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

If we had the means to do it, what things would be great inventions?

Examples

- clothes that clean and iron themselves automatically...
- personal teleportation devices...
- grass that never needs cutting...

CR

* I keyboard that knew when you accidentally had caps lock switched on and beeped to inform you of same.
* An adjustable seat for airplanes

A direct brain-to-internet interface. A car that could go away and park itself while I get on with my life.

A tablet form dialysis machine to remove any traces of a heavy weekend from your blood on Monday morning.

A dream recorder, so you can go back and watch those really weird, interesting, cool dreams that you had last night.

Proper genetic engineering. Poo to all this faffing around with ethics. I want the ability to grow extra limbs at will (just think - carrying shopping into the house. Many bags, not enough hands. Answer, grow another arm so you can open the front door without having to put the shopping down. This would also be handy when you wanted to read a broadsheet AND have a cup of tea AND a fag at the same time. There's no end of possible uses.)

I also want internal packaging for male genitalia. They're just too vulnerable out there dangling around.

Isn´t it weird that we still don´t have grass that doesn´t need to be cut. You would think somewhere in the world a grass plant would mutate, and become dwarf grass. And then spread out because it wasn´t damaged from being chopped in half once a week.

Actually I think the opposite is the case - each blade of grass competes with its peers for sunlight and "territory". The act of cutting grass resets this competition thus giving them all a better chance to grow.

I thought of this when I was mowing my parent's lawn over the weekend. I have thoughts like this when I am mowing the lawn...

Any other inventions? Clothes that destroy stale tobacco molecules and Guinness stains? Peer-to-peer Shortwave devices in cars which enable you to speak to other drivers close to you instead of honking and screaming at them?

To reduce the incidence of drivers honking at each other, the output part of horn should be put in the steering wheel - thus when you decided to blast the horn you would get the bulk of it. This would cut down on all but emergency horn use...

cars that drove themselves would be nice....

Lightbulbs that never burn out

Instead of just honking blindingly into the ether, I want to be able to aim my honk at specific cars. I also want different kinds of honks, so that I can have one to say "oops, I'm sorry!" and another to say "hey, watch out!" and yet another to say "@#$@#!"

I also want a fully automated laundry system -- I toss my clothes in the chute, they are sorted, washed, dried, ironed if need be, and folded or hung up. Frankly, all of the technology needded for this exists, but it would probably be cheaper to just hire a maid.

I have a LitterMaid system -- now I want them to take it a step further, and empty out the little bins of poop by itself, and to automatically fill up with cat litter when it needs to.

I also want something that would automatically prepare meals for me -- like on Star Trek or the Jetsons.


Mikey

How about a compact car flag.
I always find it really annoying when I am looking for a parking space and I think that I see one, but when I get there, there is already a compact car in the space that could not be seen because of the cars next to it.
To solve this problem, they should have a little flag attached to all compact cars that extends off the back of the car so that you can see that there is a car there and don't think it is a space.
The flag can be made so that it is hidden out of site when you are driving, but when you park the car and turn it off, the flag automatically flips out in the back of the car.

Screw cars that drive themselves, I want a public transportation system that can get me anywhere in town within 15-20 minutes, without me having to change buses/trains more than once, and without me having to walk more than a block. Ideally, this system would also interface with a system for travelling medium distances (i.e., the kind that would normally take an hour or three to drive) and long distances (the kind that you would normally fly for).


Mikey

I think I would rather just have a self teleportation device that could teleport me to any location in less then a second when ever I wanted.

A machine that prevents people with an IQ below 100 from breeding.

Mostly

Now that is a good idea.

There would still be plenty of average people left to do all of the jobs that don't require intelligence so there wouldn't be the problem of having intelligent people stuck cleaning toilets

Maybe we could get a law passed.

Mostly

Not when the people passing the law would be prevented from breeding