What science and technology should be here already (2023) but isn’t?

Submitted by InfinityScientist t3_1255k3x in Futurology

I was thinking about some technologies that really work well on paper but just don’t exist yet for strange reasons. I read that microwaves could be used to disrupt tornados. We have microwave technologies and we have satellites. Yet we don’t try and stop tornados with them. Yes money is an issue but we paid for James Webb just fine.

Flying cars are theoretically here but due to problems with practicality; they just aren’t viable.

AGI or Artificial General Intelligence is in its nascent stage with ChatGPT. As someone who uses it daily; there is a lot left to be done before we can bring a conscious A.I. into the world.

That being said; what are some things that really should be a thing by now but just aren’t for frustrating reasons?

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TarTarkus1 t1_je2kwuj wrote

Anything Space related.

Maybe this isn't a specific technology, but it seems like humans would've completed a round trip to mars by now. As well as some rudimentary colonization of the moon.

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pythagorean_cultist t1_je2l8sb wrote

Sustainable nuclear fusion

Extraplantary colonies (Mars, Moon)

Solar sail deep space vessels

Mass access to organ regeneration ( Penn State did a lot of research into this)

High efficiency desalination plants

I'll stop here

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Beemer17-21 t1_je2lk62 wrote

Electric vehicles and self driving cars. Self driving cars could be facilitated if all cars on the road could communicate with each other (and ideally sensors embedded in the road itself) but for practical and cost purposes we aren't there yet. Widespread EVs are inevitable and just a matter of adoption.

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RailX t1_je2ltla wrote

Hoverboards.

I remember them being featured in a documentary from 1989 with Michael J Fox, but they appear to have been kept to Area 51 since.

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Rdg1961 t1_je2m1pp wrote

Fossil fuel should be history. Wars should be non existent and we should have colonies on the moon

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TarTarkus1 t1_je2mqpf wrote

Replying to Beemer17-21 (#2,431,604)

I'd say electrification is going to become more of a thing in the future thanks to the performance benefits it provides. Looking at something like the Corvette E-Ray is a great example.

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DerClown2003 t1_je2ncyr wrote

I see a lot of comments suggesting that high end technology should be developed further for our time, but the way I see it we should be a lot further in slowing down, stopping or even reversing climate change. What’s the point of awesome technology if there is no place to use it.

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Vince1128 t1_je2psew wrote

Colonies on the moon, definitely should be here already.

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Vince1128 t1_je2r4jq wrote

Replying to DerClown2003 (#2,431,970)

I think both arguments can be done, high end technology can/must be used to protect the planet (among other things), but humanity prefers wars and division instead of science and development, even though wars brought a lot of scientific achievements in the past, right now is not enough anymore, we have to work as a team, as a species, otherwise we can't do anything as fast as it should be done.

Just my opinion.

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gvsteve t1_je2u4rq wrote

General purpose housekeeping robots. Something that can roam around, picking up laundry and putting it in a hamper, then loading it into the washer and dryer, loading and unloading the dishwasher, picking up and wiping countertops, general organizing.

We got robot vacuum cleaners and things paused after that.

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AtomGalaxy t1_je2z1ou wrote

Replying to TarTarkus1 (#2,431,493)

I feel like it’s a rubber band that’s been stretched with potential energy, except that it’s the potential for innovation in the space industry. We’ve got so many converging technologies that will snowball and lead to new self-reinforcing industry. Think of how valuable a 3D-printed cloned organ would be that could only be grown in micro gravity. Inflatable space habitats will definitely be a thing. Automation and self-multiplying robots will be a thing on the moon.

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Green__lightning t1_je328u5 wrote

I'm posting this by typing it, from earth, using power coming from burning wood chips. Why aren't I posting this though my brain implant while waiting to get to mars or something?

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Fuzzers t1_je33ozu wrote

A proper cure for hair loss. Sure you can take finasteride, but its super bad for males on a hormonal level, and even with its side effects millions of males take it, myself being one of them.

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Codydw12 t1_je36m7n wrote

Replying to DerClown2003 (#2,431,970)

Theoretically we can control the entire global environment. The ability to turn back the dial both in regards to global temperature changes to preindustrial levels but could even be used in small sections of land to expand the "natural" world. Turning Siberia into Pleistocene Park complete with currently extinct megafauna.

