What's Always Next? 584
bettiwettiwoo writes "In its 'What's Next' issue, Time has a charmingly silly piece called What's Always Next? , in which is provided '[a] sampling of the future that wasn't': things that have been predicted since day dot, but have somehow never materialized. The examples they give are: videophones; moon colonies; food in pills; cars that drive themselves; jet packs; and moving sidewalks.
... There are, after all, so many and varied things -- ranging from the very serious to the down-right silly -- that are predicted time and again, yet seem curiously absent in our daily lives. Examples: global catastrophies of the Armageddon kind (be they population overload, total environmental disasters, plagues, asteroids, or nuclear wars); a secure and bug-free Windows; the end of Madonna's singing career (her 'acting' career was, I believe, still-born)." So what are you waiting for?
If they could only.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If they could only.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Finglonger (Score:3, Informative)
I'm waiting for (Score:2)
- Ralph Kramden
Re:I'm waiting for (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I want a professional cameraman do it for me.
Obvious (Score:3, Funny)
Duke Nukem Forever! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget Nuke Nukem Forever - which is the time it will take to develop and not the working title as many people mistakenly assume...
video phones? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:video phones? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:video phones? (Score:3, Funny)
Indeed, and a self-parking car has just been announced in Japan.
Truly these are great days we are living in!
Re:video phones? (Score:5, Insightful)
When you can roam from Europe into the US and have your 3G video cell phone work, then it can be struck off my list.
Re:video phones? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:FLAMEBAIT (Score:4, Insightful)
sorry, but no. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:video phones? (Score:5, Informative)
The US also holds an unprecedented amount of support for terrorists in favour of removing the people's elected governments and replacing them with dictators.
Troll? Only in the eyes of ill-educated americans.
Food pills (Score:5, Interesting)
that can be swallowed with one gulp.
Our daily requirement of protein and carbohydrate is on the order of hundreds of grams. To get 100 grams of carbos, you need at least 100 grams of material, and typically a bit more (unless you're gulping down pure sugar). This would be well beyond the size range of what we would usually call a "pill".
You can put things like vitamins and a few "supplement" materials in pill form, because we only need those in sub-gram amounts. But you're not going to put significant amounts of amino acids or sugars into a pill, not in the quantities that we need them. The universe just doesn't work that way.
Also, we need a significant amount of water per day. Our biochemistry only works in a water medium. If you could reduce the proteins and carbos to a digestible but waterless form for less bulk, you'd just have to consume the water some other way. You might as well leave the water mixed with the proteins and carbos and consume them together. It's a lot more satisfying to the palate than downing pills and drinking large quantities of water.
I can't swallow that! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:video phones? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:video phones = stupid for day to day use. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:video phones = stupid for day to day use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just need stronger roofs. Buildings have all sorts of defenses against errant cars. Look at government buildings with their setbacks and concrete barriers. Even civilian buildings have some barriers to prevent accidents. If larger numbers of people had flying machines, then we would just see the equivalent vertical barriers being put into place to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Food pills too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Food pills too. (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks, Violet.
Y2K (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Y2K (Score:4, Insightful)
It wasn't all hype. Inaction would have been costly.
Re:Y2K (Score:5, Interesting)
We couldn't fix the only serious problem we had; a batch of industrial PCs that we shipped to our customers before 1995 wouldn't work properly after the leap day of 2000. That is why you think there was no Y2K problem; most of the problems were minor and could be "fixed" by setting an incorrect date. Computers fail for many reasons, and most Y2K bugs were solved the same way as Windows bugs are solved; users and programmers found work-arounds.
I really object to your characterization of programmers and designers as incompetent. I'll bet programmers are writing code right now that will fail during the non leap year of 2100; and you (or your preserved head in a jar
Re:Y2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The ones that did the work were the ones that had a reason to care. The ones that didn't were the ones that didn't. Amazing, huh? Or do you think the CTOs and engineers at these companies just said "Oh, USA Today says the world will end, we have to fix it!" No, the looked at their code, and what it was used for, and decided if they needed to do anything.
"Some people and organisations" that did the work would be banks and power plants and missle silos. You know, the ones that USA Today told you would cause Armageddon but didn't because those people understood the problem and fixed it.
"Some didn't" and those some were the ones that looked at their code and what it did and decided they didn't care. Most didn't care. The ones that did fixed it.
