What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Post capitalism.
We have automation for so much manufacturing. We have solar energy which is basically free after manufacture. We could spend a fairly small amount of time really working towards automating most resource extraction and processing.
We could have a really good standard of living not just in the west but globally and we could in the process resolve the threats of climate change but instead we have billionaires.
I think if we had the tech to make replicators (Trek), we would easily be able to go full on post-cap, as that would essentially end hunger, our over extraction of earth’s resources, landfills, recycling, people not being able to afford basics like groceries, etc. I think we have the capability to do that now without that tech, but as a species, lack the will and compassion.
From what I have read there is no physical reason that we could not all have a reasonable standard of living right now with no extra technology. The reason for poverty is not a scarcity if resources, it is a distribution problem. Some people take too much and use systems like law and governance to enforce their relative position. Ditching individual wealth would solve most of the issues which prevent a good life for everyone. Being as most wars are ultimately about wealth and the same for borders it would be revolutionary.
Hemp as a replacement for plastics and synthetic materials. Food packaging shouldn't have a longer shelf life than it's contents.
Sunchips was using PLA, which is a step in the right direction.
Ah yes ... The Thunderbags™... You were not sneaking any snacks around those things.
I think a moon colony was possible at minimum the mid 90's. I only think bureaucracy got in the way along with a very stunted space shuttle.
There is also the cost.
The American program to go to the Moon cost several percentage points of American GDP over several years to get there. The USA could have physically had a moon base up there, but it would have been wildly expensive.
I will agree there. But the mining and manufacturing potential is rather insane. We could make money back rather quickly.
Agreed, a lot of sci-fi infastructure is technically feasable its just the logistics and our lack of organisation as a species that gets in the way. We could also technically start on a dyson swarm and a lunar space elevator (not an earth one though) with modern technology and materials.
I'm glad to see that we are moving forward with it, I just would rather it not be by Elon. But he has the tools to get it done.
We could be solarpunk. Like, right now. With everything using clean energy and plants everywhere.
That would be so nice.
Public transportation.
RELIABLE public transport. I guess that's too sci-fi
[ WWWWWWW sounds in the distance ]
Do you hear that? It's the Japanese laughing at your comment.
Oh look, another 'Murican "only the US exists" type comment.
Public transportation is common worldwide.
Slow down there. Keep it reasonable
Wow this hits the feels so hard… Like it’s impressive how hard we have worked against this goal…
UBI. Not only is it viable but it works in improving everyone's lives, not just the people receiving it.
Sure, but have you considered that this would loosen the hold capitalism has on the wage slaves? Won't someone think of the shareholders‽
At best it would prop up capitalism until we can replace it with something better.
It's literally just giving people more money to shove into the capitalist system. You don't change a system by feeding it.
I won't say it's a bad thing... but it's not a solution. It's a stop gap.
Exactly, what are those useless sociopaths supposed to be doing now? Actual labor? Come on....!
Why not just distribute the resources themselves, rather than tokens to exchange for resources? If we have post scarcity, we won't need money
Because distributing resources equally is a bad idea since people are individuals. You're giving 1 chicken to the guy that loves chicken and the same amount to the vegetarian. If instead you give h both the money for 1 chicken they can decide whether they want the chicken or something else.
There's a few reasons. Firstly greed is a motivator, and people work hard if they believe they'll receive more for more effort. This gets people to go out and generate the resources that need to be distributed. Second, fungible tokens allow people to trade on the open market instead of having to find a particular person who is willing to trade say, a worm gear for a bale or two of cotton. The token is the middle man that allows someone trying to sell something sell to someone who doesn't have what the seller plans to finally trade for. That's why money started to exist in the first place.
Even in a communist system, there needs to be a way to transfer the results of labor into the things a person needs. Money is that way. Even if it means everyone gets the same amount of money to buy what they need. Everyone's resource needs are different. You can't just say everyone gets the exact same everything.
Finally, we're not post-scarcity. Not really. Until resource manufacture is so automated that it doesn't require people to do labor to acquire it, we either pay people to do the labor or we force them to via slavery. For that reason alone, we need money.
Telemetry free consumer products would be nice
I'm on board with ethical and opt-in telemetry. Knowing how your users interact with your app is very useful, but not many companies can show restraint when money is involved.
If my data was used to refine and improve the products and services I interact with I'd be fine with it but as it stands it's just used to help make my life hell and exploit my existence for cash.