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Codydw12 t1_je38djn wrote

I truly wonder what is holding up larger scaled greenhouses complete with LED lights. The verticle farms effectively being skyscrapers that are filled completely with crops and are climate change resistent. I understand that the economics of purchasing the land in a high density city to build a farm isn't pretty compared to spending a fraction of that to purchase a similar amount of total land in an area more built to suit said farming, but I think long term enough people in major city centers would pay good money for fresh produce year round. This plus significantly larger crop yields on paper of a near perfectly controlled environment to me screams a fast way to grow.

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[deleted] t1_je38klj wrote

Free healthcare. Affordable, more widely used/invested in renewable energy. We literally have the power to do these things but you know…..money. That fake, worthless, piece of paper we invented

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bschofield t1_je3b5l1 wrote

Safe, convenient, and 100% reliable birth control that works for anyone who could get pregnant or cause pregnancy.

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DeathGPT t1_je3dm3z wrote

Replying to LakesideTrey (#2,437,206)

Yes, but they won’t go out of their way to prevent natural disasters as it fuels political discourse even when the technology for super computers is here, pretty sure they could handle tornado and rain but they won’t. There’s many ideas in the scientific community for resolving tornados and other natural disasters but they won’t even attempt it.

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NoSoupForYouRuskie t1_je3e2j4 wrote

Advanced artificial intelligence probably is. Unless they are being completely honest, usually the military copies and reverse engineers stuff like this pretty quickly. Think any chemical ever designed. They are probably worried we will abuse it so it's running around on its own separate internet. We get the downgraded version lol. If that bastards connects to the WWW. Think Diaboromon. Except yknow real.

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LakesideTrey t1_je3eyu5 wrote

Replying to NoSoupForYouRuskie (#2,437,417)

Most first world countries gearing up for a baby bust and possible demographic crisis due to low fertility rates. The U.N predicts the global population will begin reduction by 2086. I doubt we will be hitting 100 billion on earth anytime soon.

Plus, even if your point is right, if something is replaceable that doesn't mean you actively destroy it. If the human population is replaceable that doesn't mean those in power want to destroy it.

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LakesideTrey t1_je3fmh4 wrote

Replying to DeathGPT (#2,437,299)

In order to prevent tornados you would have to be able to regulate air temperature over huge areas. That is much harder than a supercomputer and more advanced than what we have now.

I think the lack of significant investment in geoengineering is simply due to the fact no one with a lot of money wants to "waste it" on a risky investment.

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Lemmy_K t1_je3h09c wrote

Nuclear Fusion. When it was about making a nuke, they gathered fantastic resources and went from Science-Fiction to explosion in 4 years. When it come to saving humanity with nuclear fusion, relative to our current capabilities, there only are relatively small attempts on-going for 40 years. ITER, the most serious attempt, get a budget of $1B a year, a 1000th of US military budget alone.

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YaGetSkeeted0n t1_je3ic6l wrote

Speaking of microwaves, how about a microwave oven that doesn't suck?

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Caconz t1_je3idub wrote

Flying cars??? This one always annoys me because isn't that a plane? It's just that most are like flying buses and trucks. So bulk transport.

Unless you can fully automate flying it's not gonna happen. Too many drivers do dumb stuff all the time dealing only with forward, back, left and right. I wouldn't trust many people to be able to manage up and down as well, without serious training, like a pilot does. I think a lot would never be able to learn it at all.

They would also have to be quiet. Planes are so noisy and having them landing up and down the street all day would be God awful noise pollution

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Lemmy_K t1_je3iduh wrote

Replying to Codydw12 (#2,436,270)

Potentially, you could grow anything, anytime, anywhere. And you would not have to do it in city center, even a bit outside suburbs would lead to substantial gains in term of transportation. Reduction in farming land space could lead to major changes for leaving space.

I think it does not change because land and fuel are still dirt cheap relative to the sale price of vegetables and fruits. Climate change, insect population dropping could lead to more development, but I would be immensely reassured to have it developed way sooner.

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NutellaGood t1_je3k9ia wrote

Automatic nail clippers. Like with lasers or something.

