The idea of time travel has always been fascinating to me, and in my lifetime I would like to see that technology be accessible. If I were to travel somewhere for a short period of time, it would be the Middle Ages in Europe. This part of history has always been interesting to me (as I am currently watching Game of Thrones), and I would like to see how accurate our depiction of this time period really is. I’m sure with historians and archeologists have pieced together a good idea of what it was like, but I would still like to immerse myself in the culture of the time for a short while. Our generation has grown up with technology all around us, and we certainly take that for granted. It would be a good experience for any of us to leave all technology behind for a certain period of time and truly live off of the land, which is the only way of life that the people of the middle ages knew. I think most of us would lose our minds after more than a few days not being able to have many of the commonplace things that we do not even consider technology.
In Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Hank Morgan travels back in time to the days of King Arthur (around 600AD) where there is little to no technological advancements. I wouldn’t have even thought about not having glass, and I do not think society has considered glass as “technology” for hundreds of years. Not having windows and never being able to see your own face is a shocking thought to me, and one that I will probably not take for granted again. Not only was the technology of the day primitive, but also so were the ideologies of the masses. Clarence, a boy in King Arthur’s castle, was scared beyond belief at the fact that Merlin has cast spells all over the castle that would do harm if spoken out against him. This seems silly to Hank, as it should, but it also puts things in perspective for me a little bit. As a man of science myself, I know that we are always making new discoveries, and disproving old theories. In the 600’s, they did not know any better, and believed in the idea of magic without question. This makes me think about what things we currently believe in that people hundreds of years from now will find preposterous. I would like to believe that our advancements in STEM have been sufficient enough where we don’t have any laws of nature completely backwards, and that everything I’ve learned in school so far is not a waste and we are not actually part of the matrix, but hey you never know.