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

.....since road accident deaths cost around a million pounds per death....that includes investigation, coroner costs, etc, then work being done to prevent cars being driven by drunks (inbuilt detectors) , and from crashing into each other (distance warning devices), must surely be welcomed.

I've always thought that ultimately what we'll end up with is (and I can't find a better way to put it than this) 'malleable consciousness'. We'll be able to mould our personalities (perhaps on a computer) and increase/decrese our intellegence and characteristics at will. We'll never die. If a great new energy source is found then perhaps the future will be 'eternal hedonism'. But where would life be without a challenge, eh?

I'm not as pessimistic about relationships as AgentProv. I think/hope in the future we'll be able to find compatible partners using the internet in some way. Maybe boffins will find a clever objective way to measure the 'spark'. What would happen in a world where you find perhaps 100 plus people who rate highly on the 'spark factor' and, if met in 'normal' circumstances, would have been considered 'the one'?

Actually I read a couple of years ago that some people think we'll be able to download (or is it upload?) our brain onto a computer within the next 20 years.

Something I'm looking forward to is the perfect electronic diary. It would record all your activities in 24 hours - conversations, things seen etc - and keep them stored on computer for later inspection. Would also be a great aid to us absent minded folk...

>>.Something I'm looking forward to is the perfect electronic diary. It would record all your activities in 24 hours - conversations, things seen etc - and keep them stored on computer for later inspection.<<

This is something women already have but are keeping it quiet. They use top record everything you say and keep it in evidence...

I think Mrs. D has got one... and a good thing too! I forgot that her sister's wedding was this weekend the other day and asked what we were doing!

PPPPFFFFFFFFF! Ooops

Just wait till they get a thought recorder

That'd be scary... no longer will you be able to answer in the negative when they ask "does my bum look big in this?" or "were you looking at that woman's cleavage?"

And of course there'll be the problems when you get asked if you mind doing the washing up or taking the bin out...

"no longer will you be able to answer in the negative "

You mean you can now? How? Come on man, tell us all the secret!

I dunno... maybe I just have a very honest face...

Brain uploading would be something. But I don't see it happening within 50 years. Brain implants that can interact with computers is already happening though.

A universal remote control that can turn off noisy motorcycles, burglar alarms and loud sound systems.

~^M^~

Chavtron bomb!

Kills all the chavs in the blast radius but leaves buildings and normal people unharmed!

If a social development could be called an "invention", I agree that there's a need to do SOMETHING about the "underclass".

funny how Orwell predicted this in "1984" - he speculated that in the Big Brother era, the vast majority of society would be ill-educated "proles", kept quiescent on a diet of junk food and junk entertainment, minimally politicised and policed, encouraged to have little interest in politics, and used as a reservoir of unskilled labour. (The REAL mind-control and a two-way TV in every home, the intense surveillance, would be reserved for the potentially dangerous intelligencia of the "Outer Party", such as Winston Smith and Julia, the ones with the mental capacity to think potentially dangerous thoughts. This was Orwell's implicit answer to the question "Whoa, where are all the people who will do the observing and watch everyone else come from?" - ie, it isn't necessary to put EVERYONE in society under surveillance)

Winston Smith goes to the Prole Zones to seek illicit entertainment and escape from 24-hour surveillance, but the book talks about the sense of danger and unease when he goes there - they aren't safe places for somebody who doesn't belong.

Alas, we now have our Prole Zones with a significant population of unskilled, uneducated, unmotivated, anti-social people. The question is - what do we do about them? I'm no conservative, but I can see as clearly as others we can't let it go on like this, and the longer we leave it, the more drastic the action we're going to have to take.

I predict that successive governments WILL carry on dithering about this social problem and tinkering at the edges, until somebody ends up taking a draconian approach: I'd favour "child-licencing", myself, the idea that nobody, but nobody, is allowed to have children until they prove they are capable of being fit parents. (Have a kid without the licence? Fine, we'll take it into care with a view to its being adopted by people who CAN be good parents. Child benefit? A free council flat? You must surely be joking!) If we don't do something like this, we'll carry on with a cycle of bad parents raising feral children who grow up without limits and prove to be even more abominable parents themselves, with consequent problems for the rest of us!

As I've said on other threads I'm a great advocate of freedom of speech. Freedom to do, however, is something which should only be granted to those with freedom to think.

A logical step would be to force parents to be involved with a child's education. Those who are willing will come quietly and happily, and those who aren't will bloody well be made to see how an active role in a child's development will have a positive impact in the long term.

Relevant reading material: 'Visions' by Michio Kaku details advances that we can expect to see in the fields of computing, microbiology and quantum mechanics that will revolutionise technology.

For example, he says that soon, computers will be as cheap as scrap paper (not too far-fetched is it?) You'll be able to write on them, just like scrap paper or 'graphics tablets', and then you press a button or something and it's saved wirelessly to a central server. Then, like an etch-n-sketch, you can wipe the screen and re-use it!

He also says we'll all have our DNA on CD-ROMs.

"He also says we'll all have our DNA on CD-ROMs."

Perhaps the concept of 'restoring a recent back-up' of your body will become a reality, hence stifling the aging process.

I would absolutely love it if there was a really cheap RFID tag attached to all normal objects - glasses, remote controls, toys, socks and shoes, knives and forks; so if you lose it, you press a button somewhere and it starts to beep back at you.

I expect the later one's would respond back in polyphonic ring-tones, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Polyphonic tones would only be the beginning... I'll be waiting for camera-pants and hands-free sets for bras.

and with all these ideas about RFIDing your kids, you could assign each their own ringtone

I haven't got time to plod through the backlog - am trying to finish work so I can go home (wonder why it's taking so long?)

It would be cool if - as a next step to skyping and talking over the web, and maybe seeing the other person on screen as you do so, that they could be holographically projected to sit right next to you or stand in the room while you hold your conversation.

It'll be a while before you can offer them a cuppa in this state, but it would be a nice step further in communication. Mind you, you couldn't pick your nose or play with your toenails while on the phone any more.