100% this. Telemetry and market research are fine. Hell Some opt in, totally 100% disableable targeted ads are fine as long as they're not excessive and in the way. Flagrant selling of info however, does not spark joy.
Fair point. Ethical opt-in seems alright
Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.
A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.
The moon base (and/or moon orbit base) isn't just cool, it would facilitate building ships in space that don't have to escape the gravity well. That and asteroid mining (to get materials for ship building) would be such a huge step to having a real presence off-planet.
Mine materials on asteroids, send them to the moon refinery and manufacturing facility, send parts up to lunar orbital ship building facility, send ships to Europa, Ganymede, etc.
Madness!!
THAT'S COMMUNISM
Socialism technically, but I get your sarcasm. I hope it is sarcasm.
Well they did say Sci-Fi and we all know how likely that stuff is. So I think we're "safe" with Late Stage Capitalism.
The technology has never been what is holding us back.
we're commies on the moon, we carry a....
Library economy.
Roof-top gardens everywhere! Like the launch arcologies in SimCity 2000. They looked cool as fuck.
Plants on buildings bring some architectural and safety challenges, depending on how large they are. You need to somehow get dirt and water up, and the dirt can be pretty heavy. If something falls down into the ground it could hit someone and injured them. And also, with time, roots could lessen the structural integrity of a building.
Abolishing the concept of money. Probably won't happen but it would be pretty cool.
Money is a useful idea, and useful ideas are notoriously hard to kill.
I can see replacing cash with transfers but not removing currency entirely, but that's my POV. What would you replace it with instead?
What would you replace it with instead?
Nothing. Humanity as a whole would have to evolve past the carrot and stick mentality for this to work. That's why I said it probably won't happen 😅
the end of scarcity. that's a totally bogus concept that capitalism uses to keep the rich in power. we produce far more than the whole of humanity would need to feed and cloth themselves, and we have more houses empty than there are families. we could end poverty right now, we just choose not to.
Well more accurately, some of us did chose that for the whole of us
you got me there. there's plenty of us who would love to see everyone get a fair share.
The whole "we have plenty of housing if only the greedy capitalists would give it to us" claim is very much false. Empty homes are typically empty for a reason. They are being remodelled, or are searching for new renters, or have been condemned, or are in a legal limbo of some sort, etc. The idea that rich people are buying homes en masse and then keeping them empty makes no sense, since they would make more money by buying those homes and then renting them - then they get appreciated home values and rent money to warm their cold, capitalist hearts.
What is actually happening is far more mundane: people are moving to more desireable areas, and are choosing to live in smaller households. A two bedroom home that used to house mom and dad and Jack and Jill in their bunk beds now houses only Jill, plus her home office. And you can't force Jill to take in a homeless man as a roommate, at least not in a democratic society.
The idea that rich people are buying homes en masse and then keeping them empty makes no sense
Yeah, which is why Zillow's house flipping business was a disaster and they've backed out of doing that. Capitalism does not make sense, you're absolutely right, and unfortunately we're at the tail end of its collapse so we get to deal with the last gasps of a system that never made sense, was never sustainable, and prioritized short-term profits over long term financial stability.
None of that changes the fact that we don't live in a world where people need to be homeless because we can't house them. Nor do they need to be hungry because we can't feed them. And the only thing holding us back from feeding and housing everyone is mindsets like yours, where you're so stuck in the old way of doing things because that's all you've ever known that you can't even imagine a better world. The funny fucking thing about that is there used to be a time when nobody could imagine a world without kings and emperors, but guess what? Just like the power of kings, the economy is a fantasy. We made it up, it's a bunch of nonsense rules, and at any time we can just decide not to listen to that bullshit.
And before you start in with any "what abouts" or other nonsense, consider for a second that you're simping for a wholly imaginary system that has no basis in reality or a physical existence, and also that I do not care to listen to your brain react with shock and horror at the idea of things being different.
Goodbye, and good day.
A moonbase.
Universal healthcare and living wages for everyone.
They said scifi, not fantasy :p
Arcologies.
Dense housing with good soundproofing, atop commercial space, in a walkable neighborhood.
Wouldn't need rent control if there was more houses.
This. This is the solar punk dream.
Add a rooftop patio or gardening setup and I might cream my jeans
Walkable cities are sOcIaLiSm!
