John Titor the Mystery man of Internet forums or really time traveller ?

John Titor the time traveler from 2036 is it real or Hoax....? In early November 2000 a poster showed up in few internet forums claiming himself a time traveler and then he identified himself as john titor a time traveller from the year 2036... in his posts he made a numerous predictions which were both vague and quiet specific.

Titor's posts sparked an intense debate on the Internet, with some people dismissing the claims, and others defending them. In the time since Titor left the forums, the predictions for events that were supposed to occur by now have all failed to occur (as of January 2008).

Nevertheless, the Titor postings still have their supporters, who are quick to explain away these predictive failings. As many will recall, one of the first things Titor did was post pictures of his time machine and his operations manual. As the days, weeks, and months went by, people began questioning Titor about his presence "in our timeline", the seeming impossibility of the physics of time travel and his thoughts about the issues of our time. He also posted on other Internet discussion boards including the old Art Bell site. In his posts John Titor often entertained, enraged, frightened and belittled those who engaged him in mostly one-sided conversation.

On March 24, 2001, John Titor announced he would be leaving our time and returning to 2036. After that, he was never heard from again. Speculation and investigation about who John Titor was and why he was online (curiously focusing his efforts on conspiracy community discussion boards) continues to this day.However, as time goes by, many point to current-day details that seem to corroborate Titor's stories, and even others feel his exact predictions have come to pass. Others have even compiled his contributions into the
book, John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale.

Titor's posts................................................

The name "John Titor" was not introduced until January 2001 when TimeTravel_0 began posting at the Art Bell BBS Forums (which required a name, real or not, to sign up for an account). The Titor posts ended in late March 2001. Eventually, a number of the threads became corrupted, but Titor's posts had been saved on peoples' hard drives and were copied to Anomalies.net along with new discussions of the science behind Titor's time travelling as well as his predictions.[4] Around 2003, various websites reproduced Titor's posts, re-arranging them into narratives. Not all refer to the original dates posted.

Outline

In his online postings, Titor claimed to be an American soldier from the year 2036, based in Tampa in Hillsborough County, Florida who was assigned to a governmental time travel project. He had been sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer which he said was needed to "debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036; a reference to the UNIX 2038 timeout error. The 5100 runs the APL, and BASIC programming languages. Titor had been selected for this mission specifically due to the fact his paternal grandfather was directly involved with the building and programming of the 5100.

Titor claimed to be on a stopover in the year 2000 for "personal reasons," to collect pictures lost in the civil war, and was visiting his family; Titor spoke of his family often. Titor also said he had been, for a few months, trying to alert anyone that would listen about the threat of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease spread through beef products, and about the possibility of civil war in the United States. Titor also had expressed an interest in unexplained mysteries when questioned about it by an online poster, such as UFOs (which in his time were still as yet unexplained). Titor suggested that UFOs and alien visitors may well be time travelers from much further into the future than his own time, and with much more accurate time machines than his own.

Time machine

Titor described the time machine on several occasions. In an early post, he described it as a "stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a "standard off-set Tipler sinusoid". The earliest post was more explicit, saying it contained:

* Two magnetic housing units for the dual micro singularities
* An electron injection manifold to alter mass and gravity micro singularities
* A cooling and X-ray venting system
* Gravity sensors, or a variable gravity lock
* Four main caesium clocks
* Three main computer units

Some of the Predictions of john titor!!!

• Why are you posting messages on the Internet?

JOHN TITOR: I’ve been trying to alert anyone to the possibility of a civil war in the United States. To see it unfold is very interesting. I realize no one will actually believe me, and I’m not sure you should.

• Tell us how the war started. Who was involved? Who won?

Civil war in the United States will start in 2005. The conflict flares up and down, but the year 2008 was a general date when everyone realized the world they were living in was over.
Time Travel: John Titor's Startling Predictions When the civil conflict got worse, people generally decided to either stay in the cities and lose most of their civil rights under the guise of security, or leave the cities for more isolated and rural areas. The conflict consumed everyone in the U.S. by 2012 and ended with a very short World War III.

• How can we survive the war?

If you want to survive the coming conflict, learn to let fear keep you alive. Too many of you turn off the life-saving natural instincts and premonitions when it’s convenient. The same person who has five dead-bolt locks on their door will think nothing about getting into a parking-garage elevator with a total stranger. If you want to live, keep your eyes open.

• How does your time machine work?

The basics of time travel will begin for you at CERN in about a year when they announce their ability to create microsingularities, and end in 2034 with the building of the first “time machine.” The unit I have is called a GE C204 gravity-distortion unit. It’s about 5-feet-long and 2-feet-by-2-feet square. The C204 unit is accurate from 50 to 60 years a jump and travels at about ten years an hour at 100% power.

