Nanotech robots for garbage recycling.
Imagine if we dumped our trash into one end of a big fuckoff machine and out the other end it came out in microscopic pieces into hoppers for reuse or correct disposal.
Throw in an old appliance and out the other end comes the aluminium from the body, the steel, the copper from the wiring, the silica… you get the idea.
But they’d just realize we are all garbage and then gray goo the entire earth
Nah thats the dystopian version, op specified “Exotic” thats the one that doesnt go wrong and kill us all.
“Exotic” isn’t synonymous with “safe”
Dont tell me how my hypothetical science fiction invention works, you dont understand the hypothetical sciemce fiction research we would be hypothetically doing.
Being able to photosynthesize. It wouldn’t be that hard either, we already can, just not to make food.
Asteroid mining. This may still be too far off and too expensive. But the first person to get this working successfully will be a trillionare.
This plus fusion are the two things most needed to transition humanity to a space based civilization.
And that is something to inspire to? Look at the world right now, with billions of people having almost no money at all.
Asteroid mining is incompatible with current capitalism. Say you harvest an asteroid with 100,000 of platinum in it. You in theory now have trollions of dollars in platinum for the $40 billion you spent harvesting the asteroid, only you have now quadrupled the amount of platinum in the economy, crayering the price and totally ruining your company. It’s obviously a net good for humanity as a scarce resource is now abundant, but it is bad for capitalism because the ones who finaced the work are the biggest loser.
I did some googling and math. Global platinum market is 8 million oz a year. Current spot price is ~$900. That’s $7T per year. They would have a monopoly and be able to shut down all mines by undercutting the price selling at say $800/oz. If it cost $40 Billion to mine the asteroid, that means it would take 7 years to pay back the cost.
7 year payback is short for businesses. Commercial Solar is installed despite having a 10 year payback.
No you’ve got it backward. The mining is a cover. You look for celestial bodies that require only a small delta-v to redirect to a collision event.
It’s a proper hostage situation, once you’ve got the infrastructure to replicate it more cheaply than people can defend against it.
This would be a really cool idea for a novel or mini-series IMO.
Oh yeah. I’d consult on that for sure. Tricking Silicon Valley to invest in something that then holds Earth hostage instead. Fun plot.
…although I bet they’d still invest if you just told them. As long as the financials work.
I think if mining economy worked like that, Saudi Arabia would have gone bankrupt by cratering the price of oil.
Oil jas constant demand and the Saudis have so much of it that it costs them very little to drill for it and store it. And digging a new well doesn’t immediately flood the market with 4x the annual production of oil.
I’m not arguing against asteroid mining. I am saying that it is fundamentally impossible under our current capitalist system. That’s why there has been zero advances in the concept in iver a decade.
Or it’ll be a gold rush situation where that guy will break even, but the people selling him rocket fuel will make a modest fortune. It’s all dependent on how expensive the shipping method invented is.
Those machines that can make food instantly for sure. Put a few of those bad boys in the right place and we’ve solved world hunger. Also, healthy tasty food for those of us who can’t cook and can’t afford to eat at restaurants.
Granted, people in the restaurant would largely lose their job, but we can retrain them for something else like we did with stagecoach drivers, telephone operators and honest politicians before them 🤷
Replicators! Yes!!
Some restaurants probably will still exist as a premium option. And chefs can create recipes and sell them online.
They’ll probably add DRM to it. Crap! 😬
Atomically Precise Manufacturing!
Might actually happen in the upcoming decades.
FISH!
I’d say budget 3D printed meals are around the corner.
Proper gourmet replicated meals, 60yrs.
Farmers would also loose their jobs.
Eh, most of those are kinda dicks anyway 🤷
And I say that as someone whose family has been mainly farmers all the way back to the 1400s lol
I hate it when my job gets loose.
Opps
Cybernetics hands down.
Also clean energy but personally virtual reality 100%. Give me that SAO experience, damn it. Just without y’know the bad stuff
Regrowing teeth
Current against foetal alkohol syndrome
- Space tether.
- Nuclear fusion.
- Home assistant robots
Bacta Tanks. Maybe a few days in one would fix my back.
Nano-tech medicine, for sure. Injectable swarms of individually dumb, tiny robots which are controlled by an external AI doctor.
Naa I want a Sarcophagus from Stargate.
Although only use it when you need it.
I’d invest my billions with this guy
Giving it all away to mutual aid groups to have them figure out local issues.
Do I have to choose one? The world food program is never overfunded, and that would buy a stupid amount of lobbying for whatever overlooked domestic issue, or even just research grants for neglected but foundational things. Boring/ugly animals could also use conservation.
Maybe we understood the question differently: are you saying that if you could choose between researching Star Trek’s food replicator and feeding people for a day, you’d choose fish?
No. And cool wording by the way.
Assuming 100% success, yeah, replicators would be a great choice. Or maybe that skin cream that fixes everything including intangible life problems from that one short. Assuming actual science stuff, benevolent AI maybe, so we don’t have to worry about the other kind, and so it can hopefully research everything else.
Doors that go “swish” when they open.
Make them open and close in a circular pattern like a camera aperture and I’m in
Van Neumann probes
Sentient von Neumann probes :)
How far off do you think we are from this becoming a reality?
One AGI breakthrough - so couple of years to never.
Imagine we send an AGI in a probe that can operate in 100-400K without oxygen or water or food or gravity, and not some brain in a flesh.
May be poulsen treatment or immortality cruciform from Hyperion. Not sure if immortality is such a good idea though. Throughout history horrible dictatorships tend to end after the death of the despots. Imagine if these horrible people are immortal…
that’s a no on the cruciform for me, dawg. Yeesh. I’ll take everything else from there though, Poulsen, hawking drive, farcasters (maybe without the yoke of the AI techno core though), etc.
The terror usually doesn’t end when the dictator dies today he just gets replaced by the next in line, but even, having the entire human race go old and suffer until death to alleviate the dictator problem is maybe not the best way to do it?
Open source non destructive Brain machine interfaces
I want to interact with machines at the speed of thought so bad. Not to mention what it could mean for people when they are disabled.
Man I always watned that, but it woudl have to be an open-source program, becuase I will not pay by having adds in my own mind
I see this very much as another Pandora’s box situation for humanity. Once it’s open, both good and bad things can come of it.
The bad being, brain hacking, brain ransome, and perhaps a few other things. You mention a “nondestructive brain machine,” but I can’t comprehend how anyone will be able to make an implant that could be engineered not to be destructible and still have uber computing power in such a small form. But who knows what advancements are in store this century?
The good, as you mentioned would be, enabling the disabled in many ways never fully realized before. Both personal and professional productivity across the board, in theory, would greatly be improved.
If the interface is one way “reading brainwaves” not writing it should be pretty safe from hacking.
You bring up a good point.
Way “non destructive” was my hand waving risks some tbh. What I mean is safe implants either though regenerative technology to overcome damages, precision so small no meaningful damage was done, or non invasive. I also consider reparability and upgradability/downgradabilty import.
