lodged in the original PC technology, perhaps somehow traceable to the IBM 5100, which was the very first marketed PC. Or perhaps somehow resolved by going back to the original PC.
If the Y2K scare had anything to it, it stands to reason that this would be of major concern to a future society which had suffered from it. In other words, in the unmodified timeline, Y2K had happened and they wanted to undo it.
It would require a deep study of the Titor text to develop the interpretation in which it could be read as a cipher warning of the consequences of Y2K and how to avert it. If, however, the scare was the warning of a genuine disaster, and it had not been averted, Titor would not have been able to post on the internet some months afterward. This doesn't explain why he posted, all by itself, but it establishes the context.
Originally posted by Grayson@Dec 29 2004, 05:34 PM
Very, very interesting Paul, but why the Internet tale then?
The easiest answer is that it is a true story-- he has something to do with time travel. For example, he is the right age to actually be the grandfather of someone of Titor's alleged age, and he had something to do with the creation of the IBM 5100. He was in fact crucial to the invention of the personal computer.
So he may be the subject rather than the author of the story. I have toyed with the idea that the entire Titor text is itself a timetraveler, in the sense that it has been transmitted through time, its details deliberately distorted, in order to establish contact or transfer information to someone. It is more plausible to me that you could move electronic text through time than bodies, at least in the earliest stages of time engineering. If this is the case, then Titus could be the "target" individual: either he is meant to decipher the text or he is spotlighted for attention.
It makes more sense to me that he is highlighted. Think of it this way: a government agency of the future needs to "prompt" a certain individual in the past in order to obtain the necessary advances in technology. This can be done by contacting him directly or by showing others who he is. Titus is in very fine health, by the looks of him in the photos, and it has been 30 years since his invention. It is open to many possible interpretations.
Titus is also apparently someone who might be attracted to a timetravel story on the internet. He is among that broad class of potential target-audience members that we have discussed on the forum in the past.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the story is now four years old. The recurring theme of computer technology in the Titor story (internet; IBM; Y2K) points to it being important to whatever interpretation you choose. At the time of the Titor advent, which is actually 1998, Y2K was looming and Titor supposedly leapfrogged over the millennial deadline on some sort of mission. Later, he alluded to the averted disaster. The Y2K "bug" was said to have been lodged in the original PC technology, perhaps somehow traceable to the IBM 5100, which was the very first marketed PC. Or perhaps somehow resolved by going back to the original PC.
If the Y2K scare had anything to it, it stands to reason that this would be of major concern to a future society which had suffered from it. In other words, in the unmodified timeline, Y2K had happened and they wanted to undo it.
It would require a deep study of the Titor text to develop the interpretation in which it could be read as a cipher warning of the consequences of Y2K and how to avert it. If, however, the scare was the warning of a genuine disaster, and it had not been averted, Titor would not have been able to post on the internet some months afterward. This doesn't explain why he posted, all by itself, but it establishes the context.