During operation the C204 is usually placed inside a vehicle. The gravity field generated by the unit overtakes you very quickly. You feel a tug toward the unit similar to rising quickly in an elevator, and it continues to rise based on the power setting. Outside, the vehicle appears to accelerate as the light is bent around it. After that, it appears to fade to black and remains totally black outside the vehicle until the unit is turned off.

• Can you travel to a place and time of your choice?

The distortion unit has operational limits. The unit I have begins to “break away” at about 60 years. In other words, if I wanted to go back 2,000 years and meet Christ, there is a good chance I would end up on a worldline where he was never born.

• What would happen if you met yourself in another timeline?

Nothing would happen. The universe is made up of infinite worldlines where everything is possible and has a 100% chance of happening. Therefore, there are no paradoxes. The Everett-Wheeler Model is correct. [There exist parallel universes in which anything that can happen does happen.] It has always surprised me why that concept is so hard for people to imagine and accept. I have met or seen myself twice on different worldlines. I was born in 1998; so the other “me” is two [years old] on your worldline.

• How does your original worldline differ from ours?

The fact that I’m here makes it different. I would guess the temporal divergence between this worldline and my original is about 2%. Of course, the longer I am here, the larger that divergence becomes from my point of view. I get home by going back before I arrived and then going forward to 2036. If I go forward to “your” 2036 now, it would probably look nothing like mine. Under multiple-world theory, there are an infinite number of “homes” that I could return to that don’t have me there. I can never get back to the exact worldline I left, but I can get back to a worldline that is so close, no one would know the difference.

• Why do people travel in time?

The reason we use time travel in 2036 is to get information or items that would be helpful in 2036. Right now most of our practical missions are from 1960 to 1980. I was sent to 1975 to get an IBM computer system called the 5100. It was one of the first portable computers made with the unique ability to read older IBM programming languages. We need the system in 2036 to “debug” various legacy programs that are used in larger mainframe computers.

• Can you tell us what 2036 is like?

In 2036 I live in Florida with my family, and I’m currently stationed at an Army base in Tampa. I was born in 1998; so I do share some childhood memories with all of you. Life is centered more on the family and then the community. I cannot imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents. People spend more time talking to each other and their neighbors. I’ve noticed the same effect here when the power goes off.

There is a lot more personal trust and less paranoia. There is no large industrial complex creating masses of useless food and recreational items. Food and livestock are grown and sold locally. People spend much more time reading. Religion is taken seriously, and everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.

• What can you tell us about our immediate future?

Since I will eventually be leaving this worldline, I could easily tell you all sorts of things that would happen in the next few years. Unfortunately, your worldline is already 2% different from mine, and there’s no way to give you absolute facts about future events. When the day comes for my “prediction” to be realized, it may happen or it may not. In fact, the information I give you will allow someone to affect the outcome based on the prediction itself. If what I say does happen, then your ability to judge your environment is crippled by your acceptance of me as a prophet. If I am wrong, then everything I have said that might possibly have made you think about your world in a different way is suddenly discredited. I do not want either. You are able to change your worldline just as I am. Can you stop the civil war before it gets here? Sure. Will you do it? Probably not.

• What are the major health concerns in the future?

A great many people are still dying from CJD [Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease]. I want to emphasize how devastating this disease will be for you in the future. We only eat meat that we raise ourselves. Do not eat or use products from any animal that is fed and eats parts of its own dead. The “Mad Cow” story here is yet to begin.

• What does time travel do to religion?

Since every possible outcome, event and possibility is happening and will happen, then all good and all evil must balance out in the universe. After the reality of multiple worlds sank into our collective thought, the one basic change to all religious dogma is the concept that good and evil does not exist as an organized force in our lives, nor can it be used as a useful way to judge what God may think of a situation.

Good and evil are personal experiences that can only guide what we do as individuals and how we relate to others. This outlook also makes it impossible for me to judge any other person or event. Since we cannot see the entire universe as God sees it, we will never be gods or be capable of accurately judging anything outside of ourselves. My actions can only be judged as good and bad by me and my God.

• Does the ability to know what’s going to occur help convince people you’re a time traveler?

Consider that you are a time traveler who goes back in time to the first week of February 1970, and you are confronted with the same problem. What do you remember right now about the second week of February 1970?

Naturally, the conflict in Vietnam and the Middle East came up, but as someone has already stated here, that wouldn’t be any more convincing than it is now. I suppose I could predict the failure of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, but since time travel is ridiculous, I would be blamed for sabotage.

• What surprises you the most about our time period?

I like the incredible freedom you have, but I see it as a trap. The cost is the loss of your sense of connection with family and community. Yes, you can self-actualize your ambitions, but at what cost to the people around you or yet to be born? The incredible availability of art, literature and limitless resources is hardly taken advantage of as you sit in front of your TVs every day.

• What would our government do if they found you?

