| rdfs:comment
| - The problem with the past is that it's so uncivilized, but any time traveler worth their salt can fix that. Just introduce it to the delights of modern technology, several centuries early. You may need to go through a few intermediate stages, replicating the history of technology on fast forward, but you know exactly what needs doing. How difficult can it be? If a Hero succeeds, there's still a risk of going horribly wrong, going horribly right, or both.
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| abstract
| - The problem with the past is that it's so uncivilized, but any time traveler worth their salt can fix that. Just introduce it to the delights of modern technology, several centuries early. You may need to go through a few intermediate stages, replicating the history of technology on fast forward, but you know exactly what needs doing. How difficult can it be? There are two types of time travelers who try this stunt - the unwilling ones, Trapped in the Past with just the right skills needed to jump start the industrial revolution, and the reckless ones who don't care about paradoxes, they just want to rewrite history for the better. Either way, this is a long term plan. Even optimistic heroes will expect to take a few years to get the desired results. Realistic ones will consider it a lifetime's work. The hero can't leap straight to modern technology; they have to get the past society to go through all the intermediate steps first, or they won't have the necessary tools to make the tools to do the job. As such, this is typically the plot of an entire book, or even a series. Ancient Astronauts and explorers rediscovering lost colonies occasionally fall into the trope, if the story goes into detail about how they introduce technological advances, but they normally gloss that over. By contrast, works in this subgenre typically go into great details about the new technologies being introduced to the past, and their social impact, as well as addressing all the problems that would realistically crop up. If the stranded party has a phone to a high-tech society, whether in the future or on another world, this trope can still apply. The phone can provide them with all the information they need, but they still have to deal with the immense practical problems involved in getting from medieval to modern technology. It would still take decades to get 14th century England from church bells to digital clocks, even with an internet connection to the present day, and the full resources of the kingdom at your disposal. However, if the stranded party can get actual physical objects from their high-tech friends, the difficulties melt away, and this trope does not apply. If a Hero succeeds, there's still a risk of going horribly wrong, going horribly right, or both.
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