Sometimes I read comic books or watch sci-fi and think “what if that technology existed?” Holodecks,repliclators, flying cars, faster than light-travel, clean free/cheap energy, fountain-of-youth drugs (sadly, fountains-of-youth techs are almost always depicted as horrible in fiction), advanced medical technologies, are all things you see. But which do wish existed - either for the good of humanity or just for you own enjoyment?
I like a lot of them. Star Trek replicators are always appealing - mostly seem healthy but mostly taste just as good as the real thing and require no work in purchasing, preparing, or cooking food. Several fictions have great techs that make you essentially immune to all diseases (and poisons). I’d love a good “youthiify” tech - they almost always make you slim and toned and reverse damage done to the body - but offhand I cannot think of single fiction that had them without making them parasitic or destructive. Clean, cheap energy is one I think would be mostly good for the world, but I’ve heard arguments for the reverse.
I’m “meh” on FTL-travel, but I know some folks love the idea.
You’ve mentioned some of the best ones (including FTL, which I’m not “meh” about). I’ll add antigravity, wormholes, teleportation, and at least weakly god-like AI (with constraints) for a start.
FTL travel I don’t care about. I just wish I had some tech that would vacuum my house efficiently so I don’t have to. Yes, there was (emphasis on was) the Roomba, but it didn’t really work (I had one and can attest to this). I want something that will efficiently get all the crumbs under the kitchen table, all the dog fur accumulated in the corners and the stairs. And I don’t want to have to babysit it while it does these things.
Are there any non-anthropomorphized robot maids/cleaning machines in fiction that you can think of? I’d love a machine that did all chores, but I don’t want it to be at all person-like. I want to own tools, not slaves.
I’m not fond of the idea of flying cars. I don’t want to be awakened at 3 AM by a drunk driver crashing into my roof.
The problem with replicators was pointed out ages ago in one of George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral stories (and LONG before Star Trek was around in any form) – it will wreak havoc with economics, prices, and exchange. Trade only really works if you’re moving items of scarcity from one place to another, and bringing in items that your trading partner finds scarce. With replicators scarcity no longer exists, except perhaps for the energy needed to run the replicator.
They tried to dodge this in the Star Trek universe by making “gold-pressed latinum” the basis of exchange, because it’s one of the few things that can’t be replicated, but I doubt if that would eliminate the problem. Who’s going to buy expensive items , even with GPL if it can easily and cheaply be replicated?
The technology to perfectly repair diseased organs or easily replace with brand new ones, curing almost any of the illnesses that today can be terminal.
Teleportation is one I’d like. I love going to new places, but I hate the process of getting there. Airports and all that crap? Ugh.
Now, of course, there’s the “Flash Crowd” problem that cheap teleportation means all the nice places will be swamped with tourists, but even if it cost about the same as a plane ticket, it would still be a massive improvement over current technology.
I concentrated in the people with different accents part. For the rest, I have been told that they are self centered and boring. May have been in the Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
Pretty much all tech makes something less scarce. I’d agree that a replicator like in star trek would be the most disruptive invention of all time, but it would not end scarcity, nor trade.
In terms of my own vote, yeah I’ll just go with FTL. Our universe’s vast empty spaces with no prospect of crossing them is terrifying and frustrating. And yes, I know the flipside of FTL is potentially the borg or whatever could come here en masse, but I’ll take it.
I think we’re not that far away from universal translators. OK, not for animals/plants/fungi. But something resembling a universal translator (you speak into it in one language, and out it comes in a selected target language) is already available as a cellphone app for the world’s major human languages, and will keep getting better.
Yes, that’s one of those things that seems like an inevitability, even if it takes longer than we might predict. Improvements might be slow in coming, but every improvement will be kept in perpetuity, so eventually we’ll have something that works “well enough” for everyday usage. Maybe for detailed legal or technical writing you’d still want a trained human in the loop, but for “I’m going on vacation and want to have casual conversations with people there”, it will be fine.
Yes, that is the crucial point. What is enough for who? If it is good enough for enough users, there will be no more interpreters going forward, because they will not have the opportunity to practice, and this job is all about experience.
Same applies to many other profession though, lawyers for instance. AI is going to have some paradoxical long term effects. But enough of this diversion: I am glad I am retired. I am sorry for my colleagues who still need the jobs and are too young to retire and too old to learn something new.
Now give me my TARDIS and my lightsaber and I’ll take the replicator too if you throw it in.
