What will provide the next technological leap?

[JTsyo]

Originally posted by: BrownTown

Originally posted by: hellokeith
Personally I think the next *leap* will be wireless power transmission.

Well I can guarantee that will NOT be it

Didn't Telsa have ideas about doing this? Not sure what it would do to cancer rates.

ahh here it is

 

[yhelothar]

"It is inevitable that in the near future, neuroscience will unleash a veritable revolution in consciousness and its study, that will result in a paradigm shift orders of magnitude larger than any in science preceding it."

We will uncover the mysteries of the brain, which will reveal to us insights on how to live and think more consciously.

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
Neither of these is coming, AFAIK, but is badly needed:
1. Much higher efficiency in solar power collectors. Current tech gets about 5% of solar energy converted to electricity.

Best tech in labs currently gets 40.7%, it's just not practical to produce yet.

 

[QuixoticOne]

A Efficiently produced and operating photovoltaics.
B Engineered / integrated photosynthesis technology (create H2 + O2 from water based on sunlight at 99% efficiency).
C Efficiently produced / operating hydrogen fuel cells.
D More ubiquitous communications / IT access; eliminating the digital divide, giving access to the 3rd world.
E Localized home / village scale independent power generation, food production, et. al.
F Anti-aging biotechnologies (pandora's box, but I'd not be surprised if it is already known or will be within 10 years)
G Physical regeneration biotechnologies.
H Eugenics (major pandora's box; no major "upsides" intrinsically if one has F/G et.al., but a lot of apocalyptic downsides)
I Oceanic habitation.
J Natural capitalism / permacultural engineering of our societies.
K Better educational systems, especially ones taking advantage of IT and digital libraries and interactive AI "teachers"
L Efficient, cheap, high power capability, high temperature superconductors.
M Better more efficient propulsion technologies for land / air / space.
N "Imagine all the people living for today....." social paradigm shifts.
O Automated manufacturing technologies that can input specifications and output anything.
P Massive recycling (goes with J).
Q Eschewing greed, exploitation, class / racial / gender 'caste' systems.
R Ending fossil fuel use obviously (A,B,C,E,J)
S Possible orbital / lunar industrial development.
T quantum computing.
U Artificial intelligence (that's going to happen VERY soon if not arguably already done / doable)
V Artificial life (pandora's box again)
W Peace, non-violence, compassion, enlightenment, social evolution, memes of cooperation instead of competition.
...lots of derivative bits.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Efficient, relatively(*) clean, widespread, low cost nuclear fusion MAY play an important transformational role
on the planet's energy / industrial ecology, though I can certainly see it as being of secondary or auxiliary
importance in many aspects to efficient photosynthetic / photovoltaic / solar-thermal technologies.

AFAICT there doesn't seem to be much drive to design / improve / proliferate the technology, doubtlessly
due to many political and economic special interest factors limiting the impetus for it.

If we globally replaced coal with it next year, in every significantly large energy consuming country, it'd be a
big transition / transformation, but to achieve full benefit over the industrial ecosystems we'd need other technologies like superconductors, fuel cells, hydrogen storage, et. al. Thus it may come to pass that the "hydrogen/solar economy"
will be significantly transformational on a global scale well before most of the world gets significant local fusion power.

Advances in manufacturing, transportation technology, urban design, home design, technology design, et. al. will
greatly limit the need for more energy to sustain the population, though advanced sustainable energy technology would
be a boon in achieving a 'quantum' evolution to new technologies / societies / capacities.

 

[QuantumPion]

medical: organ/tissue cloning, cure for cancer/heart disease, bioengineering to eliminate disease precursors
engineering: mass-produced carbon nanotubes for super strong, light weight products, revolutionary practical energy storage technology, fusion energy
physics: theory of everything, testable/provable axioms of string theory
social: either anti-government upheaval or implementation of socialism+world government
computing: free worldwide wireless internet, design upheaval from silicon semiconductors to some other material, quantum computing
space: man on mars, cheap, reusable, single stage to orbit vehicle, civilians in space for reasonable cost, scramjet

 

[Onceler]

There are 10^15 synapses in the brain, and each neuron is much, much more flexible than a simple on or off transistor. It will be a long time before a computer can approach the complexity of the brain.

They use to say that the brain's capacity was one gigabyte (Maxwell Maltz Pschocybernetics and others)
it seems to change every few years

 

[RossGr]

In order that we continue the technology spiral we must find a clean renewable source of energy. Obviously this means we must learn to capture solar energy. Currently wind generators and hydroelectric are our main harnessers of solar energy (winds would not blow nor would it rain with the sun!). Perhaps we can delve into bioengineering to learn more about using the processes of photosynthesis to generate power. Meanwhile we need to learn to grow and havest oil bearing algae strains.

