by Pedgerow » Tue Dec 18, 2018 9:09 pm
If things can be invented once, they can be invented again. So rather than teaching our new society how to invent things, I propose we teach them how to bypass things that should never have been invented. Only then can this new society surpass our own. And that is why I propose that our first book should be The Big Book of Renewable Energy and 101 Applications for It, by Jay Fictional. Now, Jay Fictional doesn't exist and neither does his book, but there must be an equivalent book that does exist. Using this book, whatever its real title and author may be, our budding society can develop sustainable and renewable energy, without falling into the trap of inventing the internal combustion engine first and poisoning everyone centuries later. They can also use the 101 applications for renewable energy as a pretty heavy hint towards other things they can invent, so that will be useful.
The second book our society needs is How to Write About Yourself and Make Sure Other People Actually Read It, by Mark Zuckerberg. This book doesn't exist either, but it has a better chance of coming into being than any of Jay Fictional's oeuvre. Society will need this book because there is no social ill under the sun that can't be at least partially alleviated with a big old dose of More Empathy From Everyone, but nobody can be bothered to go around asking random strangers about their problems when everybody already has problems of their own. The best solution, therefore, is to get everyone to write about their problems on some form of newly-invented social medium. And since I presume we are teaching our society to read, they're going to need some stuff to actually read once they've gone through the three books in the whole world that we're leaving them with. Let's use their newfound literacy to tackle hatred before it even arises. What a paradise our new world will be.
The third and final book our citizens will need is the sports almanac from Back to the Future 2, because duh, we have a time machine.