Monthly Archives: February 2009

Identity/Incognito

Scarlett Johannsen comes to me and says that she wants to do an experiment in identity. She wants to try and “go incognito” in a crowd of people.

I help her get dressed and fix her hair so she looks ordinary. The goal is to make her look unrecognizable to people who might meet her on the street.

She goes and stands around in an open courtyard area. After a while people come and talk to her and make casual conversation. One guy talks to her for a while and then goes on his way.

I chase after him and inquire if he would be willing to answer a couple of questions, like it’s a survey. He agrees and I ask him if he recognized that the woman he was talking to was a movie star. He said he did not know that. Then I ask if he recognized Scarlett Johannsen and he was surprised, because he had no idea.

Time Travel Technology

Friedman and I working on a project involving time travel. We have developed technology that enables us to send people back in time. However, once they’re in the past, they have no way to communicate with us. To get them back to the current day we have to go and find them in the past, which is difficult.

As a result, we are concerned about rogue agents going back into the past, getting lost or feeling isolated, and then taking actions that would damage the timelne. We are trying to develop a way for people in the past to communicate with us in the present. We’re exploring options like having them carve messages into stones in caves.

I test out the system by going short distances back in time and sending messages to the future. When I’m in the past I run into past-Friedman who has no idea what’s going on and keeps asking what I’m doing. I tell him I’m from the future but that isn’t a satisfactory explanation to him.