I was in the train station the other day, and the more-or-less disgusting conditions got me thinking. One of the staples of science fiction (at least in movies) is that everything is really, really clean. And then it hit me - you set up a forcefield over the entire floor - make it maybe half a millimeter higher. Then, at the end of the day, you just lay down some paper, turn off the forcefield, and dump the whole thing! Bam! Instant future-clean floors! Now, granted, you’re gonna have to make sure there’s decent friction on the forcefield, but other than that - even in a power failure, people would just fall a tiny amount, not enough to be a big deal.
And that got me thinking - there are a lot of nifty technologies in science fiction, but often they’re just used for really flash-bang effects, not for the boring stuff. So, what sorts of really cool, useful on a day-to-day basis things would you do with some of the technology from science fiction? Any source is fair game, but please describe the tech, and what it’s used for in the original source.
Transporters from the Star Trek universe. Normally used to move people and cargo over any distance, I can imagine transporters be used for more comical purposes like removing someone’s clothing at a party. I think I read about a similar prank in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Use the transporters for waste disposal of all sorts. No more trash bins, garbage collectors or sewers.
Maid/housekeeping services could use Scalosian water to speed themselves up to super-fast levels, thereby getting all the housework done in an “instant” of the homeowner’s, with little or no disruption of their regular routine.
Inside and out. That’s why there’s no bathroom on the Enterprise and where they get all the matter required for the replicators.
You could also convert your entire house to a holodeck. You’d only need a building shell, and it would be easy to reconfigure it to your specific needs as and when. It could also be relatively small, wouldn’t require plumbing (water or sewage), gardening or rubbish collection.
I think Niven extrapolated the ultimate transporter usage…
A wealthy character had a giant vat of mixed cocktails somewhere in his gigantic home. His glasses had sensors in them, and in the base was a small transporter.
When your glass reaches a certain point of emptiness, it refills itself. I love this idea.
That’s silly. If you have transporter technology, then you also have replicator technology, so there’s no need to have a giant vat of anything anywhere. You just have to fit your replicator with a transporter and you can have your unending drinks without the need to bulk buy, and if you fitted a communicator into your glass you could change your drink order (and clean the glass in between drinks too).
Well, that depends on how your transporters work. The Portal style, for instance, would still need the vat o’ cocktails.
Brings up a good point, though - if you’ve got replicator tech, a lot of these don’t matter. Why bother keeping your train station clean with a forcefield when you can just make a new one every other Thursday?
With transporter tech, I’m thinking I’d reactivate my real estate license and start buying – real quick – beautiful-but-inaccessible property and get houses built there.
Wanna live in the Rockies, but your job is in Alabama? No problem! (Well, there IS this time diff that you’d have to get used to…)
Holodeck tech–Open up your own bordello. Want to get it on with Susannah York? Or a young Merle Oberon? No problem! Although, I’m sure someone would find a way to make it illegal eventually.
Time travel – Let’s go back a little bit and catch a lot of endangered species and use them to repopulate today. No dinosaurs, I’m thinking rhinos, tigers, even dodos and Tasmanian tigers/wolfs.
Phasers/disintegrators. Have you ever thought what the Mafia hitmen would pay for something that leaves no body? Tough to get a conviction with no corpus in your habeas.
I think lasers instead of blades would take a lot of work out of mowing your lawn.
Heh, and not just for the bathroom, either. Cancerous tumour? Let’s beam that baby right out of there! Hell, got a blackhead? We can take care of that! Need an exfoliating facial? Lock the transporter on dead skin cells! Or for makeup - you could get your makeup how you like it, save the settings, and then beam makeup onto your face every morning. Brushing your teeth? Why bother when you can beam the plaque away! I’m seeing your entire morning routine - up to and including breakfast - replaced by a transporter and a computer. Just pray you don’t get a virus…
That won’t work. You’ll be laying the paper on top of the forcefield and accumulated crud. When you de-power the forcefield, you drop all the crud to the actual floor, with the paper on top. It has to be 1) lay paper 2) power on forcefield
3) daily use 4) depower forcefield 5) remove soiled paper, goto step 1.
I just wanna shiny new Viper for my commute to work. (and a phaser to light my grill. That would rock.)