I would probably end up in a nice little padded cell while they poked at my machine with a screwdriver. I’m really not that worried. First, they would have to believe in time travel; and second, stupidity and greed are fairly predictable. In my experience, evil may be powerful, but it isn’t very bright.

• How did you feel about the President in 2005 and 2009?

The President or “leader” in 2005 tried desperately to hold the country together, but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights. The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.

• Do you think that war is immoral?

I disapprove of murder. Man as a species is incapable of changing his nature through will alone, and war is a tool of biology. The ability for war sleeps in each one of us, and we must decide what we will do before it awakens. As for morality, again I point to the universal balance of good and evil. For every worldline where there is peace, there is a worldline that has destroyed itself.

• It sounds as if you think a war would benefit us.

I have an example that’s closer to my situation: You are a time traveler who wishes to go back in time to 1941 because your grandparents live close to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. You realize you can’t stop the war, but you may be able to help them prepare for it. Strangely, December 7 comes and goes with no sneak attack. As the war in Europe rages on, Japan fails to join the Axis power, there is no war in the Pacific, and the United States remains neutral. Then you watch as Germany begins to develop the atomic bomb all by itself. What would you do?

As far as war goes, I have faith you are quite capable of starting one all by yourself. I am hard pressed to accept any criticism of my outlook on that subject. Personal responsibility, determination, honor, friendship and self-reliance are not just words we fantasize about in the future. I watch every day what you are doing as a society. While you sit by and watch your Constitution being torn away from you, you willfully eat poisoned food, buy manufactured products no one needs and turn an uncaring eye away from millions of people suffering and dying all around you.

Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that. I think a war would be good for you and your society. I don’t want to stop it, nor would I if I could.

• Is there anything you want us to know before you return to 2036?

One very disturbing thing I have noticed about your society is your blind acceptance of what you are told. Do you really think the news industry doesn’t have an agenda? Do you really think those hamburgers you stuff into your body are safe?

• Do you really think your government is telling you the truth? What proof do you have of any of that?

I often hear, “If time travel is real, where are all the time travelers?” Quite frankly, you all scare the hell out of us. In trying to help you, we put ourselves at great risk, and there’s really no point to it. Since worldlines, outcomes and events are infinite, we have better things to do.

Predictive failures

The posts were met with skepticism when they were being posted, but it was impossible to prove beforehand that they would not happen. Titor claimed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics was correct, effectively meaning that his travel was from a parallel universe and things could occur differently than he'd predicted. This makes his claims unfalsifiable. At any rate the predictions have failed to come true in this time line.

One of Titor's earliest claims was that CERN would discover the basis for time travel some time around 2001. This event did not occur. An article about miniature black holes being created by CERN (a recurring theme, also ascribed to Fermilab and Brookhaven at various times[14]) was taken by some to be evidence of this claim, but these events did not occur either. Civil war did not break out after the 2004 presidential elections, and though Titor claimed that the 2004 Summer Olympics would be the last to be held, the successful 2006 Winter Olympics demonstrated this claim to be wrong as well although some speculate he might have been strictly talking about Summer games, in which case it remains to be seen.

Problems with the technology

The image of the laser pointer's beam being "bent" has the obvious problem that objects around the beam are not bent. For instance, the framing of the window visible in the background should be distorted if there was a large gravity gradient in the area, but it is not. Some have speculated the "beam" is an optical fiber.[15]

Titor claimed that he was sent back to obtain an IBM 5100 because it could translate several types of computer code. According to IBM engineer Bob Dubke, Titor's statements regarding the IBM 5100's little-known ability to emulate and debug mainframe systems were correct.[16] Supporters state that this information was not publicly available in 2000 or 2001 when Titor made his declaration.[17] and Titor himself stated that this feature was "discovered (or at least known after testing)" as late as 2036.[18]

However, this capability was actually widely known in the industry, and commented on in depth in numerous publications, both about the 5100 and APL in general.[19] References to this fact were also available on the Internet as early as 1999. This is a fairly obscure bit of trivia, however, which suggests whoever was making the posts was familiar with the machine, or had an interest in retrocomputing.[20]

Problems with the story

An examination of the claims also suggests several problems with the story. For instance, in some posts Titor claims that money is widely used and people still have credit cards despite his statement that centralized banking no longer exists. In another post he speculated that today's dollar would be usable in his time, but this would be after the reorganization of the federal government according to his own history, potentially making the currency worthless.

Numerous commenters have pointed out the broad similarities between the Titor story and Pat Frank's classic post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, Alas, Babylon.[22] Alas, Babylon takes place in a small town in Florida just before and after a nuclear war, and describes the struggle to survive as a family in the aftermath.

John simultaneously claims: "There are also no income taxes." and "Yes, we pay taxes. Sounds like you don't enjoy keeping track of your personal income taxes. I don't think anyone does.
source: wikipedia, and info from some public forums