If there was a real problem we would have seen the companies that were prepared sail through without a hitch and the others fail.
I'm sure there were problems. But you probably didn't hear about Bob's Discount Fish Outlet's warehouse database automatically ordering an extra crate of herring because it thougt it had been 100 years since it had done so. Everything you would have heard about fell into either "don't care" or "fixed it".
Nothing happened. It was pure hype.
Something did happen. What happened is a lot of programmers around the world looked at the problem realisticaly, and fixed it where necessary. A lot of work went into making sure that on New Year's Day you could watch the rest of the world celebrate on CNN as Midnight treked around the world while checking your online bank teller to see your $12.36 sitting there safe and sound. That wasn't hype. That was engineers working hard to fix a problem. And while I had nothing personally to do with the situation, I dislike it when members of my profession kick ass at solving a real problem well enough that it doesn't affect you at all, and you call it "hype".
Oh well. It's not as exciting as Armageddon, and there's no Steve Buscemi, but danger averted is still pretty cool in my book.
P.S. No, there almost certainly wasn't going to be Armageddon in any serious way. No missles were going to launch just because the date changed. If they ever were in danger, you can bet those bastards checked it out well in advance. The media did blow it out of proportion, and quoted every engineer who said "there could be a problem; we have to look into it" as proof that we'd all die in nuclear blasts at 12:07am. So actually I blame them for your opinion. But you're still wrong!
Re:Y2K (Score:2, Interesting)
And look: we did nothing, and nothing went wrong. Think of all that time and effort we could have saved in 1999 by doing nothing about Y2K.
Re:Y2K (Score:2)
I hope you just worded that wrong and really meant:
And look: we did nothing, and we paid for it.
Holographic TV please! (Score:3, Interesting)
At least we can be sure of some things.
Suppose we're gonna see lots of crappy flying car jokes here on
Re:Holographic TV please! (Score:2, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, the car flies YOU!
(Oh dear.. my first SR joke and what a bad one..)
Q.
Videophones (Score:5, Informative)
Video mobile phones are around and on sale in at least the UK and Australia. I've got the NEC e808 which is a bit big but does have a Qwerty keyboard. See www.three.co.uk for more info.
Re:Videophones (Score:5, Funny)
No, you're just pleased to see me.
Re:Videophones (Score:3, Insightful)
Weren't they just "predicting" that recorded media is a thing of the past?
When they "predict" things like this it's a clear indication of the direction they're trying to push us in.
In the case of videophones it's a direction that it turns out we weren't willing to be pushed in.
Bottom line is that most of us don't want t
Photophone != Videophone (Score:2)
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:3, Informative)
In the USA, Canada and a few other countries, TV is 29.97 two-field frames per second, or 50.94 field per second (NTSC).
In the rest of the world, TV is 25 two-field frames per second, or 50 fields per second (PAL).
Re:Photophone != Videophone (Score:3, Interesting)
There are some compact video conference systems out there. For example, the Polycom [polycom.com] ViewStation [polycom.com] is a very compact unit containing the computer and camera. Attach to any TV you like to complete the package.
At work, we use these over our corporate LAN. They also work over ISDN. (Ordinary phone lines don't have enough bandwidth, unfor
Re:Moving sidewalks (Score:2, Interesting)
I think what is paramount with new technology is the people's condition of willingness to try new things. Many hold the viewpoint, "why fix what isn't broken?" More specifically, why require people to adjust to something radically different for the sake of menial efficiency improvement?
That is the viewpoint from them. It should be noted that I would break and sprain my foot a few times for the sake of new technology. It is
Video Phones (Score:2, Interesting)
supposition. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, for each of the civilization advances, we knew some drawbacks : every occidental now has (or could have) a car, but the level of pollution has grown to a serious level, hence the priority change.
At this moment, most of these researches may have had their priorities lowered to face the consequences of the previous inventions...
It's a Long List (Score:2, Funny)
I'll settle for the flying car.
Ed Almos
Re:It's a Long List (Score:5, Interesting)
- Sliding doors exist (mainly for elevators), but don't say "swwiiish" whenever they open and close.
- The tricorder doesn't exist as such, but there's PDAs and mobile phones that can do much of the same, and much that the original tricorders couldn't do. Many of them even look like a tricorder, due to it being a practical design.
