robotics, space travel, and the establishment of spacer worlds.
I see your point. Hmmm… who would control replicators? You could make a conquering army, a billion phasers or… what is the Star Trek equivalent of hydrogen bombs?
And I’d be worried about Asmovian robots getting all Cyberdyne-y, Three Laws or not.
Sorry, that convinces me… no more technological development is allowed on earth. Ever. We just can’t be trusted with it.
We must take steps to turn over the planet’s governance to dolphins and moutain gorillas, who will rule with justice for all.
Ahem. Post #11.
Dolphins maybe.. but mountain gorillas?
First thing I thought of. The version from George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral stories is interoperable with 21st century tech, which solves your quibble.
Alternately, bring in a Culture GSV and be the first to welcome them, etc.
I dunno, but if they’re good enough for Jane Goodall. they’re welcome to be my new monkey overlords.
“There is no Master but the Master, and QT-1 is his prophet.”
Well I was just going to hop across and bring back a benign Culture Mind, an entire GSV is just showing off!
I’d get all the Culture-level human upgrades when I was over there as well of course! 
Lightsabres!
A year later, MMA becomes the most popular televised sport worldwide…
Wouldn’t the BTF2 car have time travel, Mr. Fusion, hover car tech, the battery tech requisite to handle Mr. Fusion, AND a sports almanac in it?
that’s my nomination though the Mr. Fusion by itself is well worth it. The rest is just icing on the cake, but since i don’t care much for cake, is just ice cream on the pie.
People THINK this is true.
It is not.
It would wreck 9 kinds of hell on the Economy for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is “how do people get paid for their intellectual property?”.
And it would wreck 9 kinds of Hell on Humanity as people get bored out of their minds and turn to liquor, drugs and bad habits to keep themselves occupied.
Well, yeah it would wreck the economy. Economies happen due to scarcity of resources. Remove the scarcity, there’s no need for an economy.
Right now, there is a massive number of people on the internet who happily create videos, novels, music, and art for free. Some may do it with the hopes of being paid to do it in the future, sure, but there’s a not-insignificant number of people who create because they like to create.
Why would people need to be paid for their intellectual property? Presumably, they’re happy to produce it just to prevent themselves from getting bored out of their minds and to keep themselves occupied.
Or maybe you’d just see an economy based on services and other non-replicable luxuries, but divorced from the essentials of life, from which people could opt out as they chose. Like, maybe, I make money breeding pets which people buy from me, and I spend that money hiring a poet to write an ode to my girlfriend, and the poet spends that money to watch a live play, and so on.
for the last time, jane goodall studied chimpanzees, diane fosse studied gorillas. can’t remember the name of the orangutang lady (Mary Galdikas?)
I actually had the ones from Red Alert 2 in mind, that inexplicably created gigawatts of power from…iunno, static? Magic? I always thought they were somehow a hodgepodge of his real tesla coils and his theories of “Free Energy,” but I admit I phrased that really shitty. Though the things that **Bryan **is describing are also quite cool. 
Huh, the ones in Red Alert 1 just zapped tanks, and consumed enormous amounts of power in the process (you pretty much needed 1 large power plant per 1 Tesla coil). I hadn’t realized they’d changed them in 2.
H.L. Menken once said, “No man has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
I would want a machine that would do that.
No matter how low I shoot. I always overestimate it.
If I were feeling altruistic, I would go for the “cornucopia” from some of Harlan Ellison’s stories. Essentially a Star Trek replicator, but doesn’t need antimatter to power it, and doesn’t have the “cannot replicate certain substances” limitation.
If I were feeling selfish, I would go for the “autodoc” from Larry Niven’s stories. Cures all diseases, heals all injuries, regenerates lost organs, rejuvenates indefinitely. And, by the 30th century, is a common household appliance.
PS: If you insist on an economic benefit, I would point out that in Niven’s universe, no one is ever too sick to work, or too old to start over.