Except the arcologies part, that's not even sci-fi, it exists across east asia.
I don't forking understand why in 2025, taking pills is still the only way for me to get better for some illness. As someone who gets pretty bad anxiety about taking pills and who sometimes almost chokes on them, I seriously can't understand how we have pocket PCs but we don't have a way to just treat things without pills. Hell, I'll drink something that tastes horrible if it means I don't gotta test my gag reflex.
I never stopped dreaming about flying cars, I just think it's not gonna happen because a crash would easily kill people just sitting in their homes.
I am grateful everyday that cars cannot fly.
Helicopters exist, they are expensive, loud, require pilot training and skill, and still crash sometimes.
Compared to aviation, road vehicles have virtually no structured regulations.
Even road rules are considered optional by many drivers. Lots of people drive without a licence.
Socialism
Augmented reality overlaying historical photos and 3d models so you can literally see history as your walking.
Imagine being able to visit The White City that was built for the World's Fair in Chicago. Or seeing New York before sky scrapers dominated the landscape.
While you're admiring a building which was there in 1925, you get run over by a car which is there in 2025.
Or "blink twice to unlock a 2 hour view of this building for 59,99 58,99! Limit time offer only."
I think your idea is beautiful.
I think your idea is beautiful.
Here is something we don't have that I think we could: Automated vegetable farming.
I've seen these watering gantries that are fixed at the center of a circular field and then rotate radially around that point to water the field. Could you use that as a rail with an effector arm on it that can plant, weed, tend, fertilize and harvest the field, such that in goes seeds and out comes vegetables? Without the liability of free roaming robotic tractors and combine harvesters. Surely the issue here would be software.
Those are called pivots, and what you are saying seems plausible: there are vision algorithms to recognize and selectively spray weeds (see Bilberry ), recent prototypes with light-pressure grabbers to gather fruits and soft vegetables.
Even for harvesters, there are projects to automate harvesting and swapping the grain trucks (see Outrun ). GPS-guided (or assisted) tractors are already a thing.
Agriculture has some interesting innovations, but it often gets bogged down in corporate acquisitions and monetization.
I've seen a project for adapting Reprap 3D printer technology to a raised bed garden, with a multi-function tool head that can individually plant seeds, it weeds by poking weeds deep into the soil, it waters individual plants according to that plant's need...so I thought why not scale that up to multiple acres in size?
I'm into hydroponics as a hobby grower and there are certain techniques for veggie growing that are set and forget. You plant and harvest only, no weeding, no watering. As far as I understand, traditional techniques are still cheaper though
I'm into vegetable gardening as a hobby, my land is essentially beach sand, the only thing that grows in the local dirt is tetanus, so I grow in raised beds and import or make all of my soil. What kind of hardware and rigging does a hydroponic garden take?
The viewscreen from Star Trek. It's actually real but nobody really wants to use it.
Phones, tablets, and laptops have had video chat for years. Apple brought it to actual TV a couple years ago. The idea is you use the Apple TV set-top box, and you get a squared-S-shaped clip that mounts an iPhone to the top of a TV so the rear camera array can point out into the room. You pair the two, and your whole TV turns into a viewscreen, just like on the starship Enterprise.
I've explained this to a few people and the reaction is usually "okay why TF would I wanna do that?" So imagine a Thanksgiving or Christmas, or other "big family holiday" thing where you have that one person who won't participate because it's their partner's family's turn to see the kids or whatever... so, the Apple TV is like $100. And somebody is gonna have an iPhone. And these days, everyone has a TV, at least in the west, and they're 55" or bigger. So you get the TV in the corner of the room and you set it up so you're broadcasting the whole living room and maybe part of the kitchen or dining room, and you connect it to another family/part of the family who is doing the same. And your TV is now a window into that other living room, and people can go up to the screen and interact, or wave from across the room. Now if it's like Thanksgiving and it's based around eating, you could even run the end of the table up to the TV (so the TV is basically sat at one end of the table with no one in between) on both sides so when you look down the table, you're looking into that other room.
I feel like the end result here would be saying hi like a normal phone call, and then kind of awkwardly ignoring and avoiding the tv for the rest of the night. All the problems with video conferencing, but multiplied.
Could also just get two laptops with webcams doing a zoom call, and HDMI the display over to your TVs
I've thought the same thing, Trying to hold a video call between families using a phone or even a laptop is such an awkward experience, especially if you want to just hang out virtually for an extended time like you said.
