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If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how

Assume that the future can change based on your actions, so any historical information that you bring along with you from the intervening 25 years may quickly drift out of the new realities history.

Edit: also assume that you can be given a healthy 21-year-old body if you want or take your previous self's place.

Further, identification will be provided for you if you were not born at that time.

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  • Like the other person mentioned their family, I would say that about my friends and other relations. I don't think it's possible for me to redo my life in a way that my decade old friendships would be the same (or even better) than what they became. I don't even know if I will feel the same about my friends if I decide to relive my life as memory is a precarious thing and I can't rely on how I feel about them to last until I meet them again and live life interacting with them while trying to change the world.

    I could consider a 21yo body but as a millennial I would end up overaged for the people who were important in my life to have any meaningful relation with them.

    I have considered the scenario of reliving my life, correcting my mistakes and maybe making some massive changes along the way, if I could somehow guarantee keeping the things that matter to me the same.


    I forgot to write what things I would do, so here are some ideas:

    • Investing is an obvious one which everyone else has also mentioned.
    • I would download all the open source stuff, all leaked files, maybe even scour the dark web for stuff
    • Buy NeXt to hire jobs as the CEO of my tech company (also any other corporations that I could buy back then, like Google)
    • I'll create a note with ideas that were killed too soon or didn't last due to tampering by big corps, and products which got enshittified and implement them when there's no competition or wait for when I have enough money to not worry about people getting in my way.
    • I'll create a note with mention of all the important events (multiple notes, encrypted, to prevent someone from using that information)
    • Put an offline LLM and other AI on my phone (along with very reliable chargers and replacement batteries).
    • (Kind of a sub point of above, but it got big) I'll try to take a phone with replaceable batteries and sturdy design. It would be great if it could fit in that time, I'll disable the touch screen to that effect and only use a stylus, and other changes to make it seem worse or maybe take a "bad" phone from the start. I'll also claim it's an experimental product if someone asks me about it.
    • A list of my favourite recipes, so that I can be a food trailblazer
    • Start my own music company and invest in artists which I know will be big in the future, give them better terms than my competition and use that roster to prepare for streaming. I'll already have Jobs and Ive to design iPod and take over that period.
    • With RISC-V as my chip, I'll buy one of the fabs which went under back then and use it to establish myself as a chip manufacturer and once I have built up enough lead in the fab business with knowledge gathered before going back I'll open source RISC-V as an act of benevolence according to the world (I'll discuss the future fab knowledge with the researchers I will acqui-hire with the fab, they should be able to create something in a few years with whatever knowledge I can provide, I'll just have to act as a layman with more knowledge and if I go with my age they'll think I'm a smart kid)
    • I didn't mention crypto because that might change with the chip info I bring back, so I'll see if that happens again and invest early and secretly to have enough of it to have a hand in that too.
    • I'll also try to keep my identity hidden so that I can live the important parts of my life again as they were, and once I have lived those I'll consider if I need to be known to the world.
    • I'll prepare media organizations to fight disinformation
    • I'll bring back innovations in renewables that I'll slowly release into the world.
    • Forgot to mention in the edit, so adding as a new comment:

      I'll bring back my story ideas and complete them and publish them as books, it'll let me pretend that I have an active imagination as a writer and that I just got lucky with the lottery and used it to put money in tech that fascinated me and just was good at imagining tech.

      I'll do a fast forward course of comp-sci to present RISC-V based on that and use common terminology to explain it as much as possible.

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