- Computers speaking. Thankfully, they don't speak in a monotone tin-bucket voice. (The exception being my Asus motherboard BIOS, which tells me in a metallic semi-feminine voice "no CPU instarred" twice before booting.) Luckily too, we don't have thousands of computer voices speaking simultaneously from every cubicle. This most likely because the cubicle was never predicted.
- Voice recognition. Unfortunately, we have that on too many phone services. If, like me, you have a voice that makes James Earl Jones sound like a puberty boy, they're not too helpful.
- Stasis/hibernation. It exists, but if you want to time travel that way, only your sperm can go.
- Jumpsuits. They exist, and presumably some people wear them, but I can't remember the last time I saw one in real life. Possibly due to the fact that most people still need to go to the bathroom every now and then, and there's no transporter that can take care of that need for us yet.
- Designer drugs. Yes, we have them, but they're nowhere near as sophisticated or readily available as in speculative fiction. We also have the smokeless cigarettes, but it's not a plexiglass tube filled with crystals, nor do they make you zonk out.
- Androids. Replacement bodyparts are common, but few if any of them are improvements on the originals.
- Laser weapons. Sure, but they don't make Moog sounds when used, and are more useful for guidance than payload.
- Universal nudism and free sex. What happened? After a short burst in the 60's, this one seems to have died... *sigh*
Regards,
--
*Art
Re:It's a Long List (Score:3, Funny)
- Universal nudism and free sex. What happened? After a short burst in the 60's, this one seems to have died... *sigh*"
After lokoing at my coworkers, I can only say.. Thank God.
Star Trek predicted interfaces, not tech details (Score:3, Interesting)
Artificial Intelligence (Score:4, Funny)
Autodrive: denied. (Score:2, Insightful)
Smellovision (Score:2, Insightful)
Rejuv (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rejuv (Score:5, Interesting)
Do a google news search for "resveratrol". This is some potentially huge news that got only a few writeups here and there a couple of weeks ago. They even posted a "Science" section story on Slashdot about it, but most people there seem to have largely missed what a big story it may actually be.
Executive summary: Not only have some people at Harvard Medical School worked out how the caloric restriction effect works, they have demonstrated that in yeast, flies, and likely in mice a particular class of polyphenols (resveratrol being the most effective thus far) can be used to stimulate the same system in eukaryotes and extend lifespan some 30%.
It works by engaging a stress response mechanism which appears to stabilize cells against aging damage in times of environmental stress - ie, you get more time to reproduce once the (mild!) famine is over and you haven't wasted your reproductive years just scrounging for food.
Of course nobody has yet demonstrated that it will work in humans, but at this point there is no clear reason why it wouldn't work...
I'm still waiting for my paperless office (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm still waiting for my paperless office (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I guess technically I didn't HAVE to, since I didn't get audited in 2002 (yet). But if I did, and had no paper trail... look out! So yeah, coworkers demanding paper are annoying, but the IRS demanding it is a serious problem.
paperless office (Score:3, Insightful)
However it is a social issue, not a technology one. Any company that puts iyts mind to it in a serious way, could reduce paperwork by 50%, easy.
I think if the person who is in charge of supplies had the power to say, "You are not allowed to print emails" would be a good use of empowerment. espcially if they got a bonus tied to cost savings.
I worked with a team of 10 people and we all committed to a 'less
Re:prediction (Score:3, Funny)
One bad example... (Score:2)
Sheesh, I can't even keep the windshield on my car secure and bug free
who says they aren't here yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
jetpacks - just like flying cars, it's primarily a safety issue. we have the tech - but no-one wants the cast of Friends crashing their hover-porsche into people's homes. on the ground there are trees, and curbs and bushes to slow them down when they leave the road. not so above.
cars that drive themselves - well honda's already park themselves. darpa is holding an unmanned vehicle race through the desert - i can't imagine commercial applications will take too much longer.
videophones - are already here. videoconference much? just because the consumers have decided that thus-far, the cost outweighs the benefit doesn't mean science is holding anything back.
it's simply a matter of consumer adoption.
moving sidewalks - already here - in malls, in airports. why aren't they in manhatten? because who pays for that? who benefits from a moving sidewalk downtown? when there's a business case for them, they exist. when it's left to the public sector, and there's no tangible benefit to outweigh the cost - the just don't exist.
once again, a problem of business, not of science.
plague - hello, HIV/AIDS, cancer ?
now how about the things we have that we never thought to ask for?
the internet, gps, multivitamins, the ISS, remote surgery, the genome map, cellphones, tazers, velcro, stain resistant dockers, nano-tube-spun ropes, teflon, sunscreen, moores law, p2p networks, etc?
