5 Awesome Sci-Fi Inventions (That Would Actually Suck)
Remember all those Star Trek gadgets you wished you had because they looked so cool? Well, it turns out looking cool is about all they'd be good for.
Here's five inventions that will be available some day ... even if nobody wants them.
#5.
Flying Cars
As seen in:
Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Back to the Future II, Futurama, The Jetsons ... it's actually kind of difficult to list sci-fi that doesn't feature some variation of the flying car.
Why we thought we wanted them:
First, we don't mean some kind of sissy half-plane, half-car hybrid that some people will try to tell you is a flying car. No, we mean real, float off the ground, how the crap is that happening, Jetsons sort of flying cars. Admit it, when you were 7 years old, there were only two things you were sure of: Transformers fucking rule, and the future would be full of flying goddamn cars.
Of course, once you learned to drive you wanted one even more. Every time you're stuck in traffic, you can picture yourself flipping a switch and swooping into the sky, leaving those honking bastards behind. You'd fly straight to work, free as a bird.
Why we were wrong:
Well, guess what: They're not gonna let you do that. People just flying wherever the fuck they want would be a death warrant for every radio tower and power line in the country.
No, you'd have to fly according to a wussified autopilot, along pre-set pathways. Air-roads, in other words. And, once everybody has a flying car ... well, have you ever been driving to work in a city at around, oh, eight or nine in the morning? If so, you'll know exactly how bad traffic can get during rush hour. Now, imagine if there was not just one layer of cars, but there was layer after layer of flying metal death traps over top and below you.
That's not even the worst part. The many people who have tried to invent flying cars over are finding out that every single thing that's bad with cars (cost, safety, etc) is made worse when you try to make the thing fly.
For instance, no matter what kind of engine they invent, a flying car will always burn more fuel than a regular car, especially on short trips (you burn a bunch of gas trying to overcome that gravity thing on takeoff).
Even worse, even a minor crash with another flying car could send both vehicles plummeting to the ground while you scream in terror. Imagine the poor guy on the ground, sitting there at a red light, as a flaming five car pile-up is hurdling down towards him from the sky. If you're not scared yet, try to imagine what they're going to charge you in insurance premiums as a result.
#4.
Jet Packs
As seen in:
The Jetsons (again), The Rocketeer, James Bond used one in Thunderball, Boba Fett... too many to count. If you've never heard about and/or purchased a toy featuring a jet pack, you are from the 1800s.
Why we thought we wanted them:
Because every single human wants the ability to fly, pretty much from birth. We're talking the ability to fly, not ride in a thing that flies.
Why we were wrong:
We're going to skip past the obvious point that the Rocketeer here would be left with charred stumps below the thigh, since that exhaust is coming out at around 2,000 degrees.
But let's assume they overcome all that and make one that actually works. All those safety issues we have with the flying cars? You've got all that, only without a car around you to protect your fragile body. The only possible method of saving your ass when you crash/fall asleep/run out of fuel is probably a parachute, which means you'd need extensive training on how to land without impaling yourself on a tree branch.
The only alternative would have to be some kind of air bag that instantly inflates around you in an emergency, letting you bounce gently to safety while you involuntarily shout, "WHEEEE!!!" The problem with that, of course, is that we'd be intentionally crashing all the time just so we can do that.
#3.
Holodecks
As seen in:
Most people would know the holodeck as being an invention out of the Star Trek series, but they probably took the idea from a Ray Bradbury short story called The Veldt where a family has a holodeck that simulates an African veldt, and then are (predictably) eaten by virtual lions.
Why we thought we wanted it:
The holodeck is just big room, that can simulate any number of environments and/or experiences for the user, and can trick all five senses into believing that it's real. You don't have to hook anything up to your brain, you can walk in and out of it like any room. A room that happens to be full of ninjas and naked women and everything else you don't have in your real life.
Why we were wrong:
Of course, we here at Cracked were too busy practicing Jujitsu and working on our dragsters to watch something as geeky as Star Trek, but we do know that the dangers of a holodeck were demonstrated in Episode 234 ("A Fistful of Datas", aired November 9, 1992, Stardate 46271.5). This episode proved that if you get shot by a cowboy in the holodeck world, you really die.
