Keeping with the Time Travel theme, here's a really cool philosophical exercise that I have often posed to colleagues and friends over the years. It tells you a lot about yourself; especially, like any good broth, after you have let it simmer for a while:

Time (and obviously money) being no object, list the 10 people that you would most like to be able to spend a day with.

A pretty heavy opportunity when you fully consider it. Future, past, famous, infamous, icons, obscure, the gregarious, the recluse—anyone. The possibilities are seemingly endless. But are they?

Rules:
• No limits on where, when or who (may even be fictional).
• You may alter your list at any time, changing the order of importance or replacing individuals entirely.
• No limit on time to complete your list. In fact, once your list has begun, it never really completely stops.
• Although you may choose to keep it private, you are encouraged to publish it in a comment to this post, so that others may learn from your experience and unique viewpoint. Sharing your values, both with yourself and others, is what this exercise is all about. Feel free to discuss. You may very well change someone else's list; setting them on a new path.

The reason that there is no limit on time to complete or that you may alter it as you go, is that this list is meant to be dynamic and to mature. That's what tells you about yourself. As your mind realizes certain aspects of its own preferences and detractors, the priorities will change—and the list with them.

Certain individuals may have escaped your focus entirely when you began your list. Adding them will bump some off the list. That is a decision only you must make. Sometimes, this is difficult. This period is when the list is most dynamic, often enervating and sometimes surprising.

Aspects of some on the list will come to light that you had overlooked or had discounted originally. This will change their placement in the list, up or down, and may eventually bump some off the list. This sorting, sifting and winnowing is what will lead you to better understand who you are, what you value and that which you wish to learn.

It is a way to take a look at yourself... from outside yourself.

It's been some time since I have adjusted my list. Like all of them, it has been aged and refined over the years. I'll not influence your choices by inserting mine here, but will post it in a sequel, once we have some lists to discuss.

I challenge you...

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1. Sometimes, Foresight Is 20/20
2. Art Glass Paperweights of the Alien Kind

I don't know about you but when I have brain power left over after, and sometimes during, a long day working my magic, I like to explore philosophical questions to see where they lead. Helps to exercise other portions of one's gray matter from time to time and give the previously busy part a needed rest. Everyone deserves a vacation. So, in keeping with the Time Machine thread from the previous post, the question for you today is:

If you could travel back in time 10 years and sit down with yourself for 5 minutes, what would you say?

I know what I'd say. I would remind myself of a conversation I had 14 years prior with a friend in his Brentwood living room one afternoon during one of my Shuttle Mission assignments for NASA Headquarters, where I held a CD in my hand and told him that their days were numbered. They had only recently gained widespread popularity, vinyl was still the mainstream, and he looked at me as if I was totally nuts.

Looking through the crystal ball in my head, as I do from time to time, I said: "They're illogical. Takes spinning this around to retrieve digital data that can be read more efficiently from memory, without involving any moving parts. As soon as chip technology advances far enough to hold an entire album, these things are history. Once that happens, you won't have to go to Tower Records to buy your music. Pop a blank chip into your player, call them up, order the album you want, burn it to the chip. Done. What we need to do is figure out who will develop that high density chip and buy stock now."

Not being a gambling man (I consider dabbling in the Stock Market, when you don't have a seat at the Exchange, to be a bad gamble), I knew that one should never put money in stock that you can't afford to throw right out the window. Who knows how long it would take or how the tech firms would rise and fall while the years passed until the chip was finally developed? Even as the years went by, there was never a lot of disposable income. I didn't buy any stock; instead investing in tools and equipment to work my craft. I figured that this was a better "gamble".

If Foresight does turn out to be 20/20, Hindsight then becomes 20/5... much to your dismay.

