Inside Darren

Last week, Larissa and I watched a short, but extremely thought-provoking documentary entitled Obsessed and Scientific. It was conceived and directed by Jay Cheel, who is a friend of my friend Doug Nagy, and who completed this film as his final project for a film course at Niagara College (where Larissa teaches ESL).

In the course of checking out some of the information presented in the film, I came across the story of a man who goes by the name of John Titor (a pseudonym), and who is mentioned in Obsessed and Scientific rather prominently. Ever since my discovery of the John Titor information, I have been spending almost every waking hour digging into this stuff on the internet, and contemplating the possible ramifications of what I have read.

Now, before I explain anything further, let me preface this WHOLE post by saying that I am not convinced of the validity of this story. But I also cannot say that I am wholly convinced that it is a hoax either. I am approaching this with an open, but healthily skeptical, mind. Having made this disclaimer, allow me to present you with what I have been reading:

Back in late 2000 and early 2001, an individual began posting on a few different internet forums, claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. He was, of course, greeted with the same amount of disbelief and skepticism that you yourself are experiencing as you read these words. However, the more he conversed with people, explaining the means he used to travel through time, the reason he was doing it, and offering some information about his past (our future), the more credible he seemed.

There were many reasons for his perceived credibility. His story was consistent and logical, and was open to verification at several points. In the 5 years that have passed since John Titor’s internet postings, nobody has been able to reliably and absolutely discount these points. He had a specific and well-developed cultural worldview which was consistent with the account of his personal history, but different than most individuals in our culture. He spoke with intelligence and humour, and treated all of the questions asked of him with respectful (and often detailed) answers. He posted photos, diagrams, descriptions, and operating information for the device which he used to travel through time, which nobody has been able to prove false or trace back to a known fabrication. And he seemed to predict certain events and political trends which can be perceived to have taken shape in the ways he described them.

In short, he offered a very believable scenario of one who has actually traveled through time. I would go so far as to say that if anyone ever HAS traveled through time, short of appearing in my living room, there would have been little more that they could have done to demonstrate their legitimacy than what John Titor said and did.

In this series of posts (of which I’m “predicting” there will be three), [Editor: I was wrong - There are four!] I’m going attempt to present to you, my loyal readers, a summary of the major pieces of information surrounding this individual and his claims. In this particular post, I’m going to outline the major events of the future that John Titor claims to be his past, and explain why he was sent through time in the first place. In my next post, I’ll explain the worldview under which John Titor operates, and examine some of the ramifications of this worldview that arise as a result of believing that time travel is possible. My third post on this topic will address the physics of how John’s time travel device operates, and give an account of the experience of time travel in John’s own words. My final post will deal with the question of the credibility (or lack thereof) of John Titor’s story, and give a list of links to other sources of relevant information on this topic.

John Titor claims to have been born in 1998, in the state of Florida. Sometime in late 2004 and early 2005, unrest began to develop in the United States, due to increasing restrictions placed on people’s freedoms in the name of civil security. Homes were being searched by the authorities, and people were often arrested and detained without warrant or due process. This led to an American civil war, which escalated gradually, but which nobody could ignore by 2008.

The war seemed to be between the average US citizens and the state or federal controlled military and policing agencies. Those who decided to flee government harassment moved to rural areas and participated in guerilla warfare attacks against their oppressors, while the urban areas became strongholds of strict government-enforced control.

The destabilization of the USA lead to other ambitious countries taking advantage of the situation, and attempting to expand their global power-bases. China invaded Australia, and the European Union sent an army marching east of Germany. Finally, in 2015, with the civil war still raging in the USA, Russia launched a nuclear attack on China, Europe, and the United States. The American targets were the major city areas, thus eliminating the oppressive government forces, and ending the civil war, albeit at the cost of millions of lives.

John Titor claims to have spent his teens in a militia unit in Florida, and says that both he and his parents survived the war. In the aftermath of the nuclear attack, the American infrastructure was in shambles, and rural communities were forced to provide their own living essentials (growing their own food, manufacturing their own products, etc.) This situation is still the norm in John Titor’s 2036. Many survivors of the nuclear attacks died of starvation, lack of drinkable water, and radiation effects. Few people are able to give birth to healthy children.

The United States of 2036 is organized a bit differently than it is now. The Constitution was amended to protect people’s liberties more, and while all of the territorial states are still intact, they have joined together with neighboring states to form 5 major American territories, each with a separate elected president. These 5 presidents make decisions together, and are elected on a rotating basis. By 2036, much of the American infrastructure has been rebuilt, although drinkable water is still a major concern. Bikes and horses are more common modes of transportation, and there is a public transit system of some sort which links major population centres.

John claims that stable time-travel devices were developed in 2034, and that their existence is not a secret to the people of his time. Not many have been produced, and in 2036, they are all owned by the military, although John said that he believes that there could be commercial time travel happening by 2045. The major components in the time travel device are a pair of small, artificially-created rotating singularities (or black holes) which generate a gravitational distortion field, which is (according to Einstein) a warping of space-time itself. But more on how the machine works in a later post…

John was part of a military team that is sent on various missions through time in order to assist the people of 2036. John himself was assigned to travel to 1975 and procure an IBM 5100 computer, in order to help debug some software issues in his own time. This computer, which was indeed developed in 1975, had the unique features of being both relatively portable, while also being able to translate between various programming languages which are no longer in use, except in old hardware systems that, for various reasons, have not been upgraded. John was selected for this mission because his grandfather was one of the developers at IBM who worked on this computer, and his familial connection with this developer would allow John to both establish his credibility as a time traveler, as well as to secure the help of his grandfather in modifying the computer to translate to UNIX (which has it’s own “Y2K”-type issue that will occur in 2038).

John stated that because of a promise that he made to his grandfather in 1975, he came forward in time to late 2000. John never stated the exact nature of that promise, but speculation online ranges from warning his parents of the impending civil and nuclear wars, to possibly collecting data that helped solve the Y2K crisis, which he could have given back to his grandfather in 1975. While spending time in 2000 and 2001, John stayed with his parents, where he met the past version of himself as a 3 year-old. While this fact alone may seem exceptionally implausible, especially given the fact that the adult John Titor had no memory of receiving a visit from his future self when HE was a child, it does indeed make sense when you understand the nature of how time travel works, according to how John explains it (which I will cover in my next post).

After making a series of internet posts and participating in several online discussion forums between November 2000 and March 2001, John left this time period to go back to 1975, and then forward to 2036. Since his departure, many people have attempted to find holes in his story or to search for clues as to who might be behind a hoax such as this. It’s important to note that John himself did not try to extort money, or seek to gain anything materially from his internet communications - He was only looking for interesting discussion and insights into the culture and beliefs of our time.

If you’d like to look deeper into the story of John Titor, as well as find links to the archives of the posts he made 5 years ago, a good starting place is http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/. You can also find one of the archieves of the forum that John Titor posted to here.

Next: Time Travel 2 - Worldlines

Also in the Time Travel Series:
Time Travel 3 - The Device
Time Travel 4 - The Credibility Question