h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I read about a bill in one state that would prohibit all utilities from using renewable energy" [Baron Grim]

Apparently idiots are renewable.

We have solar panels to heat the water for the hot water and central heating and PV which give us free electricity if used judiciously during the day. Unfortunately, I can't cycle home quickly at 10 am on a sunny day just to switch the washing machine on.

However, I have downloaded far too many BBC podcasts and am now exactly 2 years behind with my listening. That makes for some interesting listening, as in 2014/2015 the science programmes are only just beginning to predict the production of power for individual use, as we now have, and eventually, we may all be completely independent of the grid. The big subject at the time was Ebola. You don't hear an awful lot about that nowadays either.

Sorry I brought in the sci-fi references, but I couldn't think of any serious predictions off hand. And sometimes the line between science and science fiction is very fine.

That would be another thread: What was considered "futuristic" in early sci-fi that is part of our everyday life today?

Shame about the holographic screens - They would be really nifty.

There's something not quite right about the term 'holographic screen'. We want a 3D representation in front of us, but a screen only presents it in 2D. We can't focus on images represented on it to give a genuine sense of depth - all we can do is move our point of view and see the image change somewhat. It's not a solution for 3D TV or cinema, as we prefer sit in a static position to be entertained.

I'm trying to remember all those episodes of 'Tomorrow's World' I watched… I'm sure they were always saying that stem cell treatment would cure baldness and put an end to dentures as lost hair and teeth will simply regrow – possibly even missing limbs too.

<BB<

Being in the throes of a Canuck winter, and not in great health: the idea of shopping for things wanted or needed - on-line - and near instant materialization would be really nice. Amazon Prime is good, but still always some days involved.

Which brings us back, I suppose, to teleporters . . .

Teleportation can be done now, but only a few molecules at a time. They have a long way to go.

A holographic screen makes perfect sense, if you consider the screen as the floor above which the 3D image hovers.

Indeed, I remember clearly seeing the Sega arcade game "Time Traveler" (sic) and being amazed at the "holograms", and thinking that surely soon all TVs would be like that, but better.

Until recently, the lounge of most homes was arranged around two things: the fireplace, typically halfway along the longest wall, and the TV, in the corner between the longest wall and the window usually, that being where the cable from the roof-mounted aerial entered the house and where the one or two plugs you needed were.

I went to look at a new-build house development the other day and something struck me forcefully - Barrett, the largest housebuilder in the UK, no longer put fireplaces in their houses. They're not even an *option*. Instead, you get a "media plate", which is where your satellite cable, digital aerial cable and Ethernet cable all come to, along with the half-dozen or so power points you need for the TV, PVR, amp, subwoofer, console, etc.

When we get holoTVs, the room arrangement will have to change again, with the "TV" mounted on the ceiling and the seating arranged all around a central area where the action happens.

#15 and #16
Dial-a-disc was definitely a thing, and run by the GPO (General Post Office), like the speaking clock A1002844 or the weather forecast.

In the early 80s I was, for a while, a telephonist in an insurance company in London, working one board of an Erikson PBX (private branch exchange). There were four of us, working in overlapping shifts so that there was always someone on early or late to make or take the international calls. These calls had to be prebooked several hours, even days, in advance.

When the international operator called you back to say your line would be open soon, you just had to sit and wait, so you couldn't be pressing buttons to take more calls, that was for the other operators. Therefore it was possible to listen to Dial-a-disc on one line and keep clicking back to the other line to see if New York was ready for you yet.

Direct dialling was talked about as being something that might be possible in the future. I do remember the day when we were allowed to take a quick visit to the Post Room to watch the company receive its first "Rapifax" document. Something that was talked about for weeks afterwards!

Dial-a-disc was on a loop as I recall, so you rarely came in at the start of a song.

Actually I've just remembered something else. We always had our regular "heavy breathers" and the like. One way to keep them amused, rather than telling them what you were wearing (never underestimate the creativity of a small group of telephonists!) was to connect them to dial-a-disc until they hung up.

They can maybe 'teleport' a piece of quantum information from one particle to another.

I.e. quantum entangled particles may be in an 'up/down' state - that is one is 'up' and one is 'down' at any one time.* But due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle you don't know which is which at any one time - see also Schrodinger's cat.

If you send quantum entangle particles up different wires then when you observed one to be either up or down - the other will be down or up (i.e. the opposite)

THAT is what they are doing when they call it 'teleportation'

Unless I've missed a major piece of science recently, they certainly cannot 'teleport' a whole molecule, let alone a few.


*Up/Down is just illustrative, not an actual quantum property.

>If you send quantum entangle particles up different wires then when you observed one to be either up or down - the other will be down or up (i.e. the opposite)<

If you send quantum entangle particles up different wires then when you observed one to be either up or down - the other will be down or up (i.e. the opposite) - instantaneously, sometimes a LONG way away

The reason teleportation's so difficult is because we've somehow got to move the matter. It makes more sense to recreate the matter that's already at the destination to match that at the source, and vice versa.

The new wonderous world of personalised medacine hasn't really appeared yet, with genetic analisis enabling person specific meds to be made on a person basis... simularly stem cell stuff is still behind where I thought it'd be by now, when steps first went into that arena back in the 1990s... actuallly medacine and medical treatments haven't come on as far as it is sometimes told to us that they have... Often its just having refined exactly the same drugs and treatments that have been around for decades, making treatments a bit better, but not necessarily chaning them, to any new treatments.... Even blood tests are still over used IMO, and there hasn't been a huge puash for differnt ways to measure the same things in blood, via differnt routes, E.G., measuring metabolites in salavia, sweat, body oder, etc., which can be related back to the starting concentrations of the molecule desired to be measured in the bloodstream ... Often though its just people being resistant to change, not least all the money tied up in current techniques, equipment, etc, IMO....
But, really, the main thing... we've still not got personal rocket pants to wear to fly us about the skys

It will come but the big problem is overpopulation sometimes it appears that the boffins are seeking a birth control system rather than keep the current population patched up.
That suggest in the 1950's (baby boom) has caused hughe problems if we as a global population don't do something soon we will come to a very sticky end.

That said the things we were promised may well be on the back burner whilst other issues are addressed. Top of the agenda still seems the development of new and exciting ways of killing each other.

Is it in the genetic makeup I have talked to many survivors of conflict
And in most cases they were the best days of their lives. My father said having sampled civil street after WW II if he had known that the Korean War was going to happen he would never have left the army, mind you he was in the front line all the time. And Brigadier Jo was the same he missed the life "up and stem chaps".

I know it's off topic bit, well maybe a lot off topic but the discussion has made me think of how they would regard the world today.

There is a social side to it - it brings people together in a camaraderie type way that is entirely missing currently - though we do seem in the UK at least have coalesced into two opposing camps re Brexit - perhaps a new lovely civil war looms in the future. Ah bliss

If you don't count the bits where people were bombed, gassed, shot, hung by piano wire etc - rationing of food and the common cause thing meant people in the UK were psychologically and physically in pretty good shape at that time.

Weird isn't it. I suspect it is in the genetic make up.