The purchase mechanism now isn't exactly as I described that day but pretty darn close. Only the medium changed. The Internet was yet to be released to public use, so didn't factor into the equation at the time. (Yeah, I'm that far ahead of the curve.) The rest of the prediction matches but the capacity has grown ten-thousandfold over one single album. If I had acted on that prediction, I wouldn't be working 42+ hour days (unless it was on something Really Fun) or worrying about much of anything. I'd have the helicopter I always wanted and a twin engine fixed wing to go along with it. There would be a workshop with all of the tools I would need to create whatever came into my mind—and the World would be better for it.
(Did I mention we build Cool Stuff?)

So, here I sit; knowing that 24 years ago I had a vision of the future (there have been many others) that could have made a huge difference in my life as a creator. I've always said: "Given enough time and money, I can do anything." I wonder what things or concepts could have come into reality if I had the money from just that one vision.

What would you say to you?

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1. Your Own Personal Time Machine
2. The Technology of Fire
3. The California Wildfire That Burned Big Sur – Part 5

Each time I observe or participate in a spacecraft launch I wonder at all that we have been able to do with The Technology of Fire.

This earth is born from the cauldron of the stars.
All of the elements that are in it
    were formed in those intense fires.
We have a fire inside that burns ever so gently
    in comparison with the stars.
It is the same fire, but it burns in a very special way.
We are born from this earth.
We rise up out of it and walk around,
    soon to return to its womb.
All of the elements within us are scattered
  throughout the Universe.
We are the Universe come to contemplate itself.

Early in our development we acquired the simple but precious technology of fire. It kept us warm and safe. It also caused great damage if we handled it improperly, for we had no means of control over it.
    In developing that control, we learned other things that we could do with it, aside from keeping warm without burning our house down to the ground. And the technology became more precious.
    In the night we could soon see campfires dotted across the countryside that told us of the existence of others that have developed the technology of fire. In that time we would use rocks that we found on the ground. As weapons, we would throw them to hunt for food or in defense of ourselves; as tools, we would use them to dig or pound them together to make something useful; as building blocks, to house and protect—even for games.

With the grace of God, we have progressed to the point of being able to dig in that same ground from which we have sprung. Take rocks and heat them and pound them into wondrous extensions of ourselves that were unimaginable by our ancestors. Then, using that precious technology once again, throw those rocks off this planet so fast that they will never return, not even to the Sun. These rocks go where we cannot, as yet, travel. They do things that we cannot do. See things beyond our sight. As they go on their journey they tell us of our place in the Universe and chart our course out into it.

We stand at a crucial turning point in our journey. Our advances, up to this point, have largely been fueled by fear. The largest advances in technology came as a result of war. Historically, exploration has been based on economic gain - the chance of riches on the distant shore. If we, now in peacetime and with no perceived pot of gold in the heavens, turn our backs on inquiry and knowledge, for the sake of themselves, surely we are headed for the New Dark Ages. An age from which we may never return.

The Vikings roamed the open ocean
    —they drifted into obscurity.
The Romans once ruled the seas
    —they lost their high position.
The Portuguese held the oceans in the palm of their hand
    —it slipped through their fingers. The Spanish,
  the English,
      the Dutch,
          the French....

We now hold the keys to the New Ocean that lies waiting. Keys that we fought long and hard to attain. Are we to follow our predecessors into the backwaters of history and shirk the responsibility that rests in our hands? Are we only to shrink away from the brink of great discovery because it seemingly cannot be justified as "immediately cost-effective"? What is "cost-effective" when you don't know what you are going to find? What price will we have to pay in the New Dark Ages?

The Fire still burns. Though it's only a glimmer, it still burns.

Beings, Human,
born of Mother Earth,
have set sail
in fragile craft
far above the oceans
of our ancestors.

Adrift in the solar wind,
buffeted by ion storms,
pounded by waves
of cosmic and gamma rays,
we plumb the
unfathomable depths.

As has always been,
we navigate by the stars.

Only now...
they are our destination,
and understanding;
our priceless treasure.

To go and learn is reason enough . . .

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1. Sometimes, Foresight Is 20/20
2. What’s Your Take: One or Many? – Part I
3. What’s Your Take: One or Many? – Part II