Now, assuming the creators of the real holodeck are not completely retarded and they install something that makes it so the simulation cowboys do not shoot real bullets and that the veldt lions don't really eat you (both of these would seem to be first-day considerations in the design phase), there is another problem.
Imagine how you'll react if you're in your holodeck and somebody interrupts you. Say, you're halfway through your chess game with Darth Vader, when suddenly he disappears, Scarlett Johansson is no longer sitting in your lap, and pizza costs money again. You'd find the guy who turned off the machine and snap his damned neck. Dilbert creator Scott Adams jokingly points out in his book The Dilbert Future that the holodeck, "will be society's last invention." It's no joke; once we had it, there'd be no reason to have anything else.
It's not just that it would be addictive; it's that it would literally fill every possible human emotional need and utterly eliminate all motivation to ever do anything ever. Everyone's only goal would be to do just enough work to keep food and electricity coming into the holodeck, to keep those interruptions by reality to a minimum.
People would stop reproducing, your virtual Scarlett Johansson could have perfect virtual kids who'll never wind up in jail or steal money from you to buy crack. If you get tired of them, tell the holodeck to blink them out of existence. If you're saying that you're a high-minded person who pursues spiritual goals and would never be sucked in by anything as crude as a simulation, hey, they've got a holodeck for you, too. You can sit down to dinner with Plato and Abe Lincoln and Gandhi and Jesus. If somebody yanked you out of that to go work at the post office all day, you'd barricade yourself in with a shotgun.
If aliens showed up to Earth 1,000 years later, they'd find an abandoned planet with ten billion mummified corpses laying on the floor of ten billion dusty holodecks, with huge smiles on their faces.
Replicators would remove the need for an economy at all, yet that's a bad thing? I'd say the only flaw in having a replicator is that some crazy a*****e could create a doomsday device and end the world, but then what would it matter? We'd all be dead.
ReplyWe would have a machine that makes strife unnecessary. Everyone could stay at home and "replicate" all of their daily needs. Sure, there's the issue with biology failing us and the need to stay fit and healthy, and the doctors could say "fuck you, I'm staying home with my replicator", but then again, do you really want someone with that mindset as a doctor in the first place? Medicine is a service, not a business (or at least that's how it should be), and I'd hope people become Doctors because they feel the need to help people......right? It's the reason I became an EMT...
To fix the strife of having to drive to the doctor's office everyone could just learn how to take care of themselves...I've yet to meet anyone who feels that the ability to take care of yourself is an unnecessary skill...probably because they're all dead from self neglect.
If replicators eliminated work that would be a GOOD thing! You don't get unemployed weavers throwing clogs into modern textile-production machines (any more). Work is not a useful or necessary part of life. What's necessary is food and nice things. Current society lets you obtain those only with money, which you can only get by working. If everyone can have all the stuff they want, most jobs go the way of steam-engine stokers, and we all get to do something else. Yay! Mankind could devote itself to creating more forms of entertainment (which we'd need, with our copious free time), and researching even better things to do with our time. Currently, it's necessary for burger shops to employ fry cooks and servers, but does that fact make the world better for anyone?
ReplyOr to put it another way, we could all live like millionaires, with as much stuff as we want. And when we get bored of our current stuff, we put it into the matter-intake pile and it's re-made into our new stuff.
Re the problem with teleporters, that's why Bones would never use one in Star Trek. But it's purely a philosophical, or even religious question. If something's a complete and perfect copy of me, it'll think it is me. It'll even have my memories up to the point I stepped into the machine. So who can say it isn't me? What difference does it make in any way at all? Even if it turns out we have souls, as long as it can inhabit the "copy", who'd notice? You, or "you", wouldn't even notice yourself! It's a non-problem.
holy shit!! replicators are awesome..
Replicators would only be cool if I was the only person who owned one
ReplyHaving no need to work and toil for resources and goods sounds like the ultimate goal of mankind.
