Say a 21-year-old person living in the year 1700 of average intelligence who received a good education but performed in the middle of his or her class was magically transported to modern day New York City, would the person be able to adapt and lead an independent lifestyle? Obviously, in 1 year/3 years/5years the person wouldn’t be employed as a Flash developer, but would he or she be able to get a professional job and not just a burger-flipping position? Would the person be able to pay their bills online and feel comfortable traveling on a big medal bird in the sky?
Well, you might consider the people who emigrate to technologically advanced countries from backwards, non-technological countries. I imagine it’s not so different.
He could become a lawyer. This guy did.
I don’t think the person could ever adapt successfully. It isn’t like taking someone out of the rain forest and adapting that person to American culture. That may be difficult, but could be done. A person from 1700 would have to learn the language, new forms of communication, completely different social skills. If the culture shock didn’t kill your time traveler, the difficulties in adaptation would probably cause him to need long term care in an institutional setting. I think the part that would really work against our time traveler would be his age. At 21 his personality is set, and he has successfully adapted to his environment. The man from the past would become as assimilated to the 21st century environment as an infant. Send a 5 year old, and maybe he could adapt.
SSG Schwartz
I’m not aware of any country that’s so “backward” that they’ve never even seen or heard of any of the products of modern technology. That’s the situation with a person from 1700 - they’ve no knowledge of radio, TV, powered vehicles, computers, electric light, washing machines, refigerators, telephones etc. It’d take years before such a person could function even as well as a modern eight-year-old in our world, and in many respects would never catch up.
They could work in a museum. Easy enough. I imagine any labor job would be simple enough, construction, fisherman, whatever.
Barely anybody today knows how things work. Ask somebody how their telephone works, most people have no clue. Once the person got over the whole “everything is magic” shock I think he’d be alright.
Actually, I think that would be a fairly simple thing to explain to a person c.1700. Start with ripples in water as an analogy to sound waves. Explain a Leyden jar (made in 1745) and a brief explanation of electricity (you could use a water analogy again). Describe how electrical pulses are used to make a telegraph. Demonstrate how sound waves are vibrations, how they are turned into electromagnetic analogues to the speaker’s voice, and go back to the telegraph to illustrate sending and receiving.
Oh sure, I think you missed my point. What does a person need to know to be productive in today’s society? I’d contest that you barely need to know anything. Most people today get by fine without understanding technology, just that it works. Which is why I think a person from 1700 would be fine. He’d have to learn how to dress and that if you push certain buttons on a phone somebody else picks up.
I don’t think you’re going to get past their conditioning. Your telephone would seem like the work of witchcraft, and any information you give them to convince them otherwise would not be believed.
The OP said “a person of average intelligence.” Now if you transport a renowned scientist of the time, one with an open mind who was actually right about things as we know them today, you might have a shot.
Actually, I was agreeing with you. It would take a long orientation process, but I think that a reasonably intelligent 1700 person with a good education would understand the concept of the telephone. In learning about the telephone, he’d learn about electricity. With electricity electric motors, electric lights, the spark for an Otto cycle engine, etc. can be explained.
I was going to make a comment like, ‘As long as you can get through the explanations without him burning you as a witch…’, but I didn’t. 
You do have a point about conditioning, but electricity was known at the time. The person in the OP has a ‘good education’, so he’d probably have heard of it. As I said, the Leyden jar was invented when he would have been 66. So I think he’d be able to accept the concept of electricity being stored. Mechanical devices are easily enough explained. Once you ‘get’ elecctricity, then a load of other things become understandable too. There are loads of simple ‘experiments’ designed for elementary school children that would help him along. He may still believe in witches (the classical kind, not the Wiccan kind) and that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, but I think with patience and training he’d be able to function.
I’m baffled at how this is in GQ. Isn’t this an IMHO question?
In terms of life skills, I don’t think there should be any question as to the fact that someone with the skills of the 1700s could get along with modern day living. I know a guy who was brought up in an Amish community, and never returned after his rumspringa. He gets along all right despite never having driven a car, dialed a telephone or eaten a cheeseburger before he was 17.
As far as mental adaptations go, I think that it would hugely depend on the person in question. However, I think at the age of 21, a person’s mind is still adaptable enough to deal with massive changes in the world. It might take him a while, but I bet Colonial Joe would be pumping gas, paying bills and enjoying the wonders of pasteurized beer within a year or two.
What’s a “good education” in the 1700s? Are we to assume the 21 year old has been educated in a profession of some kind, such as medicine? Or are we to assume he knows the Bible and how to confess his sins and plow a field and plant the crops? How often would an average citizen of the 1700s have run across a Leyden jar?
I’m not being snarky, I think this is a fascinating discussion, but I’m trying to nail down the specifics.
Speaking to Diomedes’ point, the Amish have heard of the combustion engine, electricity, the internet. Someone from the 1700s would not have. I think the mere fact of a pair of jeans fastened with a zipper would blow their mind.
The Age of Reason came about in the 17th Century and was followed by the Age of Enlightenment. The Scientific Revolution began in the mid-16th Century when Copernicus published his book on the orbits of the planets. Since the OP said ‘good’ education but ‘average’ intelligence, I took it to mean that the education is better than average. Say, college level. I would expect someone with a ‘good’ education in 1700 to have been exposed to atronomy and physics brought about in the Scientific Revolution, the artistic knowledge and training from the Renaissance, and the social and philosophical ideas from the Age of Reason; will have been primed for the scientific knowledge from The Enlightenment. A ‘good’ education at the time would not have been needed by a simple farmer or tradesman.
