The Art of "What if?" by Carl

The Art of "What if?" by Carl - June 2014 Scholarship Essay

I love asking questions that haven’t been asked before. Instead of asking, for instance, how teleportation would affect society and how it might open up travel to distant planets, I ask how it would affect my daily life. How would ordering a pizza change if the pie could be sent directly to my kitchen counter? How would buying milk change if the farmer could send a fresh bottle directly to my fridge?

If I were to write a book, I would start with start by establishing a world where these kinds of things are becoming common place and then explore what could go wrong. How do people keep uninvited guests out? Can a teleportation signal be intercepted or redirected? How do I know before stepping into the teleport that I will come out safely where I intended to go?

When I’ve determined how people would use this technology and how they would safeguard it, I would try to imagine what kind of loopholes or exploitations might still be left uncovered. Then, I would try to imagine what kind of person would exploit these vulnerabilities and what their motivations might be. In the given scenario, I think I would use a teleport technician who has been hijacking teleport signals in order to quickly murder travelers before sending them on their way to their original destinations.

What I come up with would (hopefully) be a fun mystery, an intriguing glimpse of how life might be if teleportation existed, and a reminder of both the positive and negative aspects of human nature.