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Pixel_Knight t1_je3q7r1 wrote

Replying to m4hdi (#2,436,276)

I don’t think weather control is possible. The amount of energy in the weather system is too massive to be able to affect it with any reliability. You’re talking about moving thousands of tons of mass and literal quadrillions of Joules of energy. The amount of energy stored in even a single rain system is almost unimaginable. Humans don’t have a way to control that without incredibly advanced technology.

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ToothlessGrandma t1_je3qji2 wrote

Replying to gvsteve (#2,433,346)

You're never going to get that until there's an AGI that exists. It's a big leap from having a vacuum that goes around your house to a robot that walks around and does chores. It's probably the equivalent of difficulty scale to having a plane vs being able to land on the moon. This is something I'm not surprised doesn't exist.

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NoSoupForYouRuskie t1_je3wpbd wrote

Replying to dickinsauce (#2,439,470)

Go to any city. I doubt you did. Infact I'm willing to bet I travel more in a day working or even on my days off then you do. Go outside, sure it's okay for now but it won't be forever if we are not careful. Go spread hate. I'm sure that's what you want from this right?

There's bodies in the streets in poor communities. People dying in waiting rooms. But sure. They are not replaceable. How many humans die a year?

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blaisreddit t1_je4122w wrote

figured Japan would easily have a gundam army by now

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Norseviking4 t1_je43x4t wrote

I expected full selfdriving, more clean energy, and advanced home robots by now.

I did not expect microsoft claiming their ai showing hints of agi.

Its a wild ride thats for sure

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Aggravating_Impact97 t1_je44pir wrote

Still waiting on my back to the future style hover board. Not that fake shit y’all are trying by to call a hover board.

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time_lordy_lord t1_je4959c wrote

I think (but don't know for sure) widespread solar electricity grids should already be here. Traditional means should vice versa with solar panels in terms of energy production

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ktElwood t1_je49rcv wrote

Replying to pythagorean_cultist (#2,431,551)

Well, nuclear fusion is always 20 years in the future :D

Extraplanetary colonies are "cool" but...really useless.

Voyager probes are our deep space vessels - cosmic radiation will BBQ humans in space.

If you could regenerate organs, prolong human life substancially, society would collapse. Imagine billionaires being biologicly 25 for 250 years...

My personal tinfoil-hat-theory is that who ever defeats aging in humans, will be transported to a remote island and never be seen again.

We have desalination, we just use too much water.

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ktElwood t1_je49uf8 wrote

Replying to m4hdi (#2,436,276)

Best we can do is insurance companies.

Mankind can't harvest the sun's energy that is reaching earth, so it all goes into thermodynamics of the weathersystem.

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hawkwings t1_je49wkr wrote

Some people think about a robot roaming a normal house, but it is possible to have a robot room that humans stay out of while the robot is active. Cooking is dangerous and maybe you don't want humans in the room while the robot is cooking. In addition to cooking the robot would have to know how to use a fire extinguisher. It could order grocery delivery. This could be a weight loss tool, because the robot could calculate calories. The same thing could be done with the laundry room.

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theWunderknabe t1_je4idfx wrote

Replying to Rdg1961 (#2,431,705)

The thing with fossil fuels is - they are pretty great. Easy to handle, not very dangerous - extremely energy dense. 1 liter of Diesel contains 50x the energy of LiPo batteries.

Even though electric motors are over 90% efficent (and combustion engines only 30% or so) - this massive advantage of energy density will prohibit larger electric planes or ships for many years.

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theWunderknabe t1_je4ioyh wrote

Replying to Lemmy_K (#2,437,945)

Jep, enough funding to not let fusion die, but not enough to make real progress either.

The western world easily finds hundreds of billions for saving corrupt governments, banks, funding wars etc. but not for the one thing that could solve half of our problems.

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theWunderknabe t1_je4jffk wrote

- Active camouflage, Predator style.

- something close to the Holodeck from Star Trek. But I feel like it won't take long anymore with VR and AI

- more space missions. For many large bodies in the solar system we still don't know how they look.

- Moon colony, Mars base, Venus explorative missions (with Zeppelins!)

- Space station(s) with rotational gravity - 2001ish at least, or perhaps even Babylon5 ish

- floating (on water) cities, or under the oceans, like Jaques Cousteau believed in

- massive solar farms in deserts, massive wind farms in the oceans. Instead we trickle those here and there in areas with much less sun or wind. Like my own country Germany which is one of the least sunny places in the world, yet one with the most solar energy.