ReplyAlso, this has probably already been said, but jetpacks are now a reality thanks to Yves Rossy, aka "Jetman".
if you watch the Star Trek TNG episode "second chances" you will see that the 2nd riker was not the undestroyed original, it was a reflection of the planet's atmosphere that cause two rikers to be beamed-one went to the ship, the other went back to the planet's surface. they had an info graphic and all. gotta get your Trek info right, man.
ReplyThe trekkie strikes again!
People think way too small on the transporter thing. What is actually being sent here is consciousness - who you are.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesThe receiving end is basically just another replicator which puts that into a new body. That body in no way has to match the one you had. Had a disease or defect? Not any more. Want a sexchange? Easy. Want to impersonate someone? Done. Want to be a 50 foot high cyborg death machine? You got it.
And what about telepathic, telekinetic, psychic, etc. powers which have been linked to certain rerouting of brain pathways, usually due to brain damage or tumors
Hit a character limit or something. Last big point: The transfer would be a recordable signal. If your new body dies, just replay the signal into another one like a video game save point. Immortality, eidetic memory, the whole range of telepsychic powers, etc. for everyone.
For the copy to be a complete "you" the brain would need to be a perfect duplicate, tho perhaps any tumours or damage could be repaired. It's worth keeping in mind that brain damage often causes changes, sometimes radical, in personality. So "you" would change along with it. There's no such thing as "consciousness" separate from a brain, it's not a thing, it's a process.
There's also no such thing as psychic powers or telepathy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. You need to find a better source of reading material.
How about opening a worm hole and pulling a dimension(say paris,france)to you then stepping into that dimension (closing the worm hole behind you).its much safer that way
@sam-x: you say psychic powers and telepathy do not exist, but how can you disprove what we cannot perceive to be possible? or in the words of arthur c.clarke: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Why would you need a job or money when everyone can supply anything they need to themselves?
ReplyThe teleporter issue was written about in the book "The Prestige," by Christopher Priest, and man, you blew my mind!
ReplyThere's an Outer Limits (90's version) episdode, "Think Like a Dinosaur", that addresses the transporter issue. In it, humans have made contact with a race of sentient dinosaurs living somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. Humanity is being tested by these creatures to determine whether we are worthy of being given access to their technology, which would enable humans to move out into the stars. Part of this test involves transporter technology that allows humans to visit the dinos' planet and return. It works exactly as described in the article - a copy comes out at the other end, and the original is destroyed as soon as receipt is confirmed.
ReplyA "terrorist" associated with an organization that protests the use of such technology on the grounds that it murders everyone who uses it - twice, once going and once returning - and that wide spread use would only result in mass murder on a scale unprecedented in human history tries to sabotage one transport, with the end result being that the original, a young woman scientist, survives and the supervisor has to decide whether to kill her to preserve good relations with the aliens or let her live and possibly help her escape.
The point, of course, is that this is exactly what he's been doing for years, killing the original, but without having to look the person he's about to kill in the face and have to justify it.
It's one of the gems of revived Outer Limits.
Re: the transporter "death" issue - well, you do know you've not an ounce of tissue in you that was there when you were born, don't you? Unless you're under ten; ten years is about the limit of time anything in the human body lasts without being completely replaced. Most of you turns around a lot quicker than that - a matter of weeks. So the transporter would be more like that process happening for the whole body at once in a few seconds than like death.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesNot exactly. Most soft tissues are replaced over time, but hard tissues like bones and teeth are pretty much permanent. New bone tissue can grow in during healing, but otherwise your bones are static.
Your nerve tissue, especially that in your brain, is likewise not replaced. Whatever brain cells you have when you reach physical maturity are all you'll ever have. This is why brain damage from even minor concussions is cumulative over time - the dead brain cells don't heal and aren't replaced. The best the brain can do is reroute functions around the damaged parts.
This is the important part here, because most of what makes you you, an individual different from others, is in your brain.
