most important Invention

they're called trains, and i would love them to be used more in america. europe's a great example america! please make a better train system! i'm sick of the drive-or-fly option!

 

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Have you heard of EEE (eternal electric enjoyment)?

 

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the more reason to invent it lol

 

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effervescent nutritious food that comes as pills- Nobody has time to sit down and eat, do you? I have a strong interest in this and will be more than willing to partake in the research. Pop in 3 pills a day and you are full and good to go.

interchangeable brain implant chips- get your PH.D in 1 hour. With radio wave chips you can get your PH.d over the phone

A fuckin universal I.D reader -so you won't have to fill out any freakin form ever again

Alternative energy- more of a political issue than anythig else

 

i have a question about the food pill idea....

i'm guessing that a single pill replaces an entire meal, and i'm also assuming this pill is probably a dehydrated food which, when it comes in contact with your bodily fluids, rehydrates, and thus expands some. otherwise, your digestive tract has practically nothing to work with (3 pills isn't alot), and you'd need to take lots of fiber suplements to keep your intestines in tact.

well, if one pill filled you up to where you wern't hungry, presumably expanded to the size of a full meal in your stomach, what happens if you take...
10 pills.
100 pills.
ka-f**kin-BOOM!!!

like feeding rice and water to birds!!!

is this realistic? could one commit suicide by overdosing on food-pills? that'd be the most unnerving form of suicide imaginable....

 

That seems to be a myth

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I agree with both of you. The solution I like for America is called Personal Rapid Transit. The fact is that most Americans are never going to adopt a mass transit solution where you can't go anywhere anytime. We are too used to being able to do just that with our cars. PRT-style trains do that where "conventional" train systems don't.

-Dale

 

Interestingly, that's how the future of nutrition was seen 40 years ago, when the space race was top news. Of course, it was a very flawed vision, and in actual fact, the tide has gone in exactly the other direction, towards more 'Organically' grown food, using no pesticides etc. Seems the idea has been soundly abandoned, because, well, it's a bad idea.

As to not having time to eat. Sure you do. You just need to organise your time better. I simply don't believe anyone who says they don't have time to eat.

 

Quantum Particle Deconstructors......they will allow you to deconstruct any object and create a completely different object as long as they are composed of the same basic atoms and chemical particles. It is the future of Alchemical science.

 

ALTERNATING CURRENT, if there is a god, he digs electricity


(but alternating current was discovered, not invented)

This is to say that the Polyphase Alternating Current System invented by Nikola Tesla is most important.

 

It's hard to say if any invention of the future will be as significant as writing, which has allowed us to pass knowledge and wisdom on to people we haven't even met.

Perhaps cheap fusion power. A "Mr. Fusion" power device in every basement and on every personal vehicle would go a very long way towards making the entire world rich.

Instantaneous long-distance personal transportation would be nice, but the Star Trek transporter reportedly would require more bits of information to be stored than the number of particles in the entire universe, so that seems to be unlikely to happen in reality.

 

Movable type is JUST as important as actual writing, as it enabled a much larger population to become literate, which in turn no doubt enabled budding geniuses who otherwise would have remained obscure.

The Internet is seen by some, as comparable to writing. It has enabled truly world-wide communities as never before seen in human history. This has permitted the fringe-types to engage with each other (for both good and ill) to a degree never before seen. Remember, many of history's geniuses were "fringe thinkers" initially ...

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But, what of the waste heat produced by all those individual fusion bottles? Even with, say 95% effency (highly unlikely), if you had 500 million of these things in the USofA alone, think of the huge heat-load you'd be adding to the planet ... (assuming roughly 2/person)

You are assuming that ALL the atoms must be copied _exactly_ for the process to be "good enough". Likely, if such a thing is possible, an exact copy is not required ... (but would it be YOU? <heh>)

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My reference to a "Mr. Fusion" device wasn't meant to be taken seriously. That's a reference to the power device on the flying Deloran car at the end of the movie "Back to the Future". In that movie, waste heat clearly wasn't a problem.

Yes, for a highly advanced technological society, waste heat will become a problem. See _Ringworld_ for a stfnal example. Will we ever have fusion plants small and efficient enuff to install in basements as water heaters are now? Heck I dunno. Not even science fiction writers have proven very good at predicting the future. But I will say one thing: "Never" is a very long time.

 

I realized that, and I hope I did not come across as a smart-ass

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I LIKE your ringworld reference, and it was the first thing I thought of when you said "Mr Fusion" ... Niven writes pretty good, no? <heh>

I agree, hot-water tank sized personal fusion devices may never happen: there would need to be a serious breakthrough in magnetics or similar, to confine such a small blob of plasma tight enough to permit fusion. The smaller the mass, the tighter it must be squeezed, as we are depending on random collisions to make the fusion "light off".

Who knows, maybe someone will invent Niven's "stasis fields". Can you imagine WHAT we could do, with cheap, stable persistant stasis fields?

Niven's would conform to the object inside, implying that the field could be shaped into anything.

So. Make a double-walled stasis field around an oil drum - heck, use a plastic one, doesn't matter. The field is on the outside AND on the inside, creating a stasis chamber open to "normal time". Make sure the opening has a long, threaded connection. Now, stasis your lid separately. It should screw into the stasis barrel. Whatever is inside the barrel is NOT in "stasis" but it is contained by an unbreakable stasis field.

Be sure there is a very, very tiny hole - just large enough to permit electrons through. The stasis field should conform to the hole nicely, if Niven's stories are accurate

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Now, put an atomic bomb inside the barrel with a timer. Screw the lid back tight. Wait.

When the bomb goes off, electrons will be emitted through the hole for a very, very long time. A LOT of electrons.

And what is a battery, but a source of electrons?

(just off the top of my head ...)

 

A.i.d.s.

 

Bob: Wow! What an inspired idea for using a stasis field! And Niven writes pretty good, yes!

 

An affordable, practical immersive VR system? Perhaps not important or revolutionary to many, but to the computer industry and gamers: w00t.

Hmm, perhaps for the greater good, a cheap, effective water purification thingy, to provide clean water to the millions without it.

 

A stereo so loud it blows womens cloths off.

 

Guns, you know so we could kill each other easily/faster than ever.

 

Salt eating bacteria.

let it loose in the ocean, 10 months later drinkable oceans