Is it wrong, or essential, to send Art into the past?

It has recently been suggested by scientists that information, such as audio or visual data may be able to be sent through time before it will be possible to send physical objects. One piece of music by Mozart was suggested to be the historic first piece of information to be sent back. Now , this raises some very interesting questions. What if that piece of Mozart's music was sent back to a time before Mozart composed it? And what if someone else passed if off as their music? What if it changed the development of modern music? This could be true of any art that is sent back? The book 1984 sent back to 1750 for example. Or the Mona Lisa sent back to 500BC? What if an historical fictional novel influenced real historical events because someone interpreted it in a certain way?

The question has also been raised concerning how these objects or information would ’arrive’ back in time as the theory goes that you can only send information back to a time after the first time machine has been invented. But, just because the public doesn’t know it has been invented doesn’t mean there isn’t one already in existence and for hundreds of years possibly? Some speculate the Egyptians used the pyramids for transporting things through time and that is the basis for much theory about the use of the pyramids.

Assuming then that in theory the information or object could go back in the current timeline, how would they appear? Would they only appear at the location of the individual who owned the time machine? (That might make that person, or organisation, quite powerful and would be a very good reason not to go public with the time device they have in their possession. Therefore the public would assume no such device exists) They would also gain power from having scientific/technological/historical information sent back, but that is another point. Would the objects randomly appear in space? For example you send back the Mona Lisa and it is 'discovered' by someone in a cave. Or, and this raises questions about originality, inspiration and creativity, would the information be transported through space and time as an idea? That people could pick up the information as waves, even without knowing where the information came from, thinking it is their idea? Mozart is sitting around one day and just happens to be inspired to write the piece of music sent back in time and space from the future of the music he has ‘already’ written?

Is it therefore wrong then to send back Art as it could interfere with the normal flow of creativity of the great artists such as Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci? Or will we discover in the future that much of the ‘past’ artistic genius has been 'inspired' by us sending back art through time and space?


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[edit on 18-7-2008 by UFOpsychiczebra]

Maybe it is essential for humanity to send art back in time so that it can be experienced by early man and assimilated in to their collective psyche, thus paving the way for it to be redeveloped centuries later. It is also possible that this has already (metaphysically speaking) happened.

We're already sending art and music backwards and forwards through time with our minds since we're all connected to the collective unconscious which is timeless. Past and future aren't solid. All that truly exists is the moment.

But that kind of sending, if being done, is being done without the conscious knowledge of the sender. What I am talking about is conscious sending of art/information with full conscious knowledge of the information being sent.

There are a number of issues to address.

1. If it's going to happen, it's already happened. That is to say, nothing in our experience will change because as far as we can tell that time loop has always been there.
2. You start off by saying that information will be transmitted before objects, but then speculate a physical form of that information later in your post. We could get into "what is information" debates... or we can gloss past that and discuss ways that information can be broken down and or encoded into something at the quantum level. The trick then, is having the capability at some point in the past to reconstruct and decode those "atoms of information" into something recognizable. To me, this is a bit more interesting... If we've got computers translating text into ones and zeros, and those ones and zeros could be turned into, say, left-quarks & right-quarks, and those quarks shifted through space/time, could Babbage's difference engine take those quarks and shift them back into a tapestry that he'd recognize as text?

Originally posted by JoshNorton
There are a number of issues to address.

1. If it's going to happen, it's already happened. That is to say, nothing in our experience will change because as far as we can tell that time loop has always been there.
   

Not necessarily. Some believe that the loops you hint at are in fact more spiral like. Therefore, we may see changes. They may even be constant.

You start off by saying that information will be transmitted before objects,

No. I speculated that it is more probable that information will be transmitted before physical objects according to the current physics research on the subject. However, it should be noted that teleportation may make physical objects able to be ‘transported’ through time before information alone. Teleportation of information has already been proven scientifically, it could also be interpreted that teleportation of matter is merely the transfer of energy as the original information of the physical object is used to 'create' an instant copy of the object while the original still exists in its place in space and time.

... but then speculate a physical form of that information later in your post.

See answer above. Also, I would like to point out that my post was intended to stimulate discussion and debate of the subject. I was not trying to expound an absolute conclusion on the subject.

... If we've got computers translating text into ones and zeros, and those ones and zeros could be turned into, say, left-quarks & right-quarks, and those quarks shifted through space/time, could Babbage's difference engine take those quarks and shift them back into a tapestry that he'd recognize as text?

All communication we currently use requires the 'coding' and 'decoding' to enable its transport, teleportation and time travel are the natural next steps on this path of communication.