"the Future is Here (Score:5, Interesting)
It's true.
we have flying cars. forget the moller skycar [moller.com], the future is the xantus [vtol1.com] powered lift aircraft.
we have jet packs, but now affordable backpack aircraft [easyup.cc] only nearly nobody wants to build them.
I think some people can't handle the future. they're too afraid of getting smushed up by it.
Flying Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be popular to dis Madonna, but she has more singing and dancing talent than 99.999% of the people out there.
Re:Flying Cars (Score:2)
Ok, she does have some ability to sing and dance, i'll grant you that, though in the studio and shower, most anyone can sound good (friends don't let friends see madonna live). But her skill level is no better then a trained monkey. In fact, I would go as far as saying i'd enjoy a trained monkey wearing underwear then Madonna.
There was an old interview I saw in highschool about Madonna.
Yogurt promised me... (Score:5, Funny)
Still waiting.
Not much depth to the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for videophones, well general interactivity on the Internet took over from that really. People do much prefer to hide behind an electronic persona and too high a proportion of people don't like being in posed photographs, let alone on video. Those who do like it have webcams, and webcam conversations are in general between lovers and family. SciFi Movies still feature videophone communications though, although realtime one to one video communication may never really become popular to the point of replacing the telephone.
As for jetpacks, moving sidewalks, moonbases and whatnot, I don't think a lot of people even believed those at the time. Better predictions are those which really do look at current trends and technology, seeing the barriers properly, and going for it.
Like the Segway... what am I saying?
I'll tell you why it isn't popular: the same reason motorbikes aren't mainstream popular. They are terrible to use in the rain, you can't give people a ride on them with you, they don't allow you to hide all but your head and shoulders, and they don't have a stereo. Simple.
A truly, completely modern city might be somewhere to look to for futuristic ideas, but then Stevenage [stevenage.gov.uk] in the UK, for example, a concept city just outside London with cyclepaths all over the place, yet people don't all cycle, most still use cars. Because a car also comes in handy when you need to go hundreds of miles. Sadly the site doesn't mention the cyclepaths except in section 5.1.5 [stevenage.gov.uk] of some transport review. Notice how in section 5.1.2 their transport policy "focused on accomodating the car" in spite of their miles and miles of cycleways.
I grew up near Stevenage, and it's not the idyll you might think, indeed it's a rather characterless place, bit too much of a concrete jungle, but the revolutionary ideas that went into the town planning were spoiled by poor fashions in architecture at the time, and ongoing council policy which did not match with the original town planners idealistic philosophies...
I'm still dying for... (Score:5, Funny)
It'll also be a faster method of getting my pizza to me before it gets cold
Re:I'm still dying for... (Score:5, Funny)
Simple, really.
I'd have them make the sending station look like a podium and then launch the receiver into a stabile earth orbit. Next step would be to invite Bill Gates and a few other dignitaries to the great unveiling. "Yes, step up here, please, Mr. Gates." "Energize!" *Bzzzt* (Meanwhile, in the green room) "Mr. McBride, time. And please wake Mr. Ballmer up, he's next." Muahahaha, and so on.
Some come true, some just come around (Score:2)
We have some old 1950s Popular Mechanics magazines -- around 1958 to 1960 -- in our family cabin in Colorado. They aren't all that much different than today's versions of the same publication. Some of the stuff that comes up in 1958 and 1998:
Where's the rest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Micro Media (Score:3, Insightful)
What we do have are huge conglomerations, or some moron ranting on his blog. There really isn't a whole lot in between.
Philadelphia has 2 newspapers. One reads like an AP and Reuters news feed. The other borders on tabloid. It doesn't help that both are owned by Knight Ridder, the same folks who run USA Today. The little fr
But some of them are here (Score:3, Interesting)
You will have to forgive the lack of links but did i not read just yesterday about a self parking car (does this qualify as driving), and there are cars in germany that can 'follow' the car in front so that you can take your hands off the wheel until you need to go some where different.
