I have to admit this concept slightly frustrates me. When most people study events in works of fiction, the assumption is that the fictional world is basically orderly and logical like ours and that there are objective truths, even if they are sometimes obscure and even if we occasionally have to retcon or even decanonize some things to reconcile things and build a coherent reality. This logic, however, seems to assume inherent chaos, that when followed through, begins and ends with the fundamental idea that "it's impossible to conclusively know anything about the Odyssey world". At that point, we're left with mere meta-discussion; the most we can say about any information is 'The author intended it to be like this in this episode, but it could be arbitrarily completely different in some other one'. I don't think this is a desirable conclusion, or a necessary one either. Most apparent paradoxes do have conceivable resolutions, and even if they don't, it seems better to deal with them case-by-case than to give up on order altogether.
There are some potential solutions to the K-problem. They might not be particularly strong, or as strong as we might like, but if we remember that Whit has connections and can use them to get things that other people don't, it might be able to 'help us over the hump' and make an otherwise-satisfying solution work, even if it isn't the most perfect or plausible one in real life.
Possibility 1) Radio stations don't have to comply with the letter rule if they had the callsign before the rule was passed; they're grandfathered in. There was apparently an early radio station in Odyssey, since the radio equipment was left there at Whit's End. Maybe the original radio station was KYDS, and Whit is simply resuming broadcasting. The main difficulty with this, besides the apparent strong coincidence of the letters 'KYDS', is that broadcast licenses expire over time, and this likely would have happened by the time Whit got around to using the radio equipment.
Possibility 2) Although radio stations after the rule was passed normally require these letters, and the KYDS callsign isn't grandfathered in, Whit nevertheless obtained a special exemption from the government. This might not be as radical as it sounds, considering that he is a secret agent. Maybe he occasionally sends out encoded messages, and the convenient and punny name "KYDS Radio" helps conceal it.
Possibility 3) This regulation exists in our world, but not in the AIO world. Honestly, I don't like this solution much, because the context of the show suggests that the AIO world should usually, by default, be like ours. However, I can live with this if there's no alternative.
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Concerning the AIO timeline and technology, I've studied this (although not as completely as I would like).
Here's some work on a timeline I did some time back, although there is room for improvement, things I would like to add or change.
Quoting from my post on the subject in ToO, we can get a good guess for the current AIO year by looking at Connie's timeline:
2021 Bob wrote:The AIO beginning date can be projected from early episodes. In Connie Comes to Town, Connie was a waitress "last summer" in California. The minimum age to work as a waitress in California was 14. Connie is 15 in Stormy Weather, and of that episode she still hasn't been in town long, so it is reasonable to guess she is 15 as of her introduction.
In "The Price of Freedom", just a few episodes before "Stormy Weather", we learn that Captain McGinty was killed in Vietnam, apparently during the American evacuation, which would most likely be '75. Kirk was born after his father's death, and is 12 as of this episode. This would date the chronological year in AIO time at '88, which was also the year these episodes were being released. This seems to indicate Connie would have likely been born in 1973.
Jules was born as a result of Bill and Jan's very short marriage, which can be dated (although I don't have "Life Expectancy" handy to do it from). I think the order is that he married Jan after April but before May. We see April in "Father's Day", where Connie is at least 16. So, Connie could be as much as 17 years older than Jules, although 16 may be possible, and 15 might not be impossible.
In "California Dreams", Jules is said to be 16. Assuming this is true, this would seem to place Connie at being somewhere from 31 to 33 years old. 1973 + 33 = 2006, so that gives us an approximate 'maximum year' the show timeline could be at.
A key to understanding the AIO timeline, I believe, is to keep in mind that there isn't a set amount of time that passes from episode to episode, or album to album. We have to keep track of things by events in the episodes, not a simple count of the episodes themselves. We also have to remember that since episodes, by definition, focus on things that are noteworthy, it's plausible that not every event that is a thing in these characters' lives will be recorded. The Christmas approach isn't a bad one, and would give us a decent projection of the timeline if we didn't have any alternatives, but the direct evidence we have from the episodes themselves give us something more thorough.
Regarding the technology, it isn't hard to make the case that any world where Mr. Whittaker has invented virtual reality technology is going to be on a faster pace than ours. ;-) Nevertheless, as Solomon observed, "There's nothing new under the sun". Although the world has a modern
feel, the reality is that most of the modern technology and phenomena we see basically existed in the late '90s or early '00s, even if it wasn't yet mainstream or didn't look exactly how it does now. The Appleberry smartphone, for example is obviously a partial riff on the iPhone, but we had Blackberries, Palm Pilots, etc. before the iPhone came out, and it could just as well be a device like those (particularly the Blackberry, since it is part of the name).
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On the subject of characters' ages, I determined Connie's approximate age in the present, 31-33, in the quote above. In the same post, I also determined the age range Whit could be in:
2021 Bob wrote:Guadalcanal was from 1942-1943, and Mr. Whittaker was either in his 'late teens' or 'early 20s' at the time. Without doing an extensive study of his age, in the present day in AIO time, and allowing for mistakes and ambiguities in these rudimentary calculations, he would be elderly, from a range like 80-86 years old. Considering his current activities, he could certainly be said to be well-preserved, but not yet to the point 'above the lot of mortals'.
I haven't studied Eugene's age as much, and since I don't have AIO Club handy, my materials here are much more sparse. I will say that I've always pictured him as being at most a couple of years older than Connie. "Champ of the Camp" seems to suggest they are similar ages. baysimp (on #aio) stated that in "Prisoners of Fear", it is explicitly said that the events in the past happened "twenty years ago" and that Eugene was "7" (meaning that he would be 27 in "Prisoners of Fear"). Recent episodes that I don't have access to in the Buck arc are also said to discuss Eugene's age. At any rate, the existence of the brief 'triangular' relationship, where Eugene could plausibly be thought to be involved with either Katrina or Connie, suggests they must all be at similar ages.
Wooton is probably a few years older than Connie or Eugene. In "Odyssey Sings", we learn that Wooton is "in his 30s" (because all of his songs are autobiographical). Also, as I recall, his niece Talia in "For the Fun of It" (some time earlier) is either 10 or 12 (someone else can fill in the exact age). That suggests Wellington (and thus Wooton) would be, at the earliest, 28 years old in that episode, and he's likely a few years older, considering that most people don't get married or begin to have children exactly when they're 18. If Wellington was 23 when he got married and 33-35 when Talia visited Wooton, that suggests Wooton would be in his late 30s or early 40s by now. Listeners with readier access to these episodes could likely determine more precise results. I don't remember much about Penny's chronology, but my feeling is that she is probably closer to Connie's age than Wooton's.
We can estimate about how old Jason is, based on "Memories of Jerry", "Silent Night" and "The Boat People", none of which, unfortunately, I have access to at the moment. AIOWiki suggests that Jerry died in 1971. If Jason is 10-12 at that point in time, then that means he'd be born somewhere from 1959-1961. That would put him somewhere from 12-14 years older than Connie, and indicates he'd be 43-47 years old now.