WallyM7 wrote:
Shall I not be on a pedestal, worshipped and competed for?
Not be carried off? Or better still, cause a little war?
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.
Atrael: LOTS of new cars are under $20,000. And not just econoboxes. Chevy Lumina, Buick Century, Chrysler Cirrus, Honda Accord, Ford Taurus, Mazda 626, Toyota Camry, Ford Mustang, etc. All have MSRP’s under $20,000 on some models, which means you can get them for significantly less than that.
I’d say that the majority of manufactured cars have models available in the $20,000 range or less.
Is anyone else having a hard time reading this thread with out envisioning Homer sitting on the couch reaching into his transporter having his hand appear in the kitchen getting beer from the fridge. Or better yet Homer sliding the transporter in front of the toilet, and then unzipping his fly infront of the other half…
I need help.
Ok, Ok…I give up…(throwing hands in the air)…but I do want to point out the original intent of this thread…but you made my point for me dhanson, when you were talking about the construction costs, with the codes being changed so often…ect. This is just one example of an industry that won’t go with a cheaper method because of people. So what makes you think that we’d happily embrace any other kind of technological advancment that would detrimentaly impact some portion of our economy. I think you have far too much faith in man’s willingness to give up a profit.
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.
Actually, it has gone both ways in the past.
The principles of such simple inventions as the windmill/windpump had been demonstrated over 2,000 years ago. One reason, it has been speculated, that those machines were never put into general use is that the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had such abundant manpower through slavery, that they simply never gave any thought to using those devices as tools. It took the depletion of population and the (nominal) suppression of slavery during the Middle Ages for those toys to be re-examined and turned into actual labor-saving machinery.
On the other hand, there are a number of cases where people tried to stop the introduction of machinery in order to save their jobs.
Your OP asked about the government deliberately suppressing an invention to preserve some of the financial underpinnings of society. That has not happened, and I doubt that in our society it ever will. “Conservatives” will look at the “rising tide floats all boats” model and embrace it even when the rising tide is a tsunami that is about to sweep them away. “Liberals” will see any such technological leap as “freeing the laborer from drudgery” and accept it. (The connection between labor unions and “Liberals” has been stretching thin in recent years and only the surliest, (and stupidest), labor organizer believes that automation must be opposed–especially after the fairly clear lesson of the U.S. Steel industry from 1950 through 1985: opposing automation equals offshore jobs.)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, technology that has clear implications as a weapon against which there is no defense could prompt the military to suppress or control it, but no other significant force or group in our current society will get in technology’s way.
Tom~
Tom–
You’re right…badly worded opening post…my appologies…but I think you see what I was getting at. Perhaps supression is the wrong word…how about “discourage the research of”?..And the transporter thing was just a very extream example. I should have started with more mundane objects.
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.
There are plenty of mundane examples of the government supressing innovation in order to protect the supposed interests of their voters. When Japan was kicking the U.S. auto industry’s butt because of innovations in manufacture, the U.S. response was to attempt to throw tariffs on Japanese vehicles. That’s one way to supress technology. The UAW has lobbied to suppress things like robots on the production floor, by demanding that the factories can’t lay off workers because of improvements in inefficiency. My example of building codes is another case. NASA has supressed innovation in space research to protect the profits of the shuttle fleet, and only recently has been forced to open up the restrictions on private rocket launches. There are countless examples of this stuff. The dairy industry has a complex web of regulations that were built into place back when milk was moved around in unrefrigerated wagons, and those regulations are still in place to ‘protect’ the industry against cheap, refrigerated trucking (the worry was that small dairy operations would go out of business, so tariffs are assigned based on the distance from the farm to the consumer).
I could go on all day with other examples.
Note however that this is not a direct suppression of technology, but more of a regulatory barrier that makes innovation expensive.
Two words: Cryptography exports.
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
I think cryptography counts as one of those “weapons against which there is no defense” tomndebb mentioned.
Or at least, the FBI and NSA think so.
I think this is where you argument fails. No major technology has come into major use “all at once”. We might compare that to saying “What if American Airlines in full force was offering service in 1910?”
I think that tomndebb’s view pretty much nails it. In your argument you ignore the long time that it would take to integrate such a technology, and you don’t account for all of the industry that would rise up around this new power. New technology often leads to major innovations with great econimic rewards. Imagine, for example, the ability to transport oil out of the ground rather than drill for it. And that’s just one application off of the top of the head of one person who isn’t exactly an expert innovator.
Ok, I submit, that I did indeed lose this Great Debate…but I learned some facts along the way…and isn’t that what this forum is for?..Debating ideas and learning new ones…Tom, dhanson, Undead Dude, thanks for your remarks…I found them to be informed and well presented.
Guess I’ll put the transporter plans away for another decade… 
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.
Hey! If you’ve got the transporter plans, don’t put them away. Our point was that you won’t be suppressed! Go make your billions. (Just don’t let the military get the idea that it could be used as a weapon delivery system.) 
Tom~
Big Blue is on the case! http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/
Well I’ll be damned…Beam me up Scotty…or rather, beam up the jerk that sits in the cubical next to me and recieve a pile of unusable goo.
I haven’t lost my mind, I have a tape backup around somewhere.
Problem is, that “quantum teleportation” only works on single photons or electrons.
As The Physics of Star Trek notes, it would take more computer memory to store the quantum state of every particle in a human being than you could fit into the known universe!
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.
There’s always a rumor going around that some fabulous new technology has been invented, and the government is covering it up.
There’s a story told over dinner in Petronius Arbiter’s The Satyricon which bears a striking resemblance to some of our modern legends. This was written at about the time of Nero. See if this rings any bells:
“But you must allow me to say this, I prefer glass ones [plates] myself; they are quite free from smell at any rate. And if they didn’t break, I would rather have them than gold itself; but they’ve got cheap and common now. However there was an artificer once who made a glass goblet that would not break. So he was admitted to Caesar’s presence to offer him his invention’ then, on receiving the cup back from Caesar’s hands, he dashed it down on the floor. Who so startled as Caesar? But the man quietly picked up the goblet again, which was dinted as a vessel of bronze might be. Then taking a little hammer from his pocket, he easily and neatly knocked the goblet into shape again. This done, the fellow thought he was as good as in heaven already, especially when Caesar said to him, `Does anybody else besides yourself understand the manufacture of this glass?’ But lo! on his replying in the negative, Caesar ordered him to be beheaded, because if once the secret became known, we should think no more of gold than of so much dirt.”
A `classic’ urgan legend, if you will.
Darn it, so that’s why we never hear about Cold Fusion any more! If you throw a platinum/palladium cold-fusion cell to the ground, and it won’t break! The emperor must’ve beheaded Pons and Fleischmann.
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.