Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.
However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.
Especially if you plan to survive long enough to get off this stinking rock – you’re going to need to concentrate resources, because the public sector only seems to be able to succeed at space travel under a very specific set of hard-to-replicate circumstances. Whereas greed, inflated egos, and concentrated power are easy to replicate.
Your objections will be noted.
Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.
However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.
… Are you suggesting that we increase inequality to make the world better? Like we need an overlord, be it robot or human, and the rest of the population needs to be placated, worked to the bone, and easily replaced?
I gotta assume I am just vastly misunderstanding something in this argument, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Is it just sarcastic?
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.
I’d like to support solarpunk development. I just want to live a simple life, with high tech in cooperation with the environment. We need it badly. I would fund so many community libraries. Don’t misunderstand me though. I still want space travel, but I no longer trust capitalists with it.
An end to the problem of aging, and death. Whether that means turning into cyborgs, I don’t care. I just want to choose when I die. Not having dying slowly happen to me like a terminal illness. Plus life is way too short. If I get tired of immortality let me off myself. But let me at least get tired of it first.
Have you ever heard of de’beers diamond hoarding story. Thats like what i expect would happen to humanity if we gained the ability to live forever, ‘manufactured scarcity’.
A tumultuous time of oligarchic rule with infighting to control the life extending technology. Eventually ending in a winner take all dictatorship. The masses would never see their lives extended (greener pastures visions may be made in the beginning). In fact common peoples lifespans would likely shorten as the controlling elite no longer required the same sort of widespread healthcare present even at todays standards, (depending upon where you live).
The elite would form a supplicant circle around the eventual dictator who maintains control, drip feeding the life extending technology to those who serve their dictatorship best.
Within a couple generations they won’t be a dictator but our Monarch, and the common people will obey, and descend to a miserable condition.
I may have let my imagination loose today a bit…
Similar to the book/show altered carbon except in that the poor people have a knockoff way to extend life
Honestly I’d be horrified knowing that without aging, a traumatic, fatal, accident becomes more and more likely as time passes to the point of being inevitable. Always on edge for that moment when it all suddenly comes to an end.
That sounds like the gambler’s fallacy to me. Time alone wount make an accident more likely, it just means potentially mpre opportunities wheee an accident could occur. Sitting on your sofa today or 10,000 years from now makes no difference if the environment is the same. If you’ve played the lottery 10 times before you likely won’t win if you play again, if you play 100,000 times you still won’t win.
You shouldn’t be any more anxious about an unexpected accident than you are right now. Just without the worrying about factoring in aging.
It’s not really science fiction since there are scientists working on it right now, because capitalism is the brake of development. I would invest on photonic computer research, that would help advancement of society in all aspect.
I read an ieee paper a few years ago that went into why photonic computing failed and why it won’t ever succeed.
The problem is that photons are fat compared to electrons so circuits couldn’t be made as small as they are already today. When cmos was 500 nm and researchers weren’t sure if things could be made smaller, photonics made sense. But now they’re at 3nm process (yes it is a marketing label, but pitch is 24 nm ) . Visible light has a wavelength of 400nm. The wave function of a photon would smear across circuits that small.
Intel presented photonic data bus between chips couple of months ago so I don’t think compute would be useful other than quantum stuff.
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.
Farmers would also loose their jobs.
I hate it when my job gets loose.
Opps
FISH!
I’d say budget 3D printed meals are around the corner.
Proper gourmet replicated meals, 60yrs.
Being able to photosynthesize. It wouldn’t be that hard either, we already can, just not to make food.
Every single suggestion so far has been positive, life-affirming, and productive, so I’m going to be Gru here for a change:
Bolos. AI tanks with no crew and heavily (Greek) Spartan-centric model training.
I’ll add mine here then. Cat Girl genetic engineering. It helps no one but the amount of non destructive upheavel from it be easy available would be entertaining.
We should start a company.
Van 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.
Sentient von Neumann probes :)
Combustible lemons. But failing that, a portal gun.
Lemons are already combustible?
It was a Portal 2 reference
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…
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?
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.
Doors that go “swish” when they open.
Make them open and close in a circular pattern like a camera aperture and I’m in
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.
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.
If the interface is one way “reading brainwaves” not writing it should be pretty safe from hacking.
You bring up a good point.
Regrowing teeth
Current against foetal alkohol syndrome
Consciousness storage and transfer
