# What's the most bizarre technological advance that seems juuuust plausible within your lifetime? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 8, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705 "2013-08-08T14:43:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/101 "2013-08-12T15:43:13Z")
Power transmission isn’t possible over distance, even in a home. Tesla was brilliant but he got that one wrong. Plus, would you want your home full of “RADIATION”? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/102 "2013-08-12T18:11:23Z")
> [@NotDeadYet](#): > > Wireless transmission of electricity, doing away with the need for cords and to plug anything into the wall. > > We already have the technology to do away with all LAN cables, it just is a bit too expensive for the average consumer. According to a friend in the business, the hardware is out there for a totally wireless home – phone, TV, Internet. Problem is who will go first? Right now there are devices that convert your cell phone signal into a landline device, smart TVs and of course, wireless devices of all kinds. Imagine a single “black box” with one cable going in and nothing coming out – just a strong enough signal to run every tech gadget in the house. > > Now, go the next step and run all your gadgets without power cords. Well, there’s no real reason you couldn’t just fire up a really fast 802.11 network and do all of the above on it; voice is pretty cheap when it comes to network bandwidth, and plenty of people already use wireless networking to stream videos as well. I think the only thing lacking is the actual gizmos to make it happen- I’d need some sort of contraption to connect a land-line phone to a wireless network to realize it in my home. That being said, cabling has a lot of advantages in terms of speed and lack of interference, and it’s cheap to boot. That’s why they’re still used. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/103 "2013-08-12T18:50:47Z")
I think there will be a lot of stress on society as these innovations come online, because our social attitudes lag well behind technology. For example, I think that there has been a slow but steady growth in robotics over the last few years. Eventually they will develop robots that can simulate human eye-hand coordination and manipulability, able to do everything we can do with our hands only much faster and more reliably. Result: almost every job that involves rote use of the hands and does not demand high-end reasoning will be automated. A paradise, no one need ever do boring rote work again. But that’s what most people get paid to do, one way and another. 95% of humans will be unemployed and unemployable. And the libertarian/conservative thinking that dominates the One Percent will cause them to ask, “Why do I need to give money or goods to those jerks? It’s sad that they and their families are starving and homeless, but they shoulda learned programming or gotten MBAs or something!” I fear that billions will die, just because of these attitudes, just at the point where our economics are no longer dominated by scarcity. So, gloomy gloomy in the short run. Things will get better, later … for those who survive. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/104 "2013-08-12T19:00:39Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > For the latter…in a few generations of video game development, “Massively Multiplayer Online Rape Simulators.” You switch between “-ist” and “-ee.” I take it you have never played Second Life. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/105 "2013-08-12T19:16:52Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > A paradise, no one need ever do boring rote work again. But that’s what most people get paid to do, one way and another. 95% of humans will be unemployed and unemployable. And the libertarian/conservative thinking that dominates the One Percent will cause them to ask, “Why do I need to give money or goods to those jerks? It’s sad that they and their families are starving and homeless, but they shoulda learned programming or gotten MBAs or something!” How far away is the universal application of robot hands? I’m guessing most of us will kick off long before better-than-human robot hands become a reality. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/106 "2013-08-12T20:24:36Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > How far away is the universal application of robot hands? I’m guessing most of us will kick off long before better-than-human robot hands become a reality. Hard to say. They’re still in the developmental stages, but development is proceeding faster and faster. A lot of what’s driving the development is prosthetic limbs, but of course there are also industrial applications. [Here’s a story](http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/152251-were-all-doomed-darpa-develops-cheap-robot-hand-that-can-use-tools) about a DARPA hand that can change a tire. [Here’s a story](http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20130628-50573.html) about a German hand that is made of silicon, rendering it more dextrous and also much cheaper. It’s still got a few problems though … a finger fell off during the demo. Oopsies! One of the key issues I had read about several years ago was developing software that could recognized objects and tell the hand what to do with them … something we take for granted, but which is difficult for computers. I see no mention of this is the current crop of stories. To really replace humans in most jobs, though, a robot hand will probably have to have this technology: simple set-piece programming is only possible in the highly regimented area of factories. Still I wouldn’t be at ALL surprised to see a robot hand that can pick grapes and lettuce before I die. [Oopsies,](http://news.msn.com/science-technology/robots-to-revolutionize-farming-ease-labor-woes) already here. