You’re certainly correct in that the actual progress made is slower than we hoped it would be, and new obstacles keep popping up. Real world tech seems to work that way: we come up with a brilliant idea…and then have to fight against tons of complications.
We got spoiled by transistors and the wonderful progression to high density printing of circuitry, a success story that hasn’t finished yet.
But we got a bash in the nose with nuclear power. And flying cars.
3D printing may be possible on a nano scale!!
Major breakthrough today.
**
3D printing on the nanoscale–which could lead to new methods of drug delivery–just became a lot closer to reality.
The researchers are hoping they can be immediately tried as a new way to deliver drugs to the right place in the body.**
I just had eye examine and they are still using those really old charts to read!!:eek::eek::eek: That stuff is so old it dates back really long time. I thought by now they would come up with some thing better than those old charts you read or some thing coming out in the next 5 to 8 years to replace those old charts.
These really old eye charts you read.
https://static.festisite.com/static/imagegen/img/posters/eye-chart.png
I know lot have changed with eye care and treatment but why do they still use those old eye charts!! I thought some thing new and better would be out by now or coming out in the next 4 to 8 years from now.
They’re old…but they work. It’s like the patella hammer. It goes back more than a century…but it does what’s needed.
They do have the cool vision test thing – it’s like a video game! You stare at a screen, and little shapes flicker in and out, and you push a button when you are aware of seeing one. It checks your peripheral vision, and identifies the dimensions of the blind spot. And it’s kinda fun!
I do agree that the old eye chart could be updated scientifically with abstract shapes, so that the difference between shape 1 and shape 2 is not the mere accident of history that is the difference between F and P. On the other hand, the patient wouldn’t know the names of these new shapes (On Beyond Zebra!) and thus it would take more time, where we all know how to say “Eff” and “Pee,” so the test goes by that much faster.
(“Okay, um, the circle with the line through it…and the square with a tail like a kite…and is that an oval or an egg? I can’t tell…”)
For small children, sometimes familiar shapes are used,as children can then be tested even if they do onot know the alphabet.
The Holodecks in ST would have to use inertial manipulation (which doesn’t exist in reality, but does exist in the ST universe) - to be able to move you without you knowing it, or make you feel like you’re moving, when you’re not.
One of the STTNG episodes tried to explain how a holodeck environment could seem much larger than the actual space - but it was sort of a handwave. The biggest problem for apparent size is if two people enter the environment and walk away from each other - in order to convincingly reproduce this in a holodeck, you would have to:
[ul]
[li]Prevent them actually hitting the walls as they walk apart[/li][li]Make them feel exactly as if they were walking away[/li][li]Obscure the actual view of each individual from the other[/li][li]Replace the other individual with a virtualised ‘distant’ version [/li][li](so essentially, each individual in the holodeck needs their own completely discrete ‘bubble’ of VR - and the bubbles only need intersect when it is convenient for them to do so.[/li][/ul]
So yeah, pretty nearly impossible as presented. We have more chance of doing this with conventional VR or a brain/computer VR interface (i.e. the matrix)
But are they scientifically designed to differ from one another in ways that are maximally diagnostic…or are they designed so that little kids will know what they are?
(Not objecting to the idea at all. Great idea! It’s like the frowny-face icons for little kids to say how bad the pain is.)
But let’s get rid of charts altogether. Why depend on the subjective judgment of the patient? The retinal image scanning device of the future will project an image across the lens onto the retina then scan the retina to determine the focus, then make adjustments to determine what diopter will produce a perfect focus for that eye. It will all happen in milliseconds with much greater precision than what the patient can determine.
You’d be looking at the projected image through the same lens than you projected it into - I’ve a feeling that would make some cases not simple to diagnose.
Also, seeing isn’t just about the eyes - most of it happens in the brain - and the perfect prescription measured outside of the patient’s perception might actually be quite uncomfortable to adjust to.
Oh shit. Forgot about that. :smack: So you need to hack into the optic nerve.
Much of vision happens in the brain, but I would think everything having to do with getting a clear image happens in the eye. But I’m not a professional in that field.
Someone said somewhere that color vision is kinda fuzzy and loose around edges & that our brains put it inside the lines for us so as to make it look sharp.
I may be totally wrong too.
Because there is no scan or test to show the eye or the brain can see the text or image.
They could get rid of charts and beam image onto eye but there is no scan or test to show the eye or the brain can see that.
What they could do is rid of charts. And you put on VR headset and press button every time you see x or y flash in front of your eye.
I think a lot of the “impossible” ones in this list are really being looked at with a “near-future” lens - even the really tough ones like hand-held high-energy laser weapons and antigravity / FTL could have plausible far-future mechanisms that allow them.
(Where does the heat go, or the energy come from? A wormhole in a star’s corona gives you all the input energy you could ever need, and a wormhole dumping heat into empty space somewhere can handle that amount of heat…is it as absurd as using a Cadillac to swat a fly? Yes, but in a post-scarcity society, you can waste a lot of Cadillacs if you feel like it).
I’m surprised none of the coolest post-scarcity ones have been brought up yet, a la Iain Banks’ Culture, or Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth, like:
> Long-term memory stores to augment the essentially immortal lifespans complete with re-lifing on physical death
> Infinitely mutable physical forms
> Absent post-physical societies that have evolved out of this universe entirely leaving artifacts behind
> Godlike and weakly-godlike AI’s
> Post-technological galaxy-hopping societies like the Silfen
> The ability to consciously rewind, change, and relive your own timeline a la Edeard in the Living Dream
I expect all kinds of interesting flying machines based on anti-gravity. SOMETHING is making the galaxies accelerate away from each other. All they need to do is find it and put it in a bottle. 
“Color” spans enough of a range of wavelengths where we can’t focus on them all equally effectively. The blue end of the spectrum is particularly hard.
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Did you mean to post something other than a quote?
I thought of one just the other day, while watching a ball game. Face recognition that scans so fast, that you can cover a 5,000 seat section in a stadium in a few seconds, and the scanning camera will hit on one target person.
I can see law enforcement being giddy about this, they could set up a street cam and preset for fugitives in rogues gallery.
I think a lot of the medical technologies described by some modern science fiction authors could end up coming to pass. I would expect that in the future we will have weaponised people as described by Peter F Hamilton (in his novels they are “enriched”).
Energy storage technology is expanding and developing very rapidly. There are technologies that are barely dreampt of that will be enagbled by high-density power sources. Also, most of the really cool tech concepts rely upon ultra-dense energy storage, and with that, the practical problems can be overcome. Look at the USN’s railgun - that could’ve been build fifty years ago, if the energy issues had been solved.