Emerging Technologies That Ought to be Explored in Fiction - Page 2

Penforhire · 02-20-2012, 05:47 PM

I dunno 'bout that one.

The electronics built into my motorcycle is already too complex. It uses a CAN bus with no fuses (monitors current draws and shuts off shorts using a semiconductor switch). I utter your same "this is rediculous" when I have to deal with it. I have to hook up a computer to get it to talk to me and even then all says is something like "sensor 12 is bad." Circuit breakers feel like the 'good' current tech to me.

It probably comes down to reliability. If your future power distribution system didn't have a significant failure rate I'd say it is desirable. But today the mean-time-to-failure on solar power inverters used to feed home-generated power into the public grid is too short (roughly eight years, last I heard) and the cost to repair is too high ($4K to $8K).

I'm not seeing any quantum leaps in electronics reliability on the horizon. LED lights? Nope. When was the last time you saw a LED traffic signal without some dead pixels? They are only reliable over absurd periods of time if they are under-driven and over-cooled (relative to most applications using them today). They are improving but the rate of change feels slow and steady.

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02-20-2012, 05:47 PM	#16
Penforhire Wizard Posts: 2,230 Karma: 7145404 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Southern California Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+	I dunno 'bout that one. The electronics built into my motorcycle is already too complex. It uses a CAN bus with no fuses (monitors current draws and shuts off shorts using a semiconductor switch). I utter your same "this is rediculous" when I have to deal with it. I have to hook up a computer to get it to talk to me and even then all says is something like "sensor 12 is bad." Circuit breakers feel like the 'good' current tech to me. It probably comes down to reliability. If your future power distribution system didn't have a significant failure rate I'd say it is desirable. But today the mean-time-to-failure on solar power inverters used to feed home-generated power into the public grid is too short (roughly eight years, last I heard) and the cost to repair is too high ($4K to $8K). I'm not seeing any quantum leaps in electronics reliability on the horizon. LED lights? Nope. When was the last time you saw a LED traffic signal without some dead pixels? They are only reliable over absurd periods of time if they are under-driven and over-cooled (relative to most applications using them today). They are improving but the rate of change feels slow and steady.