But it wouldn't even have to involve a separate box or docked phone. Everyone's got a smart TV that can run apps, so all it should take is a USB webcam with a decent far-field mic.
But yeah, in general I'm surprised this isn't more of a common use case.
In theory that should work if the app can access a USB port on the TV and use the webcam. I haven’t heard of it being done though. The Apple solution works and it’s intended to be used like that.
But really, a lot of smart TVs run Android and Android has a surprising amount of supported devices (I suppose due to it basically being Linux). I bet you could hook a DVD burner up to an Android phone, and I’m sure a third party file manager could read files off a disc. Burning though? Should be possible but you’d need an app to talk to the DVD writer. And that, I’ve never heard of. You’d think a webcam would be easier but I think the software stack in an Android phone would only use its internal cameras without an app. The camera app for example is only going to look at the installed ones. It doesn’t know to look at the USB interface for more. But a third party camera app might.
I have a USB C hub and I do have an old Android phone (Galaxy S10, 2019). I do not have a webcam or DVD writer though.
That said, now that I think about it, if you hook a Samsung phone — not sure about others — up to a TV with USB C to HDMI, it kinda becomes a little desktop computer with the TV as monitor. I wonder, if you initiated a video chat, if you could do it with just a Samsung phone. Or really any phone that will display mirror to a TV.
The problem it that sound is limited in physical space, so you can move around a room, talking to one person and then another.
Your proposal is like getting two groups of people to stand on opposite sides of a room and then communicate by shouting at each other.
Only the things scifi wanted to warn us about.
We already live in dystopia timelie.
I would just like complete control of my various web things. be able to restrict banking activity by source (so like lock my savings to only move between my checking and no where else), be able to make temporary credit card numbers that I can not only limit the amount of a single charge but max total that can be charged and daily charge and monthly charge and also be able to limit it to one payer. So like I make it and use it to pay for something than can go back and click on the the vendor payed and say lock it to only that vendor. Have an investment account where I can setup a variety of investments by percentage and have it keep those percentages as markets move. oh and have a local location for all my things where you can get any help including for their website although thats not exactly technology.
For the credit card thing, there used to be an app called Private that you could set up temporary numbers with. I think you could do some level of recurring payments with it too. Not sure it's it's been enshittified yet though
oh I guess I have to add all without apps. Some of this stuff even then exists to some degree but its kinda sad its not implemented just generally. There is so much computers could do but there just is no incentive to maximize customer capability. If anything they tend to look to monetize any feature or limit it in a way to make it shitty or make money for the company outside of their normal streams. Like schwab has this robo adviser but its way limited and forces you to keep a lot in cash yet at the same time is very slow to rebalance (the reasoning they give for the cash is to deal with rebalancing which should allow it to do it relatively quickly.)
How about a machine that can fold your laundry after it's washed and dried?
We're so close. My dryer turns all my stuff inside out. I feel like if it can do that, it can fold the stuff too...
Damn, never heard that machines could do that already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76osXtpLeM
someone was working on one years ago and it seems to never have come to market
Wikipedia says they closed down in 2021, but I'm also seeing this with updates as recent as this year: [link removed]
Edit: I removed the link. There are a bunch of really legit looking Foldimate websites and they are all scams.
That's really cool, thanks. I always wondered what such a contraption would look like. Too bad it didn't make it to market.
The real sci-fi dream is to have a machine that can take a bin of totally unsorted laundry (everything from socks to bedsheets), then wash, dry, and fold it all into a basket. I don't know if that could be done without some very human-like arms and better AI than we have today.
Mech suits.
We have them IRL... Kinda. They're just hydraulic powered limb-augmentation things but there's absolutely no reason they couldn't be like an Alice from Aliens. Shit; we could probably do MechWarrior mechs just not the same scale right now, or even an Iron Man like suit if time was spent trying.
The most fictional thing about a lot of these is mostly the power source. How do you power it? But a tank with legs could just be powered by a normal engine.
I'm an engineer in R&D and have briefly worked on an exoskeleton project. The reason we don't have mech suits is that the capitalist market doesn't demand them much, at least with our current technology.
There are two primary markets for them: medical, and manufacturing. I worked on the medical side--the big challenge there is making devices that are light enough that the mech helps more than it hinders. The biggest challenge is power: batteries are heavy. As we continue to figure out more efficient power storage and efficiency techniques, you could see more of these devices out in the wild.
