Time Travel for Beginners

From the beginning, the title of this honors seminar had me hooked. I was looking for an honors seminar to help me fulfill an honors experience and I was immediately intrigued by this class, its title, and its promise to help one chronicle their own past to better understand their future. 

The class ended up consisting of a culmination of timelines that covered a variety of customizable topics, which, for me, ranged from the history of apple pie to the history and future of tech wearables. What I enjoyed most about this class was the ability to personalize the content and timeline assignments to personal interests. As a result, by the end of the semester, each student had had the opportunity to reveal personal interests, stories and opinions that extended far beyond what would have take place in a traditional classroom setting. What was most interesting was watching as personal interests evolved into much larger stories. Each class, when all of our timelines had been pinned up on the wall, one could begin to trace the development of larger, overarching insights that applied to all of humankind no matter what the chosen research topic for the week.

One surprising takeaway from the class was in realizing that, after combing through the past, it makes it that much more difficult to predict the future. As a class, we discussed how there is a tendency for future projections to manifest in either the "dark" or the "light", the negative impacts or the positive. In my opinion, I found it easier to predict the "dark" manifestations based on current events and the overarching themes found within the patterns of previous timelines. Altogether, I found the "light" manifestations to be refreshing, albeit hopeful at times, but in reality I feel like the future is a muddled gray that no one can predict. For me, this class was an interesting exercise in acknowledging and understanding some of the dilemmas that society has faced and predicting the dilemmas society may come to face and where potential respective choices may lead.  

In this class, I've had the opportunity to complete a personal timeline of my life and the things I want to accomplish in the future, a timeline on the history of memes, on the history of apple pie, on the concept of a sharing economy, and on the history of tech wearables. Click here to view the pamphlet style timeline I completed on the history of tech wearables and where they will take us in the future.