In 2001, this movie “Black Knight” starring Martin Lawrence was released. I’ve never seen it, but I know that the idea is that this guy who works at a medieval theme park finds some magic medallion and travels back to 14th century England. I don’t know why, but ever since I saw that trailer, every couple of months I will spend a minute or two thinking about how I would not like to time travel. All I can think about is how stressful it would be to try and accomplish the most basic tasks like finding food and shelter or to communicate with people. I think most of my time spent in a different era would include a lot of sighing. How would I even find the people who might be interested enough in the topic to talk to? What if I decided that I would like to go back to Ancient Greece and tell Socrates that I know he’s not really into writing things down, but that he should really consider it because Plato’s going to put words in his mouth either way, and instead of being zapped directly into Socrates’ house, I find myself instead in a field in central Greece with no means of getting anywhere? I would probably immediately abandon my task.
Obviously all of this is not relevant to this blogging question, but I have actually found it so difficult to think of a time period I would like to go back to. Maybe I would want to go back a few years before Gutenberg and beat him to the punch, or visit William Morris and tell him he’s doing it all right, or tell the women at Cuala Press that I want in… I guess I would be more interested in experiencing a different period of book history rather than being the harbinger of … well, death seems too strong. A harbinger of something though.
I think I ultimately agree with Polina. Maybe I would go back just a couple of years and pat my younger-self’s head, and tell myself that everything is going to be okay, and that we’ll get through this tough time together.
This video of a medieval helpdesk is not necessarily relevant, but still pretty great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
Sally, thanks for the video! Totally made my day, and very relevant to my paper too! Scroll --> codex --> e-book... (not that it's that neat, of course). I wonder what's next...
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