The manufacturing market is growing, though most applications there are less "mech suit" and more "assistive arm" type of things.
So you want wanzers.
Seriously though, realize that if we ger Mecha, it's going to be more like Armored Core. Or a game set in an AC4 AU, Metal Wolf Chaos.
Do you want the US President (especially the current one, to have something like that, and be told to believe in his own justice?
We already know what a president with a robot body is like.
IDK why they would need to be that big. I don't even think physics would allow them to be that big. The scale of these things in fiction is pretty absurd. Especially the big walker boss in AC6. Your AC is already like 4 stories tall, and that thing makes you look like an ant.
It's why in the Robotics;Notes visual novel, they have to invent some meteorite that gives a lot of power and is small, just so their story about realistic mechas being everywhere work.
I'm confident that we could set up permanent human habitation on the Moon or on Mars with our current level of technology, and that's featured pretty prominently in sci-fi.
I don't know if it would actually provide a cost-effective return, but I do think that it'd be interesting to see happen in my lifetime.
Why think small?
The asteroids are just sitting there.
We could move all of Earth's heavy industries off planet.
Something tells me you've not worked much in said heavy industries. That is scifi hopium.
We could definitely move into industry in space, but a lot of technology still needs to be developed. I think we now have the capacity to launch factories in pieces into space, but asteroid mining remains a technical challenge due as we now know that many asteroids are not so compacted. Furthermore, refining the raw materials in space can't really be done right now, we probably could figure it out, but parts of the production chain do depend on gravity so we'd need to figure out artificial gravity on a rotating station or do some more direct kind of centrifugal refining. All hurdles we could probably cross. Then comes the question of what you drop back down from space and how you do it. Current heat shield technologies are generally poorly reusable, and even if we were we'd have to be flying the reentry devices back into space. Unless we create a cheap means to protect something from reentry that can be manufactured in space as a disposable, most goods would never be returned to earth. Unless we just refine giant cubes of rare metals and drop them into the ocean to be collected. I think most things made in space would be limited to serving those in space, or in lower gravity locations such as the moon or other asteroid bases. I would love to work on these challenges but there's very few companies working on these challenges outside of a couple of asteroid capture startups that seem to have no further vision.
Well, NASA was in the process of doing that already. It's still on the calendar, but who knows if Trump will let it continue or not.
We could have been doing this since the 70s. Nothing sci-fi about it. The plans to do it are outlined in:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space
When humanity turned it's back on this project, we sealed our fate as a failed planet.
Vegas can make money from tourusm in a desert, a hotel on the moon (with a casino) will do just fine.
According to this article, a tourist space flight is/will cost $450,000. That's just to break earth's atmosphere. Tack on the additional cost of several days of space flight to reach and return from the moon, plus breaking the Moon's gravity to return, plus the cost of building, maintaining, and staffing a moon base. Costs would be unbelievably prohibitive.
Vegas, meanwhile, is built on draining gambling-addicted grandmas' pension funds. You can't target that demo on the moon.
Free food.
How exactly is free food (or free anything) achievable within our current technological level?
We have the technology to do this. What we lack is the economic willingness to actually do it. We are literally letting people starve to death because they don't have the money to buy food. The USA literally pays farmers not to grow food to keep prices artificially high.
We throw out massive amounts of food every year, often because it sits too long and rots.
We have the technology to fix this. Corporations just don't.
First explain to me what technological limits are creating the food scarcity we're experiencing.
Sounds to me like you don't understand the question.
We easily produce enough food to feed everyone with our current technology level. Making it free and available to everyone is mostly a logistics and economic problem.
Fusion energy. Man, we are so close!
Yeah, you know what they say: only thirty more years.
With adequate funding. That's the part that always gets omitted. We haven't been funding the research to make it happen.
Alarm clock that reads my brain activity and only wakes me up at the point in my REM cycle, where i'll feel refreshed waking up.
These exist in smartwatches. Not reading your brain activity but tracking your micro movements (or macro) and vibrating on your wrist when you are in a lighter stage of sleep around your alarm time.
Similarly I want something that I can set to put me to sleep for X hours guaranteed. Insomnia is a bitch and ambien is awful. I just want to get ready for bed, set my alarm, and wake up exactly when I need to.
