Future technologies

Inspired in part by the Scarey thread, and in part by THIS BBC news article, featuring how 2000AD and judge Dredd has in fact come to pass in many UK cities...

What SF works/books/concepts do you see coming to pass in your lifetime?

Are you optimistic or pessimistic in how society will go?

There's a good start in Brockman's The Next Fifty Years, but I was think rather more of fiction, cause its more fun.

I can't see Assimov's robots coming anytime soon, or even AI in any form. But Earth from Brin, blackholes excepting, might not be too far from the truth.

grrr. touchstones. go Earth Go. nope, give up.

I think most concepts involving nano-anything (nanobots etc.) are soon to be a reality. How this will impact on our society I can only guess - Diamond age is one of the books elaborating on this theme, as are lots of other works (a wee bit slowbrained today), including the medicine of Star Trek and others.

Also everything where we are closely surveilled by the state or the corporations acting in its stead - think Bladerunner, Minority Report, etc. including those mentioned in the BBC article.

In a way, those two scenarios makes head for This Perfect Day, a day closer at hand than some of us like to think...?

*have to quit, got a boat to catch - my turn to fetch our son at the day care! will look in later...*

Hmm not sure about us achiving a Dimond age nano-bot style any time soon, but it would be fun!

Or did you mean the whole Viccies split societies and enclaves. That I can see coming in the not-to distant future.
If ony they get to be as clever as Colour in Only Forward some of those enclaves would be just so enjoyable to live in.

Not read Perfect day. A brief review makes it sound worse/similar to 1984?

Well, more like a YA version, (MINOR SPOILER WARNING) I think - the basic premise is that everyone is "happy", and every whatever period they have to take some "injections" to "keep sickness away". In reality it's some kind of mind control stuff. Some youngsters tries to dodge these injections, and then the story takes off...

As to the nanotech you probably are better suited than me to judge that...

The enclave thing is a basic concept in Snow Crash as well, if I don't remeber wrong, and that's here for sure.

Personally I think I'd like the future, but then I'm one of the lucky ones... I'm not so sure the peoples of say China or Mocambique agree with me; I don't think the future's as bright to (most) of them...

I think the virtual world will become more "real", if you will, in the future. I for one want a virtual pet that won't go out and spend 10 minutes sniffing in the yard when I have other things I need to be doing!

Reading sci-fi as a child, I just assumed that we would be flying around instead of using cars with tires, but it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps it's not too far away.

I'd LOVE teleportation to come true. I like travelling, but some travels I'd rather be without... like one and a half hour each day spent commuting.

That's a good point about the air-cars. Providing we can get some sort of fuel situation sorted out air cars have to be do-able within 50yrs. We've had various prototypes for a while now.... Don't think teleportation will be anytime soon, but an aircar might cut your commuting time.

I bike because its quicker than going into manchester by car.

I know we won't teleport anytime soon, but seriously - air cars seems a far way away too, if don't do it with some antigrav technology... we're already short of fossil fuels, and in any case they're bad for the environment... and fuel cells/batteries etc. are too heavy.

With "soon" I'm thinkning "inside my estiamted lifespan", which don't include a 50 yr perspective as I'd be 90 by then ;-)

>see coming to pass in your lifetime?

Heinlein's Revolt in 2100, about a theocratic dictatorship. Nehemiah Scudder for President in 2012?

Busifer, perfect day sounds a lot like the movie Equilibrium staring Christian Bale. Except, of course SPOILERS the kid isn't a highly trained government agent. The main character's son creeps me out every time I see that movie.

Never seen Equilibrium... should I?

# 8 teleportation is getting closer every day. Scientists at the Niels Bohr institute have succeeded in teleporting light 0,5 meters recently. it was the first time teleportation was achieved between light and matter. this discovery provide the basis of teleporting a dead object by recreating the exact same object in another place while destroying the old one. But i guess eventually doing this to a complicated object and especially a live one is still pretty far fetched he he.

Would be nice, though ;-)

but kind of scarry that your old self is destroyed and a new one created. what if your soul looses its way during the teleport. you would be just one piece of pretty borring meat. then again if a humans soul or personality is decided by the configuration of atoms it wouldnt be a problem, but i guess that question is for the religion thread he he.

#14 - The book The Metaphysics of Star Trek contains some discussions on that theme, quite interesting, but as I have no personal belief problems concerning the soul etc. to me teleportation is a neat solution to the transportation problem ;-)

Thanks i'll put that one on my "tjek it out list"

#7 & 8:

Yikes! Air cars! NOOO! Think of how poorly people drive on ROADS, now imagine them having to deal with altitude as well! YIKES! NO THANKS!!!

yeah. I wonder what the brake length would be for an air car

Another reason to go with teleportation instead of actual vehicles ;-)
Think multidimensional traffic congestion... picture the... no, wait, you just have to look at Fifth Element!

#19 What if your particles got mixed up in the teleport process with old uncle Morty's? Or whoever else was porting along the same route. Hmmm, I'd rather walk.

Busifer, you should definitely see it, especially if you're a Christian Bale fan. The movie is kind of a cross between Fahrenheit 451 and the Giver, with some of V for Vendetta mixed in. On the other hand, I personally would not recommend the movie version of 451. It was done back in the '60's, and while it follows the plot quite well, it doesn't have quite the right feel to it. Sorry to get OT, Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books, and I made the mistake of mentioning it, so I just had to say something about the movie.

OK, thanks, I'll chek it out :-)

#20 - I know, that's could be scary, but I don't think it would happen... Or, let's say I HOPE it won't happen!
Of course there would be no way to me as a layman to know what's going on - in certain ways it would be like magic... ;-)

But I'm not overly worried about the soul, which is the main objection to teleportation - "if we don't know what makes us sentient beings, having a soul, how could we ever recreate this soul thing?".
I imagine it as inherent, a part of our physical and chemical constitution, and hence if we can transport the molecules AND reattach them in the right order (the difficult thing here, to be sure, not going to happen anytime soon in my opinion!) the "soul", whatever it is, will be there as well.

The main problem is us humans and our views. In my work I often suggest clients to walk slow, take one step at a time - they won't succeed in implementing a brand new process oriented business support system/knowledge sharing tool if the culture etc. don't support that way of doing things.

Same here - it's hard to jump too many steps at a time, at least on the mental level :-)

#20 as in the song aluded to in the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy quintet somewhere I think its in Restaurant at the end but could be mistaken, it goes something like:

Teleporting home one night
with Ron and Sid and Meg,
Ron stole Meggies heart away,
and I got Sidney's leg!

Ha Ha Ha! Guess I should have read all the books. I like that.

Getting back to more mundane transportation, has anyone read Robert A. Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll"? I thought we'd at least have gotten to that point by now.

I haven't read that myshelves, but for awhile I heard and read a lot about using magnets to propel cars. Seemed very reasonable to me, but scientist/technician I am not.

In Heinlein's story (which I first saw discussed in a magazine article about the technology), you ease your car onto the superhighway, lock on, and then sit back and read, or take a nap, until you get to your exit and resume control. The road moves, as does a moving walkway, but at very high speed.

NASA actually runs an open contest for a functional "aircar". If my memory doesn't fail me the deadline is set sometime this year.

Ha! 2022 is but weeks away and. . .
Well...
AI is here, driverless trucks, the NWO trying to muzzle, as well as muscle the world into a Totalitarian World Game that is anyones guess how much of anything in the media is true or false...
Since 2007 things have certainly changed. . .

Judge Dredd coming to life seemed impossible once, but now it's some scary s%$&.