We need an energy source to supplant fossil fuels. What may be required is a Manhattan Project scale effort to solve this problem. If we cannot resolve this issue, our great grand children will be hunter gatherers.

 

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by: RossGr
In order that we continue the technology spiral we must find a clean renewable source of energy. Obviously this means we must learn to capture solar energy. Currently wind generators and hydroelectric are our main harnessers of solar energy (winds would not blow nor would it rain with the sun!). Perhaps we can delve into bioengineering to learn more about using the processes of photosynthesis to generate power. Meanwhile we need to learn to grow and havest oil bearing algae strains.

We need an energy source to supplant fossil fuels. What may be required is a Manhattan Project scale effort to solve this problem. If we cannot resolve this issue, our great grand children will be hunter gatherers.

We already have a source of clean, renewable energy, and it's called nuclear power.

 

[Foxery]

A lot of these are wishlists for "coming soon" technologies, where we're already halfway there, but the OP asked for a breakthrough. Something that will change our lives -- and hopefully not be cock-blocked by social, political, or economic limitations. (That's the real kicker, honestly.)

Realistic Possibilities:
-An energy revolution. And not specific to oil - that's a limited scope. Maybe it's solar, maybe chemical. (NOT fusion.) Unfortunately, this one gets the economic cockblock all the time.
-Biotech or other medical capability. Things like organ and limb replacement would be huge.
-A new form of food production or storage. Traditional techniques involve a tremendous amount of energy and waste.
-Something we have not thought of before!


Probably not soon:
-Growing materials via biological processes instead of our current mining+manufacturing processes
-Advanced genetic engineering, either of humans or other organisms (especially due to social backlash)
-Artificial Intelligence. Honestly, computers do not neccessarily have to go in this direction. It's a popular sci-fi concept, but computers have a lot of potential left without the need for intelligence.
-Space travel or new laws of Physics (doesn't really change your every-day life anyway)

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
We already have a source of clean, renewable energy, and it's called nuclear power.

That's not true. Nuclear fission is not completely clean, as it produces horribly toxic radioactive waste. It's not at all renewable, because it requires Uranium, which is a rare material that cannot be manufactured from anything else.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Well in a sense you can manufacture it from other forms, but typically you get embargoed or bombed or whatever if
you try to do that anywhere but in US / UK / FR / IL / ZA / RU / CN / IN et. al. Thus political factors are preventing any
widespread use of such kinds of energy technologies. If there are 170+ nations on the planet and only 12 or so
are politically permitted to take advantage of an energy resource / technology, then that energy technology can hardly
be held to be a solution for mankind's energy needs when it is only available to the privileged few.

Fusion may be a somewhat different story but even then I suspect a lot of the "haves" will try to restrict it from
the "have nots" even though it is not nearly as risky as the present alternative.

Actually I suspect the "haves" have already pretty much figured out how to do moderately cheap / effective fusion but
economic / political pressure is probably keeping it at the undisclosed / "we're researching it" state versus having any
substantial push to industrialize its usage.

 

[hellokeith]

I'm fairly surprised at the negativity towards wireless power transmission, considering it has been demonstrated at distances of meters (albeit <40% efficiency).

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: hellokeith
I'm fairly surprised at the negativity towards wireless power transmission, considering it has been demonstrated at distances of meters (albeit <40% efficiency).

The fact that it has to pass through air, a very resistant and volatile medium, makes the whole concept inherently inefficient - and possibly dangerous. If you're trying to immitate lightning, which transmits a huge burst of electricity across several miles, you should note that there's nothing to stop your artificial power source from arcing like a lightning bolt and killing you instead of going into the receiver.

 

[minmaster]

the next thing we find and reverse engineer from an alien ufo

 

[faxon]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
Neither of these is coming, AFAIK, but is badly needed:
1. Much higher efficiency in solar power collectors. Current tech gets about 5% of solar energy converted to electricity.

wrong on 1 not comming soon. solar power cells are starting to follow moore's law in the rate at which their efficiency is increasing, not to mention a new technology which i saw documented in scientific american a couple months back which would enable you to use things like the windows in your house and car to be used as solar panels, by transferring the sun's energy down a conduit of sorts to a solar cell that is out of sight somewhere else, and which wouldnt have to be very big to collect the energy. this technology could also be used to enhance exsisting solar cells by as much as 20?%. i cant remember the exact figures or specs and i dont feel like searching for the article right now lol.


as for what i think the next big technological leap will be, think bionetics/cybernetics. sure total limb replacement is still a couple decades out, but the density of transistors is soon going to surpass the density of human nerve cells, and with the invention of the memristor, processors that could mimic human brain functions are probably no more than a decade out, with HP beginning manufacturing of memristors in 2009

 

[manowar821]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
Cold fusion is a myth but...