I believe this does actually exist but the most reliable one is from a company that went out of business, so you have to buy second hand
Edit: Its the Zeo Sleep Manager
Sounds like a fun Hack a Day-esque project for someone out there. If you can secure it well enough to stay in place while you sleep, can probably make something with a repurposed Star Wars Force Trainer headset, an Arduino, and some means of triggering an alarm (the fact that we're just out there selling EEG tech as a kids toy is nuts to me).
Along somewhat similar lines, I wouldn't mind a fan that monitored my temperature while sleeping and adjusts its speed accordingly.
Totally possible with homeassistant. They also make temperature controlled "smart" beds.
I just wake up a few minutes before my alarm due to my internal clock. Doesn't matter what time I go to bed.
Finding a way to use organic matter in 3d printing so I can say "Computer...one strawberry milkshake", similar to Picard.
Earl Gray, hot.
strips naked I'm ready for you, babe flexes
I've seen someone convert a 3d printer to use chocolate. Not quite the same thing, but custom chocolate bunnies are possible at least.
AR. Being able to just pop into someone's AR world and walk around as if I was in tge same physical location.
Bikes/Ebikes/motorcycles replacing cars for single-person transport in cities.
VR chat.
AR is more complicated.
Yes, I want to pop into a live recreation of the world around somebody (as a sparkly wolf dragon with a 3million polygon ass obviously). We have the technology, just not the hardware and software.
Medical Biofoam from halo, we have prototypes already
The torment nexus
Just a few more billions and it'll be complete.
Terraforming.
The formerly-water deserts can be terraformed by just digging holes at specific angles so the shadow protects plants from drying up.
It's sci-fi not like a "future robot" thing but more of a "hey we know the math we can do this reliably well" type of thing.
Also those expensive EEG headbands that track your brain during sleep and give you stats can be modified to change TV channel at specific brainwave values.
I've got good news for you! We've been terraforming the planet to be more like Arrakis for a couple decades already!
Ah, the chapterhouse: Dune strategy
I don't know why I haven't thought about terraforming earth until I read it in a sci Fi book and it seemed like the simplest and best thing to do, over terraforming mars or Venus. We have the tech for bioengineering, cloud seeding (I think), chemicals to help stimulate growth of natural plants (at least for the ocean).
Oceans don't need seeding, they just need us to stop fucking bottom trawling for, like, 5 minutes
Nuclear rocket engines. A bit less ambitious than most of the responses, but most things here seem to either refer to technologies we don't have yet but seem within a century or so of developing, which doesn't fit the question, or vague consequences that one wants that tech to have without it being clear how our current technology gets there. But nuclear rockets definitely fit the question, because we have built and ground tested them before, decades ago even, we just haven't bothered to actually use the things. And they should theoretically make developing things like space industry or manned space exploration beyond the moon more viable, by being more efficient than chemical rockets while giving better thrust than ion engines do. They don't work well for launching from the ground, but since our launch abilities have increased a fair bit in the past decade or so, actually getting the things to space in order to use them should be easier than ever.
Last time I checked on that one, the opposition to the idea was focused on the risks of nuclear fallout from a failed launch.
It's a valid concern, but considering that quite a few rockets, to include some currently in use, can contain quite large amounts of some truly nasty chemicals already, and apparently can be made acceptably safe despite this, I'd bet that it's probably possible to manage that risk or find flight paths that minimize exposure in the case of an accident. For that matter, we've launched radioactive materials into space before, some space probes use decay heat for a power source.
Brain operated electronics.
Eeg headbands detect brainwaves and are used in diagnosing mental illnesses. There is also expensive portable ones for yoga people that track your sleep cycle and give statistics.
You can VERY easily have it change the TV channel or move player in a VR game. In fact there is an old starwars toy where you lift some ball by powering a hairdryer with your brainwaves for like $40.
Terraform a planet.
Not like those dead rocks out there such as Mars or the Moon though, I mean like terraform Earth.
If we can't even manage the pollution and climate change right here on Earth, how the fuck they think they're gonna bring dead space rocks to life?
At the current rate, wherever humans go, we'll just bring our trashy ways with us...
Terraforming Earth. Making Earth Earthlike.
That sounds like socialism!
That's called geoengineering generally
And it’s a very bad idea to experiment geoengineering with Earth. You don’t develop in production.
A caring society
Flying cars.
Asteroid mining.
