where did the future go?

Shade

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Apr 24, 2005
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81
why aren't we in the future? where are the flying cars, etc. etc. not the point.

here's the real point: there is so much insanely cool technology not so much in development as in existence that isn't being talked about.

how about this adorable little piece of technology, which seems to me the next big thing coming up in the next twenty years that's going to change the way we understand visible media.

oh and let's look at this little snippet of R&D awesome. that's correct, natural three dimensional images possible without any other visual equipment. imagine some of the impact on gaming this could have.

and check out actuality system's foray into holography here and here.

and then there's of course AR, or augmented reality technology- the wikipedia article is pretty informative and check the links at the bottom- the videos at various research sites are pretty slick.

i'm opening this thread up to discuss the above interesting stuff, and feel more than free to post any upcoming/existing/almost existing tech you think is pretty ****ing neat, but mostly i think that if we ever want this stuff to get moving, we have to get as many people informed and excited about this stuff. the more people know about this and the more people talk about this, the faster this stuff will get taken out of development and put into reality.

WE WANT OUR FUTURE, AND WE WANT IT NOW.
 
My neighbor just put this up for sale.

That's my house on the right.

jetsonscartoon1601.jpg
 
That's why starting threads at night is a bad idea, that's when all the crazies run free...

But seriously, Technology is moving forward exponentially faster than I think people are even realizing... Moore's Law of Technology is becoming more and more real (essentially that every two years the amount of data that fits on same sized chip will double)... These trends guarentee almost a frightening amount of

I mean, the information revolution has yet to happen... One thing I think we should be doing as a unified world is bringing the internet to every corner of the planet, with computers cheap enough for everybody to afford. Think of how different the world would be if children can escape from indoctrinization... People are already becoming more open minded in the past decade and I thoroughly believe that the internet has a hell of a lot to do with that. Kids are challenging what they learn, and they are learning that they SHOULD challenge that.

Kids learn more these days from the internet than they do in School, and while that might be sad, its just a flat out truth, and something that needs addressing by our school system. We are simply trying to fill in cracks in the system, when the whole thing needs to be torn down and restructured by the greatest minds in America (ie: NOT politicians).

I do think something really big is coming, and that its coming within our lifetimes... The past few years have really started convincing me that the world 30 years from now is going to be a whole new world...
 
But seriously, Technology is moving forward exponentially faster than I think people are even realizing... Moore's Law of Technology is becoming more and more real (essentially that every two years the amount of data that fits on same sized chip will double)... These trends guarentee almost a frightening amount of

I had what I consider a fascinating, maybe story-worthy idea while playing Halo 2 yesterday.

Those enemies are driven by a form of A.I., in Halo's case, an extremely good one(by today's standards). Compare the A.I. in Halo 2 to the A.I. of an NES Goomba and you'll see an improvement of a few thousand percent in about 2 decades, right?

To what extent will it keep advancing? Could a videogame character one day, probably by accident, become self-aware in some way? Imagine what that would be like as a controversy. Would videogame companies not be allowed to make characters this advanced, because they'd be creating a self-aware consciousness that wants to live and understands death, but exist for the purpose of being killed in the game?

This is unlikely, ill-worded, and similar to many an Asimov story, but you can probably get what I'm thinking about.

I mean, the information revolution has yet to happen... One thing I think we should be doing as a unified world is bringing the internet to every corner of the planet, with computers cheap enough for everybody to afford. Think of how different the world would be if children can escape from indoctrinization... People are already becoming more open minded in the past decade and I thoroughly believe that the internet has a hell of a lot to do with that. Kids are challenging what they learn, and they are learning that they SHOULD challenge that.

I think some guy is trying to make a laptop like that with as good a processor as anyone's for like $100 a pop, specifically for the reason you're talking about. My cousin was telling me about it the other day, and how the computer companies are keeping thr guy down.
 
what really needs to start is technology mobilization and saturation- the internet needs to be acknowledged as the information source of our time, and indeed, the future (as DSF said re kids learning more off the internet than school... that's certainly true for me). as much as the corporationization of the world annoys me, if corporations start making bolder moves regarding the internet's integration into daily life that sort of saturation can exist, and hell, you can see a lot of this in cell phones with the internet.

more fun tech stuff:

as far as transistors go we may be reaching the miniaturization limit. check this article: that's a 5 nanometer thickness (5 atoms!). crazy town awesome, says i.

also, another hyper-cool video display tech item here. color displays that can be printed, maybe to be used on things like labels; imagine moving instructions and advertisements on packaging.
 
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I think some guy is trying to make a laptop like that with as good a processor as anyone's for like $100 a pop, specifically for the reason you're talking about. My cousin was telling me about it the other day, and how the computer companies are keeping thr guy down.

And what pisses me off is that the Government is more interested in protecting Business interests to give this guy a grant or any of the hundreds of other people who are doing similar research...

I was going to make a joke about how the senators just don't want minorities on the internet, but i just started crying.
 
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something that interests me is processors, and incidentally, the ps3. a lot of work has been spent on making processors faster, but if you want to imitate a human brain, the only way to do that is lots and lots of processors... and apparently multiprocessor technology (much like that used in the ps3) is some hot stuff right now.

i'm all up for positronic brains coming into existence. that'd be fine with me.
 
I think some guy is trying to make a laptop like that with as good a processor as anyone's for like $100 a pop, specifically for the reason you're talking about. My cousin was telling me about it the other day, and how the computer companies are keeping thr guy down.

Technological advances like this happen way too often.

They finally allowed the guy who wanted to power New York City off of underwater turbines the ability to do so. After he's been selling the idea to the government for decades now. and that's only because this one time he went througha private company.

It's sad to say, but government politics causes the technological advances that can actually benefit mankind to slwo down and make it nothing more than about profit I went to a job interview, a startup company that was in the process of making a machine that could read the DNA in the air, ampilify it, and find out what was in the air every few minutes.

What would this be used for you may ask? War against Terror evidently.

But, in the process of them explaining to me their machine, I told them they had set it up too complicated, they should work on trimming the fat. Of course, I wouldn't tell them specifics, I wanted the job, I didn't want to give them free ideas.

The told me the company funding their research wants all those things because they have patents for them, and thus, making loads of money off of each one. That's the only reason why the machine was being held back.

I decline the job. I wouldn't want to work at a place where I'm hindered because some guy in a suit wants to make more money and limits the research.

I hate the state of the world right now. I agree with zombipanda.
 
why aren't we in the future? where are the flying cars, etc. etc. not the point.

On a sort of philosophical note, can we ever really be in the future? By definition it is impossible.

*stabs Joe Kalicki*

And back to the discussion. :D

It's nice to know that in an age of rapidly progressing technological achievement, many problems are still easily solved by a good stabbing.
 
I think we'd make more progress if there weren't such strict bans on nuclear research... like with space travel and stuff...


but then, there'd always be the risk of nuking by another country...

we need world peace now.
 
There have been multiple, working flying cars, they just suck too hard to be worth producing because the things that make a great car make a ****ty plane and vice versa. It's all to do with centers of gravity. The disadvantages of flying cars outweigh any minuscule benefits.
 

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