Can we rank degrees of likely bafflement?
Probably not, but I’ll ask anyway.
Let’s say that on one sunny day you’re strolling through a park’s secluded meadow with two standard-featured cell phones and a portable time twiddler. You’re bored and lazily digesting lunch, so of course you decide to perform a little temporal sociological experiment.
You adjust your holo-garbs to period-appropriate attire and twiddle time such that a typical middle-class urban male strolls seamlessly from the same park in 1909. You doff your hats at one another, the 1909-er not realizing he has been caught in a time bubble.
You walk up to the gentleman and show him your phones, explaining what they are. You hand him one, ask him to cross to the other side of the meadow, and then you ring him up. You then meet up again face-to-face and record his reaction. You retrieve the phone, bid the fellow good day, and twiddle him back to 1909.
You then perform the same experiment, only this time the subject is from 1859.
The guy from 1909 will have had some familiarity and experience with telephony, but he will only know it in its early, hardwired form. The 1859 guy will have no prior notions about transmission of sound at all, but he will also have no preconceptions about how such a thing might work.
Which of the two men would be more baffled, astounded, and amazed by cell phones?
December 19th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Presumably the 1859 guy. As you say, the 1909 guy at least has an idea of what a telephone is; the only differences here are size and wirelessness, basically. Amazing, but not mind-blowing, I should think.
Also, by 1909, radio is a developing technology that our gentleman would probably be familiar with, thus decreasing the amazement at wireless communication.
December 20th, 2009 at 2:14 am
They might be equally amazed, but at different aspects of the situation. I think the time travel aspect would be bigger than the phones.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am
Tyler: Aaargh. Didn’t think about radio being a known technology by 1909.
Amy: The miracle of the time twiddler is that the gentlemen don’t even realize they’ve been removed from their own timelines. You should pick one up! ;-)
December 21st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I expect the “explaining what they are” part will be very difficult with Mr. 1859. I suspect education levels might have a nastier effect than you expect; does he even know what sound waves are? Perhaps showing him wireless telegraphy first would help.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Pete: Ah, you seem to be approaching this as if we’re interested in teaching the primitives something, when in fact we’re just playing sort of a prank.
I picture the explanation, after some period-specific niceties, going something like this: “These are two special boxes that allow people to talk to one another, even if they are hundreds of miles apart, as if they were in the same room. Every box has a number assigned to it. To talk to another box, you open your box like this, press in the other box’s number, and the other box will begin emitting a signal. When your box is emitting a signal, you can open your box and begin speaking with the other box-holder. Here, take this box and walk across the field. When your box makes a noise, open it up, place this end over your ear, and hold the other end near your mouth.”
No knowledge of sound waves required. These things really are easier to explain if you pretend they’re magic, I think.
February 17th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Magic is good for amazing but not so good for baffling or astounding. This is because it defies explanation. In order to be baffled or astounded, you need to have a minimal understanding of what’s happening.