So I've built my time machine, where do I go?

well i would travel to the near future when this thread is full of great ideas.

if anyone says “Go back and kill Hitler”, i’m preemptively calling dibs on going back and killing you before you kill him. It’s the oldest time travel cliche out there.

Go back in time and take this with you.

I would do something involving the stock market. Maybe go back to when Google went public, or Starbucks took off, or something like that.

@eponymoushipster Kind of a dick move, even in the name of cliche-slaying…

@wildpotato no, it’s too cliched. “i’d kill hitler, i’d kill napoleon…” etc. that’s too obvious, plus it’s consequences would be too far reaching.

besides, the Vulcan Science Directorate has determined time travel to be impossible.

I would go forward, find out which ones of you have done anything of note, then go back and kill all of you, including the OP, just for kicks.

Go back and k—Oh. Nevermind.

I’d go back and watch this.

@MacBean – why?

@the100thmonkey: Because I’m morbid and creepy.

Go meet Jesus and see what all the fuss was about. Don’t sit in at the last supper with your old navy shirt though and ruin the painting.

I’d go ahead and see if humans have started that colony on a planet near the Eagle Nebula yet. Only thing is, the PIllars of Creation are probably gone already. I would’ve loved to see those. :(

Oh, wait, d’uh! Time machine!

I’d go back to give John and Cynthia Lennon some marriage counseling. That way, there’d be no Yoko in the picture, and there would be tons more Beatles music.

Back a few weeks ago to tell me I need to get more organized.

yep…I’d go and find out what was the truth about jesus and paul and peter and the lost bloody samaritan and that dude that turned the other cheek… cause he really messed things up for me

First, I’d go back and see if Achilles really existed.

Then I’d go talk to Albert Einstein.

I can only make one decision? I can’t go forward and backwards too?

@JLeslie Go back in time, then when it’s time to go back to normal, set it to right before you take off and go to the future and hope you don’t rip apart the time-space continuum.

@rangerr So if I miscalculate I could be lost in space for years?

I would go back, hoping to avoid a chronic illness I developed.

Wait, are we just observers? Or, are we interacting with the past and future? Or, do we become our younger or olderselves, but with the knowledge from present day?

@sebastian_von_tulu We have technical questions!

I would like to go back to some more hopeful time, when the possibilities seemed limitless. I think it might be nice to go back to ancient Athens where one could say with only slight exaggeration that the philosophers invented thinking. Or maybe to go back to the U.S. just after the Revolutionary War, when people had a sense of living in a new world with new democratic ideals with much to explore and discover. I have mixed feelings about traveling to the future. I am curious to know how things turn out, but am apprehensive about what I might find out.

I’d go back and tackle Steve Bartman

I’d also like to go back and see if Helen of Troy was really that good looking. While I’m at it, I’d like to check out Cleopatra and see if she really had a nice asp.

I’d like to go back to Regency England and be Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra. Then I’d get to be the recipient of Jane’s wittiest letters and I wouldn’t burn the most salacious ones after she died.

Second runner-up would be getting to meet Leonardo da vinci.

In the words of Red Dwarf:
RIMMER: Think of the famous people we could meet, the famous places we could go.
KRYTEN: We could go back to Dallas, in November 1963, stand on the grassy knoll and shout “Duck!”

I would definitely go forward. As far as possible. I want to see what’s going to happen. I don’t really care about the past. The past is an important story, but it’s already happened. It’s what will happen that interests me.

Go to January 1st 2013, so you can come back and tell us that the worry about the Mayan prophesy is a farce!!

@JLeslie @rangerr You can interact and go back and forth as you wish but your younger/older self will also exist in that time. Meeting yourself won’t cause any problems to the space time continuum. However, there might be some psychological issues to deal with.
I’m far too hungover for time travel.

Try a few time periods out. I think I’d like the roaring 20’s or perhaps a nice stay in the pre-civil war south for a bit. Definitely visit the 1960’s and see some of the great musicians in action. Then go forward, to infinity and beyond!

I always wanted to see the real Jurassic park, say for two hours or so. A safari comes to mind to see some brachiosaurus. So my time machine is set to 170,000,000 BC. I’d take some present day atmosphere with me and keep it inside my time machine. It is also equipped with a multi-targeting photon torpedo array. Just in case.

I’d go to see Einstein and Carl Sagan.
And I would also like to go see jesus(if he really existed)to see if see is really a God

I go with the beginning of IBM and microsoft!

@sebastian_von_tulu Yeah, Spock mentioned that it was a myth that meeting oneself in another time is catastrophic. Thanks. I want to go back in time to see if I can change my health, and in the future to see what it will be like.

I would definitely like to be part of the Haight-Ashbury ferment.

I would go to New Jersey.

Oh yes! My time machine.

Thank you everyone for your answers and taking part. :)

Now if I can just get this go-kart to reach 88.8mph…