Maybe a Moon or Mars colony.
End poverty.
Universal basic income/ post scarcity society.
Least to most fictional I think.
We have flying cars. They're called helicopters. And the limits to us having post scarcity are all societal/political, not technological.
The limit is skill and discipline.
Most people can’t even drive a car that is held on the ground by gravity. You want them to…fly?
Helicopters aren't exactly convenient personal transport. We could definitely make smaller maybe autopiloted transports.
Regarding post scarcity, that was the point, we could do it now with enough motivation.
Downloadable internet. You stick a pendrive in your PC with internet connection, fill it with internet and then go wherever you want, you have a usb router with data available to use and surf the net.
It is funny because that defeats the principle of the Internet as a shared, live, always on always available data space :-D
Drone deliveries, food or mail. Its being trialed small scale but I want it everywhere.
Cybernetics
Constructing an Orbital ring and then using that to get a form of space elevator built.
Totally possible to build with our current technology but the cost if we do it pre space elevator or similar is pretty insane.
Building a ring let's us basically have a stable space side anchor at low earth orbit instead of geo sync ish like you need for a normal space elevator to match ground speed.
Even more fun is cost for additional rings drops massively and you can build them in different orientations you can get space elevators to rings without having to be on the equator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
Last and my favorite part is the possibility of having literally trains that go up to a ring cross an ocean and go back down. Wouldn't be faster than planes but massively better cargo capacity and efficiency as well as comfortable for passengers.
From what I've seen about a space elevator, is that the we don't have the means to do it without creating a massive material shortage in the world.
The most plausible idea I've seen is using the centrifugal force of the earth spinning to keep a mass at LEO. But without a futuristic material like long carbon nanotubes, we would have essentially a ten mile thick metal cord tapering to something a few feet thick, and you would be limited in payload to like a few hundred pounds.
Just curious, why do you think a ring would predate the elevator?
As AAA said in a comment beside me it isn't so much that I expect it would predate a space elevator. Simply that it is possible with current tech rather than still waiting on additional moderately likely breakthroughs like long chain carbon nanotube tether.
Also there are plenty of options to have the vast majority of the material be from space and not the surface since the core idea is a metal like copper being spun above orbital speed after being made into a full loop then used for the mag lev to keep at ground speed. There are absolutely a lot of astroids that might allow for that.
Just curious, why do you think a ring would predate the elevator?
(Not OP) Because simply from a construction-point-of-view it's achievable now. Unlike a space elevator, a ring could actually be built and used with today's materials.
skyhook!
Free, unlimited energy.
Future.
This whole thread is just Americans saying things that they don't have that is common elsewhere. And that isn't answering the question at all. It's the ever present thing of 'Murican idiocy thinking only about the US and acting like anything else doesn't exist.
Not yet, but I think we might see age reversal drugs in the not so far future.
I'm going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They're generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I'm a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don't elect) might work better.
The problem is capitalism and corporations. We don't need fiction to see those two don't work, they don't work in real life.
Look at the companies that are really successful. Telecoms, Amazon, Nestle... the big ones. Note the trend of every single one of them doing the absolute most unethical shit they possibly can to make a quick buck. Do you really want to hand them things like a military/police force, or authority over your civil liberties?
Not to say that existing governments aren't also abusing those powers, but do you seriously think your life would improve if you gave that power over to fucking Comcast or something??
Corporations are predictable - they try to make money. If their profit motive aligns with my own interests, then what they do will be good for me. Amazon, for example, sells me all sorts of things for low prices and with great customer support. My interests and corporate interests won't necessarily align and that's why exit rights are so important, but at least I will still be dealing with an entity acting more-or-less rationally.
Found Peter Thiel's account
Anarcho capitalists freecities are a horrible idea. Wont take long before you can buy people in there, because the only rule is the golden rule.
You'll get more interest in an anarcho-syndicalist zone.
yeah, being blacklisted and exiled from modern society all because I called great leader "Fuckerberg" in 2010.
so fucking cool /s
Gonna be hard to move to Amazonia if all you've got in terms of money are Zuckbucks.
Post scarcity society
As long as shareholder value is the number one thing it just cant happen.
OP says, "with our current current level of technology."
We have the technology to overcome any logistics issue pertaining to eliminating scarcity (and by extension, poverty). What we lack is the societal structure.
so kill the shareholders, then they won't care about their value.