List of Emerging Technologies | Hacker News Reader

List of Emerging Technologies

en.wikipedia.org

6 pointsdm26 comments

I posted this Wikipedia article to see if anyone has any additions or updates for any of these technologies and to hopefully generate discussion about them.

How many years until we can send our cars out to go get food? I'd guess 10 years.

How many years until we can upload all of wikipedia into our brains or an attachment that our brains can pull from / talk to? I'd guess 20 - 30 years.

How many years until we can throw trash into a 3D printer and have it materialize a complex item such as an orange or a phone? Again, 20 - 30 years.

How many years until we can send our cars out to go get food? - let's rather ask how many years until we stop owning cars and start using a ubiquitous autonomous taxi/delivery service.

How many years until we can upload all of wikipedia into our brains or an attachment that our brains can pull from / talk to? - we don't have a slightest idea of how to do that and if it's even possible or feasible.

How many years until we can throw trash into a 3D printer and have it materialize a complex item such as an orange or a phone? - home 3D printers are a fad. Homemade products will always be orders of magnitude more expensive than factory-produced.

1) That's a huge transformation that isn't going to happen suddenly, it'll be gradual. We will be able to rent our cars out for the day while we are at work within the next 10 years.

2) Research has been going on in to make this happen for 40+ years. DARPA has invested a significant amount of funding towards the goal of a BCI. All that's really necessary is the connection, that's the hardest part, just how to talk to the brain and make a safe connection to it. Google is working on it pretty heavily also. It'll be done, just a matter of when. Many science concepts people don't know if they are possible because of some unknown limit, but with BCIs we know it's possible, just a matter of figuring it out, which has turned out to be a difficult but certainly not impossible task.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interfac...

3) Maybe in the short-term, but in 40-50 years there is no reason that a "Replicator" can't be created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

1) Why own cars at all? It's way more efficient to have a common pool of cars that you rent when you need them. I actually think that owning in general will eventually be replaced with loaning from shared pools. It's way better from planning, economy, ecology and maintenance perspectives.

2) Most of the breakthroughs were because of new levels of power or precision. Here we're facing a totally different kind problem, one of complexity. That's something we have no tools to deal with and no idea of even how those tools might look like. It's not like flight, or Internet, or artificial viruses.

3) Did you really just link me to a device from a sci-fi show? :-D The thing is that mass production can use optimizations, shortcuts and logistics that can never be used by custom production. Also, injection molding will always produce smoother shapes than 3D-printing, because the latter is discrete.

Also, ecologically speaking, it's better if people just own a set of mass-produced, high-quality goods than continuously print new stuff on their own. There's too much stuff in the world already.

Why do you think home 3d printing is a fad? Just because it's more expensive than factory-produced?

In short, yes. Way more expensive. Also, 3D printers cannot print most of the useful stuff. Even if they were be able to print electronics - people just don't need new electronics that often.

Still, it's a great toy for all kinds of hackers and makers. :)

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