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/107 "2013-08-13T00:54:27Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > How far away is the universal application of robot hands? I’m guessing most of us will kick off long before better-than-human robot hands become a reality. Well Motel beds already have “Magic Fingers” TM ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/108 "2013-08-13T03:54:53Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Self-driving cars. But mandated. I believe before I die that human-driven cars will be illegal. Insurance companies will lobby heavily for self-driving cars as they will be shown to be far, far safer. The epidemic of vehicular deaths in modern countries will plummet and be almost non existent. You misunderstand the insurance industry. The industry needs risk and loss to survive. Insurers don’t mind and even lobby for small risk reductions because they can - despite the risk reduction - get away with keeping premiums about the same while claims go down. But a technology that reduced MVA’s from a huge industry to a rarity would eviscerate the whole auto insurance behemoth. They aren’t going to lobby for that. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/109 "2013-08-13T14:07:01Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You misunderstand the insurance industry. The industry needs risk and loss to survive. Insurers don’t mind and even lobby for small risk reductions because they can - despite the risk reduction - get away with keeping premiums about the same while claims go down. But a technology that reduced MVA’s from a huge industry to a rarity would eviscerate the whole auto insurance behemoth. They aren’t going to lobby for that. I’m thinking that until we can get reliable autonomous vehicles that require very little in the way of sophisticated maintenance, we’ll still see broke-ass people driving manually steered beaters, and consequently we’ll still need insurance for a long time now. Plus, unless the autonomous vehicles eliminate accidents completely, people will still carry insurance, and more importantly, be required to carry insurance by governments. That’s why the insurance companies will lobby for it hard- everyone with an autonomous car will represent a guaranteed revenue stream with very little in the way of payout, even if the revenue stream is smaller due to smaller premiums. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/110 "2013-08-13T15:04:38Z")
I’m not dreaming so big. I’ll be happy with just an auto-flush toilet that doesn’t flush when I’m sitting on it grumblegrumble… ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/111 "2013-08-13T15:44:30Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Well, there’s no real reason you couldn’t just fire up a really fast 802.11 network and do all of the above on it; voice is pretty cheap when it comes to network bandwidth, and plenty of people already use wireless networking to stream videos as well. I think the only thing lacking is the actual gizmos to make it happen- I’d need some sort of contraption to connect a land-line phone to a wireless network to realize it in my home. > > That being said, cabling has a lot of advantages in terms of speed and lack of interference, and it’s cheap to boot. That’s why they’re still used. My whole place is wireless right now including the land line phone, TV and music. It is easy and fairly cheap to do too as long as you have a fast internet connection. One of [these \< $40 adapters will connect your landline to a Google Voice account and works great.](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-57561577-58/get-free-google-voice-home-phone-service-with-$40-adapter/) Combine that with a traditional cordless phone system and it is done. Total setup time is less than 10 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/112 "2013-08-13T16:42:41Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > Power transmission isn’t possible over distance, even in a home. > Tesla was brilliant but he got that one wrong. Could you, in fact, pump energy into the ionosphere and then somehow recover it again by exploiting a difference in potential between the upper atmosphere and the ground? (I’m not sure exactly how you’d do that without an eighty-mile high antenna, but let’s talk basic concept here.) ETA: Cecil’s article on the subject doesn’t get into the technicalities beyond saying “sounds nutty” and "reports of success are apocryphal). ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/113 "2013-08-13T16:46:57Z")
I think the ability to regenerate damaged nerve tissue would be a major game changer that shoud be possible in my remaining decades. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/114 "2013-08-13T16:47:57Z")
@ **Lumpy** You’d have gigantic losses. You’d need to pump out a million (WAG) watts for each watt received. The power drops in proportion to the square of the distance. On a workbench, power transmission can be demonstrated. But it doesn’t scale up. ETA- ‘maybe’ in a home. You could have multiple emitters, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/115 "2013-08-13T17:01:30Z")
I want my ant-gravity, dammit! _Something_ is making the universe accelerate outward, so anti-gravity exists in some form and I want a few bottles of it. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/116 "2013-08-13T17:21:56Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I want my ant-gravity, dammit! Just assemble a few petatonnes of ants in a confined space, and bob’s your uncle. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705/117 "2013-08-13T18:52:18Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I want my ant-gravity, dammit! _Something_ is making the universe accelerate outward, so anti-gravity exists in some form and I want a few bottles of it. According to [PeopleFinder.com](http://PeopleFinder.com), you could potentially have an “Auntie Gravity”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-bizarre-technological-advance-that-seems-juuuust-plausible-within-your-lifetime/665705.md?page=5)