As a thought experiment, look at it this way: Suppose the transporter doesn't disintegrate the original before the copy comes out the other end. You now have the original at the sending end and a copy at the receiving end. Is it acceptable to destroy (ie, kill) the original after the fact? If not, why would it be OK to do it in advance? The difference is solely in the timing, not the effect.
Faxing/instant kill != growing new tissues naturally.
GildaM- not exactly true, you're forgetting a little phenomenon know as neurogenesis- Neurons in some parts of the brains of mammals, such as the hippocampus, continue to grow and in some cases, replicate themselevs. Some ground breaking work with stem cells, andro-sterones and even cannabidial substances have been shown to propagate neurogenesis to other parts of the brain. Brain cells and neurons can and do re-grow and replace themselves, just not very well without external intervention. Children two generations from now may not have to bother with helmets as the proverbial "brain store" may be a reality.
Gilda, the thing about brain cells never being replaced is a myth. It's only recently been studied in depth, but brain cells are replaced throughout life. Brains can't heal perfectly, or recover from big injuries, but neither can most other tissue.
The main problem with jetpacks and flying cars is you would really only find them awesome if you and you alone had one. Once every Tom, Dick, and Harry has one, you no longer enjoy any real advantage and suddenly you're right back to all the crap that comes with earth-bound car driving... only now in midair.
ReplyAs for the teleporter thing, allow me to suggest the portal gun as an alternative. All the advantages of teleportation without the existential nightmares or turning into a giant fly.
yep worm holes are best
A transporter could probably have some sort of consciousness-transporter implementation that would make it work. It's science fiction, that kind of thing can work.
ReplySo holodecks... They would satisfy every single human need and there would be no reason for you to do anything else ever... problem is? Sounds like an awesome way to live, actually. You could get to create your own imaginary world with everything you've ever wanted, ever? And you're gonna say no because it might keep you from excercising or earning money? Hell, my holodeck would give me INFINITE VIRTUAL MONEYS.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesproblem is it destroys your motivation. It's something like attaining Paradise, then you wouldn't know what to do next, or there even would be something else to do
but they keep breaking their own rules - people actually eatfood in the holodeck - then what? You leave and every virtual molecule vanishes?
They also showed the dangers in Futurama, when the "Holoshed" breaks down and they are attacked by Dr. Moriarity, Jack the Ripper and Evil Lincoln.
and genghis khan
Of course, I'm far too busy reading Cracked articles to watch Star Trek, but I also happen to know that there were several episodes (not just "A Fistful of Datas") that featured the holodeck malfunctioning and nearly killing whoever was in it or sometimes nearly taking over/destroying the Enterprise. (It's also worth mentioning that the Star Trek holodeck does have a safety feature, which frequently malfunctions). They also did an episode about holodeck addiction (Hollow Pursuits)
Replyi am guessing every time it malfunctions the guy in it is wearing red :P
I can see only one downside about replicators - since there would be no need for jobs, there would be no prostitution. So how would we, the ugly ones, have fun? :)))
ReplyHolodecks ? ^^
Or, just replicate Scarlet Johannson/don't kill the original when teleporting her ?
I guess, in such a future, there would be a machine to make you forget you had anything as primitive as sex drive
I still want a holodeck dammit!
ReplyThe whole conundrum that a teleporter presents was explored to some degree in the movie The Prestige....
Replyyeah, great movie, with a twist I didn't see coming - then again, if you could duplicate people, you could, well, make an army of clone soldiers (not that it would be original) or, better, an army of Scarlett Johanssons (everyone should have his own)
with a replicator why would you need money and a job when you could just replicate clothes, food, etc. no work ever again everything you ever needed, sounds good to me.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesit seems that the picard explained their existance to that crazy machinegun shooting b***h in first contact. no poverty, starvation, need for wealth, the population was able to explore more esoteric subjects like philosophy, exploration and holodeck fucking.
But who builds and repairs the machines when no one has to work?
at marci ppl will be so bored they'll all be able to repair their own as everyone will be taught/pick tinkering skills.. since they'll have the time on the hands.
Screw all of these, just give me a portal gun and I'll be happy!
ReplyThe replicators in Star Trek work because they are communists.
Reply