The title of this post is half of an old remark of mine: "If life had a fast-forward button I'd be dead." I was thinking about this today and wondered what it would be like to have such a device.
What if you could fast-forward through a bad day -- or week or month or year? Imagine that you could do this and add the notion that you'd age appropriately. In other words, you'd be that much older when you let go of the button. You would remember the time you missed but would never have experienced it as a first-person event. Would you use this device?
The span is what gets wild when you think about this. For instance, if I had possessed a magic fast-forward button when I was a kid in the 1950s -- I'd have skipped the whole damned decade. Life was far too dull in those days. Which means I would have missed my childhood -- I could live with a deal that.
So that's the question. Given access to a device like this all your life, how much time would you have skipped?
What if you could fast-forward through a bad day -- or week or month or year? Imagine that you could do this and add the notion that you'd age appropriately. In other words, you'd be that much older when you let go of the button. You would remember the time you missed but would never have experienced it as a first-person event. Would you use this device?
The span is what gets wild when you think about this. For instance, if I had possessed a magic fast-forward button when I was a kid in the 1950s -- I'd have skipped the whole damned decade. Life was far too dull in those days. Which means I would have missed my childhood -- I could live with a deal that.
So that's the question. Given access to a device like this all your life, how much time would you have skipped?
