<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE>
<STYLE type="text/css"><!--
BODY {
margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
/*----------Text Styles----------*/
HR { color: #000000}
BODY, TABLE /* Normal text */
{
font-size: 9pt;
font-family: 'Courier New';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
color: #000000;
text-decoration: none;
}
SPAN.RVTS1 /* Heading */
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family: 'Arial';
font-weight: bold;
color: #0000FF;
}
SPAN.RVTS2 /* Subheading */
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family: 'Arial';
font-weight: bold;
color: #000080;
}
SPAN.RVTS3 /* Keywords */
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family: 'Arial';
font-style: italic;
color: #800000;
}
A.RVTS4, SPAN.RVTS4 /* Jump 1 */
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family: 'Arial';
color: #008000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
A.RVTS5, SPAN.RVTS5 /* Jump 2 */
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family: 'Arial';
color: #008000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
SPAN.RVTS6
{
font-size: 11pt;
}
SPAN.RVTS7
{
font-size: 11pt;
font-weight: bold;
}
SPAN.RVTS8
{
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';
}
SPAN.RVTS9
{
font-size: 11pt;
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';
font-weight: bold;
}
SPAN.RVTS10
{
font-size: 11pt;
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';
}
/*----------Para Styles----------*/
P,UL,OL /* Paragraph Style */
{
text-align: left;
text-indent: 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.RVPS1 /* Centered */
{
text-align: center;
white-space: normal;
}
--></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>Dear colleagues,</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>The article below about a first-ever time travel convention (go to http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/ for the event itself. It took place on the 7th) got me thinking about how OST may be connected with time travel.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>If OST on one level is about expanding our now, might it be that when we reach of point of super-expanding our now we may indeed experience the future to such a degree in the present that we could call it time travel?</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>Many spiritual practices emphasize the importance of being, of appropriate doing. Might OST in a certain sense be a time travel machine, perhaps one that we don't know yet how to use to its full potential?</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>As I recall the processes of an OST meeting, there is such a mix of past, present, and future occuring in the now, that in a sense Open Space is something outside of time and space, something outside of it...</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>If no one else felt moved to, I would contact the time travel convention attendees and ask them about OST. From what I can gather offhand they didn't use OST to run their event...</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>On a somewhat unrelated impish note, since we have OS poet laureates of the present (and past ones), might we consider creating future OS poet laureates in the present, a small experiment in time travel in a sense. I have never sent a poem for the OS poetry contest, but I wouldn't mind being a future OS poet laureate (this might mobilize me to indeed write a poem when that now sets in. Any takers?</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>And no, I have never done recreational drugs, believe me! I just have, well, an active imagination. There is no better drug, I imagine, than an expanded now.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>Warmly, </SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>and wandering in the byways of back alleys of Open Space,</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10>Raffi</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS10><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS9><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS9>Time travellers invited back from the future</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>David Adam, science correspondent</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Thursday May 5, 2005</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>The Guardian</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world's first time traveller convention this weekend.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>The organiser, Amal Dorai - a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Article continues</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>"We are doing this as a very low-risk, low-cost way to investigate the possibility of time travel," he said. "I think the probability they will come is very low, but if it does happen it will one of the biggest events in human history.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>"Of course, no time travellers doesn't rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention."</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Physicists believe some kind of time travel is theoretically possible, but it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to work out the technical details.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Concerned that people will have forgotten his convention by then, Mr Dorai is urging volunteers to publicise the event to future generations by carving the details into clay tablets and burying notices in time capsules. He has slipped invitations on long-lasting paper inside dozens of obscure books in the MIT and Harvard University libraries.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>"If we put them inside books that are only touched every 50 years or so then they'll stay there and people in the future might learn of the convention. The big danger is that it's forgotten. Once that happens then it doesn't matter if someone invents time travel, we won't be able to see it."</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>The invitations ask visitors to turn up on the MIT campus at 8pm on Saturday and include precise latitude and longitude coordinates. "Time travel is a hard problem and may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion," they note.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Visitors from the future are advised to bring proof of advanced technology, such as a cure for cancer or a working nuclear fusion reactor. Sonic screwdrivers are optional.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>"Because of the small chance of time travel I think people will be sceptical," Mr Dorai admits. "But I hope time travellers won't take that as an insult. If what they bring as proof doesn't satisfy us then they could always go back into their future and grab something else."</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>Professor Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Oxford, said Mr Dorai may not be wasting his time. The weird world of quantum mechanics suggests time travel could one day be possible through tiny holes, loops and channels in the fabric of spacetime.</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8>"We're talking a long, long time in the future to be able to do this but it's not impossible," Prof Johnson said. "It would be very hard to send through something that weighed anything, like machines and people, but you could conceivably send messages through light and radiowaves. The chances of somebody from the future turning up on Saturday night are pretty remote, but they could get a phone call."</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8> mailto:raffi@bk.ru</SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN class=RVTS8><BR></SPAN></P>
</BODY></HTML>
*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist