You make a convincing argument, bryan.derksen.

Forward is way better. Simply resolve that, at some specific point in the reasonably far future (say 30 years from now) you will go to a particular place with a package containing a database of all sorts of useful information from the past three decades - patents, programs, history books, movies, the works. Then go forward to that point and receive the database from yourself. You can now "invent" or "write" them all yourself. Assuming you don't just gamble yourself wealthy ala Biff Tannen.

You could do the same thing by traveling to the past. There are more problems with causality that way, I suppose.