Name a technology you'd like to see in the near future

[Muse]

Automated transport (autonomous cars) is coming and it's going to reshape the entire way we think of cars, and for the better. It will be one of the 21st century's better boons and I'm not kidding in the least.

Other than that I want a reverse microwave, something that sucks the energy out of food to super cool it. I have a lot of things I want frozen quickly.

Dude, it's called a freezer.

The Matrix. After we have that we dont need to invent anything else, it can all be done easily inside the system.

Man, too much TV/movies. Get real.

 

[Muse]

I think it's fair to assume that if driving were automated, then there would be no more motorcycles?

No thanks.

Until they legislate reduced emissions from two wheeled engine powered vehicles I am in favor of bannishing them, TBH. I've breathed their exhaust tons of times skating and bicycling around town. They are a scourge upon the earth until they stop that problem.

 

[Muse]

fusion

yup

 

[Muse]

People naturally fear not having control, and that is going to play heavily in the fight to get automated cars on the roads.

After a while the fight won't be to get automated cars on the roads, it will be to get the un-automated ones (very often driven by lame in-denial luddites) off the roads.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Current self driving cars are quite advanced, but I think we are far from it becoming a common/normal tech. Current self driving cars rely too much on the environment being perfect such as there being lines on the road and no snow. Come to my city, there arn't any lines on the road for most of the year, there's pot holes everywhere in summer, and in winter there are places more slippery than others and other hazards that you just get to know of over time. In spring you need to slow down near pot holes (which will be filled with water) because you don't know how deep they are. Some 2 lane roads also convert into 1 lane roads as the outer lanes are where the snow banks go so even if the lines were magnetic you don't actually follow them in winter, you follow the rutts in the snow pack (well it kinda keeps you in like rails). Can a self driving car adapt to those conditions?

 

[Muse]

flying cars. finally a reality. mass produce it and make it affordable now we need regulations, laws, and processes built around it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEHGimtJbqM

It's a common fantasy and I've always thought very silly. The technical challenges are just way too daunting, won't ever be safe, IMO.

 

[Muse]

A portable yet reasonably accurate lie detector. I want to have a good idea of when someone is lying to me.

A portable yet reasonably accurate lie detector. I want to have a good idea of when someone is lying to me.

 

[Muse]

There is nothing I want more than a teleporter.

You're gonna be waiting a long time. Unless it's your imagination.

 

[Muse]

Clean water and clean air all over the planet.

Safe storage for nuclear waste.

Saying goodbye to bad religion and stupid people, i.e. we get over it.

 

[Darwin333]

A space propulsion tech that does not involve expelling matter (fuel, exhaust etc) would be quite something. Basically a working EM drive would be a pretty big breakthrough in space travel. or even satellites. No need to carry fuel, which is finite.

Actually I wonder if they do any rendez-vous missions with satellites now days to refuel them, seems that would be cheaper than letting them die when they run out of fuel. With all the stuff in space they have to do more collision avoidance maneuvers now days so they use more fuel.

By the time the satellite runs out of fuel technology has generally evolved to such a point that not only is it cheaper to send up a new satellite but the new satellite is a lot better than the one you are replacing. I'm pretty sure that Hubble was the only "satellite" that has ever been serviced in orbit.

 

[Darwin333]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but a true Holodeck.

 

[Muse]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but a true Holodeck.

Mentioned? Many times! Had to look it up.... You guys watch too much TV.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

A mute button for dameon

 

[bigi]

Virtual blow with customized visuals. Choose your character and go.

 

[Kaido]

A waterproof tent would be nice.

I think OP meant realistic technologies that could actually happen.

 

[Kaido]

Teleportation? You've been watching too much TV. Try telecommuting, that's what you're really dreaming about.

This changed my mind on teleportation:

https://nerdist.com/this-is-why-star-trek-transporters-couldnt-create-two-people-from-one/

 

[Kaido]

-real Lightsaber]

Not real in the sense of a cut-you-in-half beam of light, but real enough to fight with: (sounds added for fun effect)

Like $500 a pop tho But you can join dueling clubs & apparently they are pretty durable IRL:

 

[Kaido]

Breakfast cereal bags with zip lock closures.
Same for bags of chips, cookies, and other snack food.

Holy crap. Patent that idea!!

