Cliché: “The world is changing rapidly, and we can’t keep up with the change.”
If you could reverse the change, would you? If you could go back in time and live there for the rest of your life, would you?
Nope. I like history but I’m infinately curious about “what’s next”.
I’m hoping I’ll live in the world twenty years from now. It’s probably a toss-up. 
Now. I’m a big fan of women’s rights (especially not having to get married/have kids) and the Internet.
Is this question coupled with being a different person in that particular time, or having a different or specified job/obligation/rights?
For example, reign of Henry VIII maybe not so bad if I get to be Henry VIII, not so good if my job consists of plucking horseshit from the royal grounds.
Although I do enjoy today’s modern luxuries such as the Internet and women’s rights, I really love everything about the 1920’s. The fashion, the music, the architecture, bootlegging, etc. Now fourse, I am glorifying how the upper-class lived. If I was poor, the 1920’s would not be fun and would probably be downright horrible.
It’d have to be some time during which the human race was actually civilized … IMO, human civilization begain in 1596 (invention of the flush toilet) and ended in 1980 (invention of the Sony Walkman).
I could cope with being a later Victorian, I think …
I would like to go back to 1996-early 2000, and just keep re-running . The only thing wrong with the dotcom bubble was that it burst. Catered lunches, foozball games and Aeron chairs for all!
I’d like the 100th millennium after the dawn of agriculture and settled communities.
I’m with carlotta and her nostalgia for the late 90s. I was in grad school and it seemed as though all was potential and hope in that era. The the burst bubble and 9/11 to put a period to it.
I’d like to live in the future, in which I hope the species has cured all diseases and overcome the darker side of its natuere.
Erm…I love history, but I also love running hot and cold clean water, antibiotics, women’s and non-Europeans’ legal rights, and Pethidine during childbirth (this is for future reference ). So if I could cheat and somehow transport these back in time… It would be a toss-up between being a Queen of some exotic place mentioned in Herodotus, someone like the Empress Livia in Ancient Rome, someone like Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century, and someone like Dorothy Parker in the 1920s.
I’m a hopeless decision-maker, aren’t I?
Lots of them, although I probably wouldn’t want to stay very long and I’d want to be able to come straight back to 2005 as soon as I needed modern medicine etc:
- republican Rome;
- the court of Ferdinand and Isabella; and especially
- Sydney just before 26 January 1788 and the arrival of the First Fleet, just to see what the place was like before “civilisation” arrived.
I would go for Minoan Crete, 1500 BC.
My brother put it best.
Q: Ooooh, and wouldn’t you like to have been born back then and be a Lord?
A: Nope, if I had, I would have died at age 3 of neumonia, so I wouldn’t have been a Lord anyway and I kind of like being alive.
I rather like our current era. I just don’t think I could get used to the loss such useful things like the internet, and readily available music and movies and such.
If I had better information ( 
) on how the future is going to turn out, I might just advance foreward in time.
For so many years, I wished I could spend a few days wandering around Egypt. Sixth, Twelfth, and Eighteenth Dynasties, to be specific.
And then I’ve often wondered what it would be like to live in Dark Age Europe, both as the upper class and as the lower class. (“Oh, look at the lovely muck I’ve found over 'ere!”)
And then I’d like to come back here and take a nice hot shower and contemplate the end of civilization. Which is what most people with any education seem to have been doing since the beginning of recorded history.
Yeah, MerryMagdalen, I agree with you.
I doubt that many people would want to go to a past era and *live there for the rest of their lives. *
The more quixotic among you expressed a desire to live at some time in the past, and the more practical ones pointed out what we would be missing: modern medicine (including medication during childbirth, and the availability of antibiotics), hot and cold clean water, women’s rights, the internet, readily available music and movies.
Of course the question of living in the past is whimsically hypothetical. I find it strange, though, that some people (not necessarily any posters in this thread) yearn for “the simpler life of the past” and yet they choose to continue to live in modern urban areas and use modern technology extensively.
Hey, nobody said we have to be consistent …
I’ve always thought the 1950s would be fun. I like the clothes, and much of the music. Men wore ties and hats a lot more, which is a snazzy look.
Minoan Crete did have women’s rights. But then the party poopers start in on modern medicine. Always the trump card of the present day. OK, you got me there. Increased chance of surviving childbirth is a biggie, I have to admit.
This was actually one of the better gigs of that time.