Here in the UK (and most of EMEA) we already have video phones that are mobile phones with built in video camera for real time webcamesque transmissions, in the UK the provider is called 3 (for 3g i suppose) what it might be called elsewhere is another matter.
just me couple of pennies worth
My tea (Score:3, Funny)
Reasons (speculation) (Score:2, Insightful)
VIDEOPHONES: People want to communicate more information more quickly. I get the feeling that the image of the person you're talking to simply isn't a piece of information people need.
A MOON COLONY: Suffers from being slightly useless in itself, and only worthwhile as a means to an end. People don;t want to spend billions in setting on eof these up.
FOOD IN PILLS: This simply isn't possible. You could have something
For us geeks... (Score:2)
Moving sidewalks (Score:2)
With only a couple of exceptions. . . (Score:2)
With the exception of moon colonies and perhaps nuclear armageddon, (though small nukes and worse have certainly been used in limited engagements since Japan), I believe all of those things currently exist, have happened or are in the process of happenin
Are we really that far away? (Score:2)
Well we're not that far away:
A Raise! (Score:2)
I'm waiting for the world to hand me everything for nothing you insensitive clod!
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
All I want... (Score:4, Interesting)
...is some sort of mechanism - 'bot, cyborg, whatever - that can handle all of the simple, silly, repetitive junk all of us have to do every day.
- Cut the grass. Simple. Pre-programmable.
- Empty the dishwasher. The same dishes go in the same cabinets every time.
- Sweep the floor (ok, there's roomba).
- Shovel snow.
- Paint the walls/ceiling.
- Wash the walls/ceiling.
- Fold laundry.
- Etc!!!
Asimo, take me away!Stupid article (Score:2)
videophones
If you're deaf, you've probably had a videophone for almost twenty years. Here there are also standby translators that will translate a normal phonecall into sign language. If you live in Europe, you already got a 3g phone with video.
food in pills
Vitamin pills? Nutritional pills? We've even got liquid food for crissakes. The only reason peaople still eat food is because it tastes good.
cars that drive themselves
Old hat.. we've even got cars that park themselves.
jet packs
Ever been to
Most of them have appeared (Score:5, Informative)
videophones have been around for a while in the UK [three.co.uk] and in other countries [nttdocomo.com](seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.
moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station [nasa.gov] up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA [esa.int] has planned in 25 years, NASA tried [desertusa.com] and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble [stsci.edu], Galileo [nasa.gov], Beagle 2 [beagle2.com])
food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins [vitamins.com] will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein [affordable...ents.co.uk] and creatine [creatinefacts.com] supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )
cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars [bbc.co.uk] have been developed [europemedia.net], which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)
jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond) [imdb.com]. You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them [armadilloaerospace.com] if you want [aardvark.co.nz]. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.
moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro [wikipedia.org] stations [bbc.co.uk]. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.
--This post brought to you by Google.com [google.com], paid for by Google For America, Inc.
Functional food isn't fun (Score:5, Funny)
Food is supposed to be a sensual experience, part of the feedback system that ensures we eat. Sure, there are some people out there who just eat to live, but we're pre-programmed to find eating pleasurable, from the sight of a perfectly grilled steak, its brown crust glistening under a sprinkling of whole peppercorns, to the scents of exotic vanilla beans wafting up from a mound of cold, soft ice cream, to the texture of crusty, rustic bread, hand-ripped from a lovely brown loaf dusted with cornmeal, to the taste of warm, moist, yielding carrots, drizzled in honey and butter, to
I need to change my shorts. Back soon.
Um, the big one? (Score:5, Insightful)
An economy not entirely dependent on oil? Depending on who you ask - and, oh boy, does it depend - we've already passed the global midpoint [oilcrisis.com] where we're using it up faster than we can possibly find it.
No, I'm not screaming that we're going to run dry in ten years, I'm saying that oil prices are only going one way, and that it's a risky strategy [bbc.co.uk] to rely on a supply of new oil from Arab countries.
How about just for once we plan further ahead than the next election and begin the wholesale switch to renewable energy sources now? We put man on the moon in under eight years from declaring it. If we had eight years warning, could we we build and drive a vehicle through every mainland US state without using a drop of oil, directly or indirectly? Oh, sure we could, we'd just use solar. And, uh, no plastics. And, um, build it in a plant powered by wind turbines. And ship the parts by, uh, yuh, we'll come back to that one. And our factory workers will use geothermal power to heat their homes, and they'll, erm, cycle to work. You see how it goes? Sure, in theory we could do it, and sooner or later, we'll have to. Are we going to wait until the last possible moment to put that theory to the test?
