Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
So, what sci-fi technologies do you thing are impossible or possible?
Here are some of my thoughts.
Impossible
Transporters - basically to work it would have to kill you.
FTL Travel - while I think we will learn ways to travel faster I think light speed or even above is a fantasy.
Sentient Computers - yes computers will get much more powerful and programming will improve. But, skynet or M5 just can't happen. I am very happy a recent Numbers episode kept this reality firmly in place.
Possible
Space Colonies - I think this will happen... probably not in my life time. But, we are talking about withing our system. Perhaps on the moon or mars. Perhaps even a space station type structure.
Alien life - while I think it is highly possible that there are "alien" life forms. I don't think we will ever meet them. The vastness of space and the distances between start systems with the lack of "warp speed" pretty much seals this.
Voice Computer Interfaces - while I don't think we will see a positorinc brain or skynet (see above) I do think PCs will have the power and programming to do some hueristic work. It will be able to perform tasks that you need it to. It will be able to adjust to your patterns. As a matter of fact, I recently heard a story about a company working on a GPS that did some of this. It monitored your patterns and help route you around traffic. It could know if you were bringing Billy to school today or just going strait to work. We alread see the beginning of "agents". For example, rather than just having to skim over hundreds of RSS articles your "news agent" will learn what stories you like or might be interested. It will summarize it. It will also be able to find events that tie in with your likes and dislikes. Of course this is a much more sophisticated task than we have now with "targeted" advertising.
Space Elevator - yes, with enough Time and Money you [google] can do anything.
BOb
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Impossible:
- A gorgeous girl going out with a loser (like Julia Roberts in the SciFi movie "Notting Hill" or the taxi driver in "Strange Days")
- Engineers having sex (and not between each other), like in the Star Trek series.
- A giant gorilla falling in love with a small hairless blond girl (King Kong); A giant male gorilla and no female ones...
- A computer loading and running alien software with no compatibility issues nor compilation errors (Star Trek, again...)
- Good and useful user interfaces for computers (almost every SF movie)
- Have the technology to clone dinosaurs (or Adolf Hitler) and do not use it for cattle...
Possible:
- FTL: It's actually the speed at which the hand of the diver behind me at the red light travels toward the horn when it turns to green.
- Immortality: greedy authors will have it as soon as the copyright duration will be set at author's life.
