Where can technology go from here ?

[blues90]

We have just about everything now . You can't make things much smaller or you would not be able to use them .

So what's next , all I can see is a phone and computer and music Ipods all stuffed into a chip implanted in ones head along with a tracking device .

Music seems to be a dying business and books can be a chip placed in your implanted device .

We have cars that park themselves and soon drive them selves so people will have their feet up on the seat .

So now it seems all there is left is to try to reverse all the damage done to the planet which is really not possible or add medical devices to replace body parts .

If it all becomes so sterilized and uniform what the hell is the point to life anylonger .

There were all sorts of new inventions , things we never had years ago but now all we do is cram and remake things we already had into a smaller packages . Oh I forgot the wonderful idea of a global economy so everywhere you go looks the same .

Boy am I glad I am well past the middle years .

[rurallib]

1. teleportation?

[madokie]

2. will they serve drinks???

just kidding but it does sound pretty cool

[ReverendDeuce]

3. Space travel! FTL, baby!

Bring it on!

[crispini]

4. I still want my jetpack!

It's the future, baby. where are the jetpaks and the flying cars?!

[mcscajun]

10. I want my flying car! Damnit! We were promised flying cars by the year 2000.

At least, that was what I saw in the cartoons when I was a kid in the late 50s.

[Cabcere]

5. That reminds me of

an SNL sketch from a while back, where Will Ferrell played the pompous owner/manager of some exclusive menswear store (or something like that), and he always had these ridiculously tiny gadgets, like a cell phone the size of his fingernail. :) It was pretty crazy, and while good for comic value, I hope we don't really go quite that far. :hi:

[porphyrian]

6. Solar desalinization plants that float in the ocean...

...collecting clean energy, reducing the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean and producing potable water at the same time. Possibly mobile, like built out of big ships.

[ToolTex]

7. The World Wide Mind! Connections implanted directly in our brains.

Everyone can know all knowledge simply by wondering about. Possible for anyone to lie? Who knows. Not much need for travel, just experience a distant place. Are you influencing another or are they influencing you? Who knows.

[WinkyDink]

8. Well, there IS art. Poetry. Literature. All those effete expressions of the human spirit.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Thank you. (pssst ... you forget music ;^D )

All existed before technology, all exist now. Sometimes it's harder to find them among all the consumer candy noise, but they're there.

[mcscajun]

9. "We have just about everything now."

I imagine someone said the same in this country about the time the electric light, the invention of the telephone, and rail travel were the limits of technology.

Frequently altered and misattributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson, this prediction was also totally off-base:

"I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree, who had built the first differential analyzers in England and had more experience in using these very specialized computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built — one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them."
(quotation from an article by Lord Bowden; American Scientist vol 58 (1970) pp 43–53); cited on Usenet.

We cannot predict the next leap(s) in technology, but somewhere out there, many someones are working on it/them.

Who could have predicted the CD when we grew up with record players? Now we hardly need hard media at all. Nearly everything (short of warp nacelles and teleportation) we've seen in Star Trek is in our homes and briefcases now (in slightly altered forms, of course.)

Look to science fiction...
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke

The Magicians are out there...
:)

[blues90]

12. I prefer to stick with the old tech stuff

I did'nt mind dial telephones or record players and I sort of miss the clatter of the typewriter .

The only place I would prefer to be transported to is the other side what ever that is or another world that was not in such a big damn hurry .

Really all we have managed so far is to make things smaller and more portable and to last less time and we did manage to have most of this built in China .

With progress went the security of a job since all that is required now is a few wires or computer connection to send a job far across the globe .

[mcscajun]

13. I liked the clatter of typewriters, too. I learned on a manual back

in the late 60s. But damn! If word processing didn't make it a whole lot easier to get through college the second time around. Every advance is a trade-off. Every Single One.

I prefer the warm sound of vinyl to the bright, sometimes brittle sound of CDs, but then again, the CDs are more durable (yes, they Do take up less space, too.)

But then I was responding to your question about Where technology goes from here...not if it should, or would it be good when it did advance. I merely point out that there is no limit, and it's not always about smaller or faster, sometimes it's just totally new, a brilliant new concept made into shiny reality.

All progress is painful, and I don't say that lightly, as mine was one of the jobs that became "insecure" in 2003 and I've been working at 1/4 my former wage ever since.

Once again, I look to Star Trek: "If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it." Ain't it the truth.

[originalpckelly]

15. Actually, you aren't the first person to do this. Back about 1900...

they tried to close the patent office because it was thought everything had been invented! :rofl:

I think we're probably on the verge of a bunch of breakthroughs.

[The Straight Story]

14. Robot slaves to work for us so we can spend all day having fun

until the rebellion when they take over the world...

[EstimatedProphet]

16. "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

One of my favorite quotes! There's a bunch more like this here, for amusement:

http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1995/1995BKM.html

[24HRrnr]

17. What's next...

Anti-gravity
organic computers
space elevators
nano-tools
ftl travel
fusion power
body regeneration
invisibility

[Porcupine]

18. t's all Dystopia baby......choose your nightmare.

It's all bad. Personally I favor fall-of-civilization scenarios. "Dies the Fire" by S.M. Stirling is a recent favorite. Others would be the Three Californias Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Or The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.

The point of much science fiction writing is that solving material needs problems does not neccesarily follow that we solve social or ecological problems. Simply solving the energy equation with a Mr Fusion on your desktop does not give you access to land or do anything for overfishing of tuna.

Nanotechnology (see Terminal Cafe may bring back the dead but then what do you do with a crowd of dead people? Are they equal to the living? Do they get to keep their stuff?

What we have to do as a species is realize that there are limits, that there will always be limits to what we can have. To some extent those limits may be stretched but ultimately Malthus was right.

There is no such thing as "sustainable growth." All growth has a terminal point or will lead to partial or total collapse. The sooner we drill this into our kids heads the better.