Oil is a one off bonanza in human history. We should be investing that wealth in our childrens' future, not blowing it on wide screen TVs and leaving them to clean up the mess.
While I'm ranting, sooner or later China is going to get rich enough to support an unhealthy population of lawyers, and then we can forget shipping our toxic garbage there to be melted down. Again, we can keep building the tire mountains and circuit board cities higher and higher and leave our kids to work out what to do with them. I just hope they're not such selfish short sighted bastards when it comes to looking after us in our collective old age.
China and India (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, we are in very big trouble, because the mathematics of having a billion Indians and a billion Chinese means that they need a much lower percentage of educated people in their countries to have a vastly larger actual number of educated people. If China or India can achieve a 10% university education rate, that's 200 million well educated Chinese and Indians - the equivalent of every person in the US having such a degree. There is a lot of complacence, because we look at those countries and see a high poverty rate, unemployment, lots of people living in poor conditions... but they are both nations on the rise and because of their immense sizes they will be hugely powerful before we know it.
Right now we can see this with IT jobs going to India... but how soon until there are hordes of Chinese accountants? Indian engineers? One only has to look at the speed with which the high-tech industry took off in SE Asia, where most of the manufacturing is still done, to see how quickly such sectors could be taken overseas with great speed. We won't just be wearing shirts made in China, our knowledge work will be done there too. Unfortunately we won't be able to afford any of it because we will all be unemployed.
IMHO you are absolutely correct in your assertion that we should be moving now, with great rapidity, to build a new set of ideals for our societies. We need to really migrate from the industrial, oil-swilling, third-world-will-pick-up-the-pieces mentality to an information age, high-tech, renewable, sustainable future. We have all the technology, we just need to put it into practice. If we don't, the west will become a hideous, decayed place full of social problems and memories of the era when we ruled the world.
Re:Um, the big one? (Score:3, Informative)
In a nutshell, today's US gasoline pump price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is as cheap as it was in 1986, and cheaper than it ever was before 1969. And when you consider that gasoline taxes have been raised continuously over the years (now to $0.43 per gallon), gasoline itself seems very cheap.
If you want to look at inflation-adjusted crude oil prices, look at this [wtrg.com]. More recent crude oil
Reasonability (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious answer is that it's cheaper than the alternatives. It's not really rational to expect that we'll stop using a resource that's available now, with an already-exisiting distribution infrastructure, for no reason other than that we need to stretch it out over some indeterminate length of time in the future.
> I'm thinking of my kids, but longer term, we're due another ice age real soon now. Failing that, god will drop a rock on us sooner or later. Our descendants are going to have to bootstrap themselves from wood burning stoves to nuclear power. Good luck to them.
What? Why would you think that they'd have to do this? By the time that next ice age rolls around, or the big rock falls, how can you know what we'll use for energy? Besides, why would they progress from wood to nuclear power at all? I can personally think of several options better than that, and I can't predict the future any better than you. You seem to think that we need to move away from fossil fuels right away, and I don't see anything in your argument to explain why. Yes, they're running out, but what's the point to having a huge world reserve of oil by moving away from oil entirely? Doesn't that defeat the use of having the reserves, if nothing you do requires that reserve? As the supply gets harder to provide, the price will rise, and when it rises high enough, we'll move to a different source of energy. Expecting the human race to do anything else is irrationally Utopian.
Virg
Electric sports car (Score:5, Interesting)
I want one of these [acpropulsion.com].
Three years ago, they matched a prototype of this car against a Ferarri, a Corvette, a Miata and a Porche Carerra on a 1/8 mile drag strip. It beat, by 7 lengths, all of these except the Miata. The only reason the Miata won was because the driver of the T-Zero forgot to disengage the hand brake.
Still waiting for (Score:3, Insightful)
Confusing Science vs. Engineering vs. Adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
Science was done with the laws that underpin videophones, moving sidewalks, and fly cars several decades ago -- how many articles on flying cars make it into scholarly science journals these days? Engineers have been using those laws to make prototypes of the products or (more importantly) low cost approaches to manufacturing and deploying these products for quite a while.
