If you travel back in time, let’s say, 200 years, knowing the same things you know now, what “new ideas” could you actually propose? Do you know how it works well enough to recreate it in the past?
I stumbled upon this question, and it gave me a few interesting thoughts. Would you be able to explain most things that you use daily today, such as how to create electricity, a silicon chip, a battery, a combustion motor, a gas stove, or a toilet discharge?
My first thought was that most people don’t really know how most stuff works (me included), so it will be hard to propose something “new”.
However, it quickly reminded me that our thinking is highly connected with the context and materials we interact with. Objects and artifacts are like an extension of our brains, conditioning them for the better or worse. In other words, ideas, materials, and actions deeply influence each other.
If we go back to science fiction from the late 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, we will notice that most of the imagined “technology” was highly grounded in the current technology of that time. For example, French toy manufacturer Armand Gervais commissioned a set of illustrated cards to imagine the year 2000, drawn by Jean-Marc Côté and other artists for the 1900 Paris World Exhibition.
Enclosed in cigarette packs and postcards, the images reveal how deeply visions of the future were shaped by the materials and artifacts of their own era: Machinery and industry dominate, with eggs hatched in incubators, tailoring assisted by contraptions, fields harvested by giant combines, and gatling guns mounted on cars or flying battleships. Yet the imagination rarely escaped the technological grammar of the time; propellers whir everywhere, radium fuels a fireplace, and characters wear obviously 19th-century dress.
Some flights of fancy were also present, like underwater croquet or a whale bus, which reflect more whimsy than foresight. The cards fell into oblivion after Gervais’ death, until rediscovered some decades later and eventually republished by Isaac Asimov in 1986, the famous science fiction writer, republished them in Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000, offering a window into how past generations projected the future through the lens of their own tools and cultural artifacts.
This reminds me of the Possible Adjacent theory from the biologist Stuart Kauffman. In his theory, he proposes that we can only create things that don’t jump to a level of the possible adjacent; that is, our (possible) creations are always based on what came before and what could come after it. If you live in a time where electricity doesn’t exist, for example, creating electrical devices is not an option.
For example, in a study of time-travel streaming series by Lisete Barlach, she demonstrated how the development and implementation of any innovation will be confronted with societal, economic, and technological limitations of a certain historical time.
Of course, looking back into the past could give us a few insights, but it can also detach us from the reality, context, and materials of it – after all, we weren’t alive back then to know the feeling. So, let’s draw on a more recent day’s example.
On April 28th, 2025, mainland Portugal, peninsular Spain, Andorra, and parts of southwest France went dark for several hours. The causes of the blackout are still unknown, and maybe we will never actually know what really happened. But what was most curious was how people reacted to it: some just activated their Covid-19 Pandemic Mode and went straight to the supermarket to buy apocalypse-like supplies. Others, facing a world without internet (what was probably most missed), went to the next-door coffeeshop or pub to drink and chat with colleagues and friends.
As a member of the last generation to have lived in the analogical world (a.k.a., the Millennials), it fascinates me to observe how people react when their (especially digital) world disappears, even if for just a few hours (curiously, Millennials included). As Cal Newport puts it:
“I increasingly worry that as we live more and more of both our personal and professional lives in the undifferentiated abstraction of the digital, we lose touch with what it’s like to grapple with the joys and difficulties of the real world: to feel real awe, or curiosity, or fascination, and not just an algorithmically-optimized burst of emotion; to see our intentions manifest concretely in the world, and not just mechanically measured by view counts and likes.”
Just like Jeff Jarvis said (and I’m using his words here), “I will not argue that technology in the past or in the present seals any particular fate; I am no technological determinist. Nor will I pine for what we are losing; I am neither a nostalgist nor a revolutionary but instead aim to be a realist about the change occurring”. However, just like travelling into the future would be extremely odd if you don’t know how some innovations were possible, travelling back in time would have the same effect, leaving us completely detached from that reality. In other words, we are people from our times.
But if I may use this space for reflection, I would propose that the fact that we don’t know how our daily stuff works is maybe a sign that most of these things are not necessarily needed. Modernity brought a lot of good stuff, but it also brought a lot of noise. We are probably more capable of solving problems that someone from the 19th century would never imagine, but at the same time, we have way more problems than they did to solve daily. In other words, because we are so caught up in the noise, we simply don’t remember most of the time how to slow down, sit back, and enjoy life.
So here is an exercise for you. In his book Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs proposed that “personal density is proportionate to temporal bandwidth, and reading works of the past is an excellent way to increase that bandwidth without suffering.” To imagine yourself living in another place or time, it’s a deliberate practice to see yourself anew through the lens of unfamiliar circumstances. This exercise enriches your sense of who you are and what it means to belong to the broader world.
At a time when education often emphasizes technical skills over reflective growth, the act of imagining another life can be a profound tool for cultivating empathy, perspective, and self-awareness. Alan Jacobs even suggested that writing such an imagined life could serve as a capstone project for every university student, a chance not only to demonstrate critical thinking and creativity but also to confront the essential question of how one’s identity is shaped by context, history, and chance.
Finally, in an era where organizations demand ever more creativity and innovation, it is essential to acknowledge that our imagination is still constrained by the materials and knowledge available to us today. Emerging technologies such as AI may expand our sense of what is possible — sometimes in thrilling, sometimes in troubling ways — but possibility is never limitless. We are bound to the tools and knowledge at hand, so the challenge is to use the present wisely.