The impact the Last Mimzy has on future history is felt in the Intel research, and possibly the lottery winnings, but even more strongly through the changes wrought in Noah and Emma, who exhibit extraordinary abilities. Some of these, particularly Noah's, are reproducible. Noah's science project involves two aspects. One of those is the building of a different kind of bridge, a tube bridge. If it is truly functional, it represents an advance in civil engineering.
The earliest bridges involved solid objects jutting from one high point to another over a chasm or waterway. These were limited by the weight and flexibility of such objects--heavier objects were more difficult to maneuver and support, lighter ones tended to sag. Thus it was necessary to support bridges midway if they were to reach any distance. Pilings are the most primitive forms of support, which must be driven deep into the ground at the bottom and thus must be tall enough to reach the heights; and still there is the problem that if something is to pass under the bridge (say, a boat), it must have a large enough space. Arches make this possible, and so bridges can span waterways as long as they are not so deep that you cannot build multiple columns from rockbed to roadbed. That is not always an option.
In the nineteenth century, bridge design took a massive step forward with the Brooklyn Bridge, the world's first suspension bridge. This advance required only two pillars affixed to the bedrock, which provided support for two heavy cables which were anchored in opposite shores. From these cables, lighter cables descended, and the somewhat flexible roadway was hung from wires. This gave significant height and wide spacing, and removed the need to run multiple pillars to the deep bedrock.
Noah's design appears to eliminate the pillars, suspending the bridge entirely from its endpoints as a cable structure. If this were possible on a human scale (and the suggestion of the film is that it would be) it would facilitate bridges in more places, such as chasms currently crossed by cablecars and over waterways too deep for support columns.
Every advance in technology expands into other fields. It is not possible to predict how this technique would impact the future. One can imagine applications in robotics, high rise construction, aircraft design, space habitats; what we cannot guess is the developments that will arise because of the problems that arise from these solutions. Our technology has been accelerated; we will know more sooner. Further, as discussed in connection with the lottery winnings, wealth will be redistributed.
That cannot not impact the work of a scientist as little as fifty or as much as five hundred years in the future. If we want to suppose that his technological base is not altered by this, we must either advance him far enough that the difference in our advancement would be lost over time (a hundred years either way on the invention of the waterwheel probably would not impact our present technology) or postulate a crisis in which gains were lost and some amount of rebuilding had to be done. Neither of those is a very promising solution here. The impact of Noah's bridge technology threatens the existence of our future scientist, and thus the whole fabric of future time.
And that is not the only danger.
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