Its the people that invest and adopt that hold up most "scientific" inventions long after science to done with the topic. Until the product is cheap enough and perceived as useful enough, all the science and engineering in the world is irrelevant. This is where marketing to cosnumers or lobbying to governments comes into play.
I don't know (Score:5, Funny)
Wine (Score:3, Funny)
What I've noticed... (Score:3, Insightful)
For new tech to work, the consumer seems to need to see an obvious benefit but the manufacturer has to see an obvious profit. Without buy-in from both sides, a new tech will not fly. It is pretty simple. In some cases, the manufacturers have enough clout to throw a technology down our throats. This pretty much happened with the CD.
Another thing that I have noticed is that a lot of what they said would free us has acted more as a chain. The cel phone and pager are two obvious examples. I can no longer really get away from work and I can not get away from my personal things either. There is no such thing as getting away anymore. Sure it is nice bing available but I have been called into work while I was in the boat fishing. I've been camping and had my mother-in-law call me with computer questions. In the eveing at home, I can pull out the laptop and do some work... We no longer have the clear work/home family/profession lines that used to divide our time and responsibilities. This has the effect of attaching us rather than freeing us.
Fears? (Score:3, Insightful)
While there is something to be said for the above, one must also point out that some of those fears were justified.
While overpopulation of the world didn't happen, it didn't happen in part due to everyone controlling the number of children they had when they got rich. In places of poverty overpopulation was a reality. At it did have dire consequences. One might say that nature is compensating with various plagues (i.e. HIV) and starvation/war (i.e. Somalia/Ethiopia). But anyone with a portion of humanity would be horrified at that strong of a social Darwinist approach to human populations.
Nuclear war was a real threat and it really was a miracle it never happened -- although with terrorists and the nature of the technology of bio-weapons and nuclear weapons, it will remain a threat to humanity until we start having off-planet colonies.
A secure and bug free windows? Well there is OSX or Linux. They have Windows. (grin)
I think that global warming is still to be reckoned with. While I'm not convinced regarding the degree technology causes it the phenomena itself is real. Glaciers are rapidly melting and I think we're starting to see weather changes. If something happens with say the gulf current be prepared for major problems in the world.
Utopias (Score:5, Funny)
Re:where's my flying car? (Score:2, Interesting)
Where's my Personal JetPack???
There's a small group of people who own and operate the few remaining H2O2 Jetpacks from so long ago at that Olympics ceremony, but it seems like there really hasn't been anything else developed like that.
I guess its time to get out the asbestos Jumpsuit and start experimenting with those little estes rocket motors... I wonder how many it would take to get me a darwin award?
Jetpacks aren't going to work... (Score:3, Informative)
Lifting surfaces of some kind are the only practical method of getting human-scale flight of a decent range - at least until we invent Mr. Fusion :)
Re:where's my flying car? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you any idea how many cars that stops on freeways/highways?
Ever thought about the consequence of a car suddenly malfunctioning when you fly 1000ft above a residential neighborohood?
When something goes bad in car traffic the worst thing that happens is that the car (and driver) is destroyed by the speed. If you are lucky the car stops and you call for backup. If you are 1000ft above ground level the speed and height will kill you with almost no exceptions.
Do you realy want Old Aunt Jenny to crash into your house at 200mph just because she forgot to change the oil on her new Ford FreedomFlyer 2004?
The only cases where its sound and economical to fly today are long distances togeheter with a bunch of other people to cut cost.
Re:where's my flying car? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be dense. When people say 'I want my flying car' it is implied that they want it to be safe. Thats really the interesting technology anyways, making it safe.
When I say 'I want my flying car' I'm not thinking Fixed wing carcraft. I'm thinking ala 'Fifth element'. minus the anoyying automated ticket giver.
Re:where's my flying car? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but with the half naked Milla Jojovich in the back seat!
Re:where's my flying car? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but that's utter bullshit. I can get in my plane here in Rochester NY, and besides talking to the control tower and departure controller until I'm 10 miles away from the airport, I could fly all the way to the Pacific Ocean without telling anybody where I am going or even turning on my radio.
The difference between flying and driving is that pilots actually have to demonstrate some skill and judgement in order to get and keep their licenses. There are bad pilots, but nowhere near as high a percentage as there are bad drivers.
Re:...global catastrophies of the Armageddon kind (Score:3, Funny)