If you want proof of the multiverse look no further than your back ups
I have just finished reading a science fiction book based around the subject of multiverses. Sad to say, I didn’t think the book itself was particularly well written but it got more interesting as it went along. There’s a TV dramatisation of it which I intend to watch. In fact, the TV series spurred me to get the book in the first place. I thought I’d read it first and then watch the show. Having read the book, I’m hopeful that, unlike some adaptations, the TV show is better than the book.
Anyway, for those of you wondering, the book was Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. The concept of multiverses isn’t new although I have to confess to being amazed to discover that it’s far older than I originally thought. Some sources date it back to a Greek school of thought in the fifth century BC. Nowadays, thanks to Marvel, you can’t move for multiverses and Apple aired a very interesting alternate universe space saga called For All Mankind recently but the wildest, most entertaining interpretation in recent times was probably Everything Everywhere all at Once.
The most popular ways of portraying parallel universes in culture have tended to be with alternate universes where history took a different turn, such as the Nazis and Japan winning the second world war in Philip K. Dick’s classic novel The Man In The High Castle and, in a very different vein, where one decision changed everything, as in the romantic comedy Sliding Doors. But there’s also the more modern phenomenon where multiple universes are created with every decision and every action, which is the case in Dark Matter.
Whether or not the multiverse or parallel universes exist is the subject of much dispute among scientists and astrophysicists who know far more about the subject than I do. But it occurs to me that we do have something in the IT industry that is quite close to it, even if it’s nowhere near as thought-provoking or exciting. Can you guess what it is?
Back ups. Of course, it’s back ups.
Before anyone accuses me of trying to glamourise a subject which, up until now, many far greater minds than mine have failed to do, despite their often quite substantial marketing budgets, I should stress that this is very much an argument in progress. Who knows, there may well be a universe where this particular column was never written and the people in that world are enjoying an erudite, witty, incisive and highly informative article about a really, really interesting subject. Sadly, we’ll never know if that’s the case or not.
So, back ups. Let’s think about it. Every snapshot is a point in time from which the next one will be created. And so on. But what happens if there’s a failure of some sort and we go back to the last snapshot. When we do that, whatever occurs until the next snapshot is no longer guaranteed to be exactly the same as it was the first time around. So we are, to all intents and purposes, creating a different version of the present to the one we previously inhabited.
Admittedly, that difference may be only infinitesimal, but it’s still branching off from the original timeline from when the fault occurred, even if it’s only by a matter of seconds.
Does it matter? I suppose it’s a bit like the fact that when we look up at the stars we’re time travelling because what we’re seeing is something that happened millions of years ago, millions of light years away. That’s pretty wild when you think about it. As is the thought that something happening even a few feet away from you is not happening right now because of the time it takes light to travel from the thing you’re seeing to you and for your brain to process it. Literally everything we see is in the past.
And when you think about it, computers are also living in the past. Their inputs are also subject to the speed of communication, whether that be touch, sound or light. And there’s no point in time where they don’t live in the past. Even at their fastest, their connections are still subject to the speed of light. They might be faster than us, but they’re not fast enough to keep up with time.
It occurs to me that while discussing the subject of alternate realities, I forgot to mention computer games and, perhaps most significantly, virtual reality which might well be perceived as the closest means we have today of creating a mini-parallel universe. But all those universes come to an end, they don’t carry on regardless on their own path. Right?
Which brings us to the concept of simulated reality, as portrayed in The Matrix, another potential view of reality which has been argued by some scientists (and Elon Musk) positing the simulation hypothesis. I’m not convinced although I find the notion that we’re all living in a giant game of Sims, while simultaneously playing Sims, quite amusing.
Still, back ups, eh.
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