what does the future bring?

This is pretty much a technological question aimed at new fad ideas that might work, and possible futuristique directions that science will head.

For years man has had such distractions as the "Ideal Home exhibition" where they show you "The house of tomorrow".
This started in the 40's and 50's and spawned such innovative designs and materials like Pyrex and the Microwave oven, Not to forget the entire mentioning of Video phones... which.. well... haven't really caught on yet. (Of course if they did, then those Double glazing salesmen are going to be out of a job)

Of course this has probably been surpassed by interactive TV.

But what does the future truly hold for us? What our inventors (crankpots that some are called) cooking up for the world in a new millenium.
well I suspect people here will have their own idea for innovations or inventions or will probably hunt around the internet for some pieces to add to this post (don't forget to quote the addresses so we can all reap the benefits of what you've found)

Personally I was interesting in an innovation that someone mentioned to me some time ago of using blacks of bacteria instead of memory and processors in computers, Of course the type of bacteria would be something not too hazardous, but then again would have to be contained within certain safety features.

Of course if running one of these computers you would be more concerned with your system catching a vaccine rather than a virus.

That's just my starting piece, I will try to add more but I hope you out there reading this post has other possible futuristique creations that they can share or want to share.

 

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One thing I have thought of with cars. I would think that we will be able to change the color of the vehicle at whim. Prehaps by passing electricity through paint fo special nature.

 

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Just what we need. A new direction to be plowed into from. Talk about coming out of the blind spot and being blindsided

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I want to see the new road that the states have to keep up on this. And you think it is a pain now when they resurface the roads. Of course, maybe they don't repave the roads for this. Mabe they put up side markers for designationg where you can drive. I doubt that contractors will be any less exensive though.

 

I have to admit Wet1 had a point, What happens if you run out of fuel? Wouldn't your car just plumet to the ground?

Then theres the problem with people that throw fast food wrappers out the window and on top of that what about road rage?

Just thinking about it makes me think of the Jetsons.

 

There's an edition of Discover I think a few months old that interviews this guy that predicted the internet, like perfectly, and he made some predictions about our future. He said that our homes would be able to discern whether to turn the lights on, off, or in-between mellow based on our thoughts and the hormones we produce. We could watch romance or scifi based on very subtle secretions of hormones or sweat. Computers will become ultra fast, and use breeding technology that would create circuits that would breed an answer to a solution by getting rid of bad strains and then using the good ones to get an answer to a solution. We will have good a.i in my opinion, I think strategy games like starcraft may not be legalized because when you send a troop into a battle it would have conscousness, and would in effect be a human and capable of everything a human could do. Backslash once told me that as long as you program a command that basically says that you (the robot) are never to compare yourself to your human counterparts physically or mentally. Then we wont have a robot war! Trust me, theres nothing to worry about.

 

The future of technology. Always and interesting subject. Technology is advancing in so many areas at once I find it hard to say what will happen next. Will advances in medicine improve human health? Will bio-technology really be able to feed the entire world like the commercial says? I looked into some advances into computing technology recently and it seems like three fundamental technologies will be coming fairly soon(in about the next 20 years). One of them is, instead of using electricity to do our computation we could use light. I'm not sure about the specifics but I think it would increase processor speed by about 10 times. Another one was quantum computing which I didn't really understand and the last one was molecular computing, IBM made the first not gate in this area a few weeks ago. Advances in physics also look promising, but not with as many obvious applications for the near future. I went to this site for the latest news on physics http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/live/news.html
Fairly interesting stuff. CERN also has an array of other interesting information that can be found at their homepage
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/
My guess is that within the next 50 years we won't even recognize our world. Who knows the need to physically move around may be eliminated.

 

What do you think the timeframe for anti-gravity technology will be? I know we haven't even observed the theorectical partical called the graviton yet but it should be intresting to see what people think.

 

Jay,
Anti-Grav might not be as difficult as people first percieved, I already know that you could use a turbine and an airpressure to cause a 1 directional "Down Force", and in space that pressure wouldn't have to be very strong (Unlikea wind tunnel down here)

It's just the noise and the possible windchill factor hehe.

 

Wouldn't be possible to use the earth magnetic force to "fly" the cars?

 

The key to any advanced technology is a perpetual motion machine. My theory is that it will somehow involve magnetics. Anyway I had a great idea for a future power plant-a wind power plant that runs on solar energy. Think of it this way: we put a huge windmill in space (basically), attach solar cells to it and construct it with superthin, lightweight material they use and will use in solar sails. Within a few weeks the things spinning a third the speed of light and is collecting solar power to hold it in place. Imagine all the power that thing could provide.

More ideas:
A new way to launch rockets:

First you build a deep, semicircle into the ground and place a machine that rotates quickly around (like those g-simulators they have at nasa that whirl around REAL fast). Attach a shuttle, add a few rockets, light the fuse and launch the spaceship into space. Sort of like a catapult.

Permanent trash disposal:
This is likely very expensive, but if you built a really long tower that lead into space from the Earth and used it as an elevator you could dump all our trash out into space (including radioactive and biologically unsafe materials) and angle the thing that shoots em out towards the Earth so they'd burn up in the atmosphere. That Idea's been with me for awhile. I came up with it I think three years ago.

Flying/Magnetic Cars:

I did this experiment a long time ago, and it didn't work but I know why and how to fix it. It's pretty complicated but basically you place a car that has the s side facing away from it on its sides and facing downard inside a large tunnel with it's surface made of magnets of the same type. If you have enough weight inside the car it won't flip over and attach itself to the ground, and if you give it a little push it'll fly straight ahead. they could be guided by computers.

I think that's all of em but I'll make sure to keep the creative juices flowing!

 

kmguru, you don't need 50,000 amps to have a flying car. There is a gentleman in California who has a flying car he is trying to get approved by the FAA. It utilizes 8 rotary engines, two on each corner that drive counter-rotating props used for propulsion. It can fly with 4 of the 8 engines disabled and will be almost totally controlled by computer (it is manually piloted right now).

 

Shrike,

This idea has been the subject of at least one science fiction book and has actually been the subject of several scientific papers. It would be a very good way to get things into orbit. One of the key issues of building this structure would be the types of materials that would be needed to complete its construction. Here is an interesting article on carbon nanotubes that has some relevence to the problem of a space elevator....

http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/mar01/qa.asp

 

I think the future holds some incredible things, as well as some extremely frightening things. Some of the most "bleeding edge" technology is that called "Nanotechnology". Nanotechnology has a lot of potential for either good or bad in a vast number of fields that range from the human life span to new transistor architectures. Here is a link to an article that talks about some of their potentials.

http://home.cnet.com/specialreports/0-6014-7-818759.html?tag=dd.cn.html.1021.01