{"id":2594,"date":"2010-06-26T10:33:38","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T17:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2010-06-26T10:33:38","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T17:33:38","slug":"the-letters-of-the-rich-and-famous-circa-100-a-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2010\/06\/26\/the-letters-of-the-rich-and-famous-circa-100-a-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Our bodies, our selves. The time travel edition."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fan of the possible, I sometimes overstate the unlikely. In recent years, I&#8217;ve toyed with the idea that the ancient past would &#8220;feel&#8221; different and might, in some ways, induce a state of shock on a time traveler from the present. (or vice versa.)<\/p>\n<p>But then I read accounts such as <a href=http:\/\/bnreview.barnesandnoble.com\/t5\/Library-Without-Walls\/The-Letters-of-Pliny-the-Younger\/ba-p\/2839>this one<\/a> about Pliny the Younger and I doubt the premise of my argument.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps, the lives of the rich today may not be that different from the lives of the rich two thousand years ago? Might the same be true for the poor?<\/p>\n<p>Or, perhaps it&#8217;s far more elementary: the lives of <em>writers<\/em> haven&#8217;t changed much because language hasn&#8217;t changed much. What has changed greatly between then and now is how we move. <\/p>\n<p>Many more of us now toil at work that is less physically demanding. We eat different diets. We play different sports. What would shock a time traveller would be the embodied meanings of our world. <\/p>\n<p>To convey this to an audience you&#8217;d have to go beyond moving pictures and require actual movement: a video game that requires players to alter their movements and gestures <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ironicsans.com\/2010\/06\/the_best_3d_experience_i_ever.html?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ironicsans%2Ffeed+(Ironic+Sans)&#038;utm_content=Google+Reader\">in order to fit in<\/a> and prolong the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fan of the possible, I sometimes overstate the unlikely. In recent years, I&#8217;ve toyed with the idea that the ancient past would &#8220;feel&#8221; different and might, in some ways, induce a state of shock on a time traveler from the present. (or vice versa.) But then I read accounts such as this one about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}