I had a problem with carpet beetles & ants last year, so I started investing in OXO Pop Containers. Cereal, pasta, etc. all go inside. They are stupid expensive, but very well-designed...the giant button on the top pushes the air out & seals the silicone gasket at the top (and the entire lid assembly is fully removable & easy to clean).

https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-POP-Container/dp/B000VJ08RK/

I also use a vacuum sealer & food buckets with gamma-seal lids (twist-on lids with ring gaskets). The bonus with most vacuum sealers is that they have a seal-only function, so if you're done eating half a bag of chips, you can push the air out, stick it in the machine, and heat-seal it back together to extend the life & prevent bugs from getting inside.

 

[Kaido]

X-ray glasses

Getting closer!

 

[Kaido]

Food relicator...rearrange atoms to recreate whatever kind of food you want.

I would buy a cooking robot in a heartbeat. I cook, but mostly only because I have to. Barring that, the awesome rehydrator microwave from BTTF would also be acceptable

 

[Kaido]

Suppose this is the next best thing:

Didn't someone do that at DEFCON a few years ago? They made a quadcopter drone that could fly overhead, pipe into a printer (via the typically unsecured wi-fi network that the newer models have built-in), hack it, cause the laser to overheat, and start a fire or something.

 

[Paladin3]

A GPS in every airliner and the air traffic control system to stop relying almost solely on radar. It's not like we've had reliable GPS technology for decades or anything.

 

[Kaido]

I'd want a replicator. Then after we have a huge war because money becomes pointless, the world would be a better place.

I've thought about this way too much. First, I just finished the Orville, and they made a really good point in one of the episodes about how their society changed from being a money-valued one to being a reputation-valued one. Second, in reality, I think that replicators would be absolutely disastrous for society, and I mean that in a serious way. Our default nature is to be lazy and addiction-prone, and being able to replicate any food or trinket whenever we want would turn the majority of us into slugs.

It happens a lot to stay-at-home moms...you don't need to hop in the shower & go to work, you can just get up when the kids get up & lounge around the house (note: this isn't a feminist discussion or an attack on moms!). The classic TV stereotype of an overweight woman who stays at home eating bon-bon's & watching soap operas exists because most people don't do well without structure. Structure that comes from things like jobs or having to go to school or whatever, where you have incentives to work because you need money to support yourself. Just look at the many celebrity overdoses from alcohol & drugs, because when you get rich & don't have to work all the time, you need something to fill your time, so you go on the late-night party circuit & ruin your life. Same thing with people with alcohol & drug addictions, you see people end up homeless because their life spirals out of control.

While replicators would be awesome to have, they definitely wouldn't be without their side effects. I'm curious to see how far VR technology goes as well...I mean, I can go down to my basement right now, hop on my exercise bike, put on my VR goggles, and pedal a tank around for fun. This is a real technology available right now that I actually have in my home. Eventually the graphics will get photo-realistic, the displays will match our eyeballs (Retina-screen-style), and you might not ever have to buy a Ferrari sports car or a Gibson guitar to enjoy the experience thanks to simulation. Dang, thinking about the future possibilities is making my brain hurt, haha!

 

[Kaido]

World blanket of true super high bandwidth/speed data.

Make cables a thing of the past for home/business internet.

I'm talking gig bidirectional type speeds with the bandwidth to handle anything that can be thrown at it.

In regards to the OP and automated cars.

In the movie Minority Report, I really liked how they did a take on the future and how cars would work. The cars were able to be driven freely on smaller roads but when they got into the main highways it was a kind of electro-magnetic looking pathway on the ground that the cars would lock into and be taken along until they got to where they needed to get off. What I like about this over something like say Googles driverless car of today is it's not countless cars all working off the need that all the other cars do not malfunction.

Ah, I specifically remember that scene from Minority Report! They drive down the building & around the city & then he takes manual control in the countryside later on. Elon Musk is working on that with those underground tunnels & with the Hyperloop idea, and also with their self-driving electric car technology. That's crazy...that movie was 2002 & that technology is starting to happen IRL!

 

[FeuerFrei]

A GPS in every airliner and the air traffic control system to stop relying almost solely on radar. It's not like we've had reliable GPS technology for decades or anything.

Seems dicey - relying on onboard systems. Active ground radar and ground observers are more ... surefire. You can detect / locate UFOs without them identifying themselves.

Flying isn't purely a matter of navigating waypoints.