I’d go back to the 1970s, the dawning of personal computer growth in it’s beginnings. I’d take every single idea and patent from today and collect them all in a multiple series of binders. I would spend weeks holed up in some apartment, jotting notes, re-directing credits to me.
I would be the founding father of hundreds of technological inventions, way before they were even thought up. Flash Drives? My idea. Compact Discs? My idea. SSDs? My idea.
Everything will be my idea and I’ll be biding my time, pitching ideas and profiting off of the patents that I sell and my ideas alone, with little to no work involved. By the turn of the 2000s, I’ll be unfathomably recognized and wealthy.
Even with a load of great ideas, and lots of the technical data (hardware drawings, software and firmware codes) you’d have still have to set up the supply chains, and convince a host of other people you have insanely good ideas.
Lots of people had ideas for miniaturization and portability of computer hardware but as soon as you quickly got a technology out early, the time line would change and so would the compatibility issues… You’d soon just be Steve Jobs managing a company creating shit, just with some extra juice in your back pocket.
What if consumers were not ready for your ideas? What about all the other dependent technologies? Are you an expert in battery or glass technology that’s needed to really make the smart phone possible? Are you able to just call up ASML in 1970 and explain them how to jump a few generations of chip scaling?