The Leyden jar didn’t come about until 45 years after our traveller’s magical transportation, but he probably would have understood the concept and not thought of it as witchcraft. And friction generators had been around for half a century.
I think we’re approaching this the wrong way.
Why is it really necessary to explain how electricity WORKS to the person? The question was one of adaptation to a modern lifestyle, and there are are plenty of people walking around out there who don’t know much about electricity beyond the fact that they flick the switch and the light comes on. There are plenty of people driving around without knowing a lot about how their cars work, just how to operate the controls and put gas in it. There’s a lot of people out there typing happily away on their computers and using the applications they want to use without knowing very much about the computer. People fly as as passengers on airplanes all the time with only rudimentary knowledge of physics and aerodynamics. I think a young person from the 1700s would adapt to using modern gadgetry rather well, given a bit of familiarization. Even a middle aged person would be able to learn how to get around on public transit, operate the appliances in a modern kitchen, use the telephone, etc. A very old person from that era might have a problem. None of this requires any understanding of how any of the technology actually WORKS. Just how to use it.
What would likely present more of a problem is CULTURAL stuff. You can teach a person about the existence of television and the movies rather easily, and they’ll learn the mechanics of watching them. However, they will not have seen Citizen Kane or The Blues Brothers. They will not have had the experience of watching cartoons as a child. They will not have absorbed many, many waves of popular music genres. They won’t have referents for historical events of the last 300 years. I have a feeling that your person from 1700 will be socially backwards, poorly acculturated and come off as more than a little strange long after they’ve mastered how to stick their card in an ATM and heat up stuff in the microwave.
In fact, if such a person had the aptitude and inclination, I could imagine them handling a TECHNICAL career before many other careers. Technical subjects are something there’s a clear path for them to catch up on, but if there’s a large “people” component to a job, they might remain just too culturally inept to handle it. I could imagine the person applying themselves and becoming an auto mechanic if they wanted to, for instance, but they might have a lot of trouble trying to make it as realtor.
What? A person from 1700 (assuming they’re British/American) would speak modern English, the same as us. Not exactly the same, but close enough we could understand each other. There might be some slang terms that are stumbling blocks, but it wouldn’t be quite the same as plunking an English-only speaker into the middle of downtown Lima. I doubt even accents would get in the way.
By good education, I mean the equivalent-for-the-time version of a modern liberal arts degree from a respectable four-year university.
I believe that person would be more successful adapting to 2007 conditions in America than a 2007 American would have adapting to 1700 conditions anywhere.
As for professional employment, there are plenty of people in 2007 America who are not suited for “professional” employment, but there is always room in the service, agricultural and trade industries.
Maybe it’s just the way I am. I want to know how things work, at least on a rudimentary level. In your examples I can describe a simple circuit, how a light bulb works, how a car’s engine works (not that I’m any good at diagnosing and fixing them), how an airplane flies, etc. I have an understanding of Boolean logic; so while I can’t say exactly what goes on inside of a computer chip, I at least know that it’s not magic.
On the other hand, we have Miss South Carolina who couldn’t think of a better answer to the question of why people can’t locate the United States on a map than that there’s a map shortage. It’s not necessary for us to know how things work, but I think that a time traveler would find the information useful. It’s not just that they would know (at least to some extent) how the thing works, but they can make connections with other things. I know there are a lot of things that would drive me nuts if I didn’t know how they worked or had access to the Internet so that I could look up how they work.
Having seen Citizen Kane or cartoons of Gilligan’s Island isn’t neccessary to function in the modern world. There are millions of imigrants to the U.S. who don’t have such touchstones. On the other hand, they have touchstones that we don’t. I could imagine the Time Traveler having a laugh at Old Goody Smith’s pet stoat (‘Imagine! She keeps a stoat as a pet! But you know Goody Smith!’) that we’d have trouble grasping. Heck, make a Barney Miller reference to a 14-year-old today and watch his expression (and listen to his ridicule).
No doubt he’d be a fish out of water. He’d probably drive people crazy with astonishing accounts of his ‘discoveries’. He might be shocked at the amount of skin that women show or that a dog has to have a license. It would take an adjustment, and at 21 years old his awkwardness might last the rest of his life. But I think given a year or two to become acclimated he should be OK.
I think some of you are seriously underestimating the guy from 1700. He’s not a caveman. People understood science. Ben Franklin was soon to be born. Isaac Newton was in his prime. If the guy had higher education, he was probably familiar with the Principia Mathematica and knew calculus. If he was an curious sort of person, he’d probably find the modern day fascinating. He wouldn’t be screaming “witchcraftt!” - he’d be trying to seriously understand things and fit them into his mental framework. I see no reason why he couldn’t become reasonably familar with how electricity works, and eventually to understand computers and modern cosmology and such. He would have read much of the same great literature and philosophy we have read (Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke…). I’ll bet someone from that time with a decent intelligence could spend five years learning prerequisites and ‘catching up’ with modern concepts, then go to college and get a four year degree in a subject like anyone else.
He’d probably have a tougher time assimilating the culture - learning how to deal with modern women, fit into a social structure, not annoy people or put them off, etc. He might be disgusted by certain aspects of the culture (Newton would have been), and fascinated by others.
It’s more interesting if we go back futher and grab, say, an enlightened gentleman from ancient Greece around Plato’s time. Watching him fit the modern world into his conception of existence would be fascinating. How would he respond to learn that the earth was just an insignificant speck of dust in a vast universe? Would he still retain his own Gods, and make his religion adapt to the new reality?