Hehe...

I'll be nice and not say "told you so" when you find out you were wrong.

 

[ajaidevsingh]

1.Bio-electric hybrid circuits ... Just imagine as fast as hell they keep then self healthy and use of such circuits on computers would yield 10x results "Quantum Computing"... "Ohh You will be able to play Crysis"

2.WARP Ships

 

[ajaidevsingh]

Originally posted by: 1prophet

Originally posted by: NovaProspekt

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
There are 10^15 synapses in the brain, and each neuron is much, much more flexible than a simple on or off transistor. It will be a long time before a computer can approach the complexity of the brain.

It will be about 20 years or so until computers have the computing capacity of the brain. That's also around the amount of time it will take to be able to perform a full scan of the human brain as well.

These predictions are based off of exponential trends of course but there isn't much reason to doubt them (the computing capacity trend has existed for decades). You could make the argument that we will reach hardware limits that will cause these trends to be inaccurate but this objection is not very strong in practice. It's true that we are nearing the limits of how small we can make current microprocessors but there is no reason to suspect that all progress will stop. The limits we have on current processor design are nowhere near the theoretical limits of how much computation we can get from a chunk of matter. Technology progresses.

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
And as long as we write the programs, nothing sci-fi-ish should happen like that. I don't see why people fear the rise of "intelligent" machines so much. They are machines and if we don't teach them how to write their own programs they can't do much beyond what we want.

If consciousness is a natural process then we can emulate it.

Have computers reached insect level intelligence yet?

Yes they have..

http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html

 

[RossGr]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion

Originally posted by: RossGr
In order that we continue the technology spiral we must find a clean renewable source of energy. Obviously this means we must learn to capture solar energy. Currently wind generators and hydroelectric are our main harnessers of solar energy (winds would not blow nor would it rain with the sun!). Perhaps we can delve into bioengineering to learn more about using the processes of photosynthesis to generate power. Meanwhile we need to learn to grow and havest oil bearing algae strains.

We need an energy source to supplant fossil fuels. What may be required is a Manhattan Project scale effort to solve this problem. If we cannot resolve this issue, our great grand children will be hunter gatherers.

We already have a source of clean, renewable energy, and it's called nuclear power.

Not so, there exists a finite amount of fissiable materials on the earth. Fussion is a long ways off, do not even think that fusion power plants will be coming on line in our lifetime.

 

[JF060392]

human computer integration.

 

[Mwing]

Watched "How Startrek Changes our Lives" on Discovery channel couple weeks ago, it does tells you something, like cellphone appeared in Startrek in the 70's and now everyone and their mom has a cellphone.

Just watch Startrek and you may have a clue? Light speed travelling?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

for materials: carbon and plastic
for energy: fusion (as a source), hydrogen (as a medium)
for transportation: aerospace- hydrogen propelled, fission powered, single stage to orbit reuseable craft. cars- diesel, then fuel cell powered, electric drive (like locomotives have been for over 50 years)
for communication: talking to people

 

[hellokeith]

Intel improves on MIT design for wireless power transmission

Like I said, wireless power will be the leap and the game changer in the 21st century comparable to nothing else seen in the 20th century.

 

[CTho9305]

How is that a "game changer"? It seems like a mild convenience. All the things you listed as previous leaps actually changed things significantly (e.g. not having to spend hours fetching water). Plugging stuff in takes seconds. Maybe it'll make the back side of a home entertainment center prettier... but "game changer"?

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: hellokeith
Intel improves on MIT design for wireless power transmission

Like I said, wireless power will be the leap and the game changer in the 21st century comparable to nothing else seen in the 20th century.

Look man, anyone with a degree in electrical engineering can tell you that wireless electricity is absolutely NOT going to be a game changer ever. Transmitting energy over distances is well over a century old. But there are 3 HUGE deal breakers. First off it is horribly inefficient, second it is dangerous to human health, third it interferes with any other sort of electric circuits you might have.

There are a million examples here. Take an air core transformer, it can very efficiently transmit energy over small distances, or a radio which can very inefficiently transmit energy over long distances. This is exactly the same idea, they are just trying to find a frequency where it doesn't interfere with other circuits, or with the human body.