Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Out of Time

Time Traveler’s Convention draws hundreds.
September 1, 2005

The premise: time travelers from the future haven’t made any public appearances yet because they haven’t been invited to. Amal Dorai’s solution: throw them a party. On May 7, the electrical-engineering and computer science graduate student threw the first and presumably last Time Traveler’s Convention–since, in theory, you would only need one–at MIT. Originally planned as a small event and advertised on a text Web page, the party elicited a response that caught Dorai ‘04 by surprise. “I thought I would only need a few bags of Doritos and a couple two-liters of soda,” he says. Instead, news organizations ranging from the New York Times to Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” picked up on the idea, and the event quickly snowballed. Nearly 600 people showed up at the Walker Memorial Building’s Morss Hall, where they were first treated to humorous lectures from MIT physics professors Edward Farhi and Alan Guth ‘68 and computer science professor Erik Demaine, followed by a late-night rager–complete with tinfoil hats, a pseudo mosh pit, and two local rock bands. Among the attendees were students dressed up as Bill and Ted from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Hank Eskin, the operator of the website WheresGeorge.com, who brought along his DeLorean. Sadly, no time travelers made the chronological junket to the party. – By Stu Hutson

paragraph one

Rest of the article

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build

“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”

ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it

The narrative around cheating students doesn’t tell the whole story. Meet the teachers who think generative AI could actually make learning better.

Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives

The workplace tool’s appeal extends far beyond organizing work projects. Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.

Learning to code isn’t enough

Historically, learn-to-code efforts have provided opportunities for the few, but new efforts are aiming to be inclusive.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.