Michael Barbella Managing Editor It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be under

Michael Barbella • Managing Editor

It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. —Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Time travel is a fascinating concept. Totally fictional, of course, but nonetheless intriguing, if only for the promises it holds for both humanity and society. Think for a moment about the ability to revisit the past and the potential impact that jaunt could have on the future (or present, depending on how one perceives time). Dozens of science-fiction novellas and films have used this concept as a central theme to force their main characters into a vexing yet interesting ethical confrontation about past transgressions. At some point in the tale (usually near the beginning), these characters face the ultimate test of their morality by tackling a question few people would be ready (or willing) to answer—would you change the past to improve the future?

The answer, of course, has provided the basis for countless numbers of fantastical plots. In Harlan Ellison’s 1957 short story “Soldier From Tomorrow,” for example, the protagonist, Qarlo Clobregnny, travels thousands of years back in time to warn the present-day world of impending armageddon. Similarly, Michael “Puppy” Young, a history student at Cambridge University in author Steven Fry’s 1996 novel “Making History,” teams up with a physicist to prevent the birth of Adolf Hitler. The pair succeed, but their hopes of erasing the Holocaust from history are shattered when a new leader emerges (Rudolph Gloder) who is just as ruthless as Hitler but more efficient, charming, patient, reasonable and—frighteningly enough—more committed to genocide than the now non-existent fascist ruler. Under Gloder’s reign, the Nazis control Europe, develop an electronics industry of their own and build the world’s first nuclear weapons. The United States matches technological wits with the Nazis in 1941 and enters a Cold War with the Greater German Reich while supporting former

Soviet guerrillas fighting in Siberia.

The future changed, all right, but not for the better.

As with most characters who attempt to alter the course of history, Young and his physicist friend learned a valuable lesson from their Hitler-annihilating crusade: Messing with the past potentially can have disastrous results for the future.

German philosopher Walter Benjamin refused to accept the notion that the past cannot be changed. He believed the past could be transformed by present actions; New Statesman author Terry Eagleton explained Benjamin’s thinking quite simply in a 2009 article about the philosopher, claiming, “What Benjamin meant was that how we act in the present can change the meaning of the past. The past may not literally exist (any more than the future does), but it lives on in its consequences, which are a vital part of it.”

How we act in the present also can change the future, based upon the lessons we’ve learned from the past. It is in this context, then, that we review the year’s top triumphs and tragedies in medtech finance and the lessons to be learned from them: