ldopa.net

1. Get a time machine. (This step seems difficult, but it gets easier later on in the process).
2. Wait to use the time machine until late in your life, then travel back in time.
3. Meet up with your younger self.
4. Give them the time machine (see?), and teach them of all the major and minor technological advancements during your lifetime — your older self will have experienced much more than your younger self, so there will be much to tell. Your older self will then be able to live out your twilight years in the period of your youth, which is a pretty good deal.
5. Because your younger self now has all the knowledge of your older self, your younger self will be able to make even more technological progress during their lifetime than you did previously the “first” time through.
6. Loop and repeat the process when your younger self is old again. After enough iterations, you will be able to have given 1,000 generations worth of technological advancement to the world in the span of one lifetime. You’ll also probably be worshipped by all the people of the Earth as a living God, which is quite a nice side benefit.

EXTRA CREDIT: At the end of your 1,000-year iteration, go back in time, kill the original time-traveller (you), then go forward in time 1,000 years. How does your 1,000 year ‘loop’ of technological progress match up with the ‘actual’ 1,000 years of technological progress? Explain. (WARNING: this creates paradoxes.)

~jeff