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FriendoftheDork t1_je4jn2x wrote

Thorium power plants. Human augmentation (non-medical implants). Smart glasses and functioning AR.

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theWunderknabe t1_je4kmvd wrote

Replying to YaGetSkeeted0n (#2,443,977)

Microwave it longer with less power so the heat can spread evenly.

I think microwaves are already almost space magic. We put the thing in the box, hit a button, 2 min later its done. Imagine showing that people a few hundred years ago that had to find their fire wood to heat anything.

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gvsteve t1_je4lnnr wrote

Replying to ToothlessGrandma (#2,439,406)

Really? I thought we were already about 70 or 80% of the way to self driving cars, and I figured identifying, picking up and moving laundry to a hamper would be of similar difficulty, but with far less danger if errors happen.

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dryuhyr t1_je4obhz wrote

Replying to gvsteve (#2,444,284)

Kinda half agree, but I think the difference is you’re leaving your robot alone.

Think of how scared people get that they left the oven on. The oven, is literally made to be ran on max power for half a day at a time. Which will likely do nothing but char your chicken nuggets to a crisp and leave smoke in the house. But because you’re away from home it’s unknown and who knows, maybe everything could catch fire.

If a robot can recognize clothes on the ground, use a dexterous limb to grab them and put them in the washer, turn knobs and then recognize the ding saying clothes are done, are you REALLY ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE that it’s never ever going to accidentally turn the knob on the oven instead? Or press the phone buttons, or pick up the cat and put it in the dryer? Or knock over the vase of flowers onto the electrical socket?

I think robots will need to be MUCH smarter before most people start getting comfy with them touching their shit.

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YaGetSkeeted0n t1_je4okc7 wrote

Replying to theWunderknabe (#2,444,093)

True. I guess my Microwave of the Future would just kinda... handle that. Bunch of sensors that can tell where the cold spots are, more mini magnetrons that can fire at specific points or something, that sorta thing!

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je4rlw7 wrote

Replying to Caconz (#2,438,173)

Generally what people mean by flying cars is VTOL, so you don't need to build runways for them. Of course there's helicopters, but they're expensive and noisy and helipads are still pretty big.

Automation is pretty easy for flying. We already complete automation for flying drones.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je4t85y wrote

Flying cars are more practical than you think. Read the book Where Is My Flying Car?

General aviation, i.e. small private planes, used to be a much bigger thing than now. Back in the 1970s there were about ten times as many Cessnas and similar planes flying, and about that many more small runways. It was working out fine, and then the FAA threw such a heavy load of regulation on top of the industry that it collapsed.

Among other things it became really difficult to develop new aircraft and get them approved. This did not improve safety; it worsened it, as people had to rely on old technology.

Contrary to common fear-mongering, people with pilot licenses are perfectly capable of flying small aircraft without crashing everywhere, and many "flying car" designs are easier to fly. Decades ago we still would have needed serious training, but today, automating a flying car is way easier than automating a ground car, and we already have computer-controlled flying drones.

The big advantage of flying cars is speed. The book argues that you get a big jump in economic productivity when an average person can travel further in an hour. With flying cars, that one-hour range could be several hundred miles.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je4u6q7 wrote

Replying to ktElwood (#2,442,302)

At this point fusion is probably more like ten years in the future.

Fusion progressed exponentially from 1970 to 2000, at a faster pace than Moore's Law. Then 35 nations threw almost all their fusion money at ITER, a giant reactor in France that won't actually run before 2027, and hopes to attempt fusion in 2035.

But technology moved on. We have new superconductors that let us build a reactor like ITER but ten times smaller, and several companies are doing it. We have supercomputers that are way better at plasma simulations, letting us design new types of fusion reactors that are smaller and cheaper. Lasers have advanced exponentially too; the NIF project technically got net power from fusion last year, but used giant lasers that are less than 1% efficient; we have lasers now that can do the same thing, but they fit in a small room, are over 20% efficient, and can fire once a second instead of twice a day. We have way better power electronics.

Startup companies are taking advantage of all of this. Zap Energy is attempting net power this year, CFS in 2025, General Fusion in 2026, and Helion is attempting overall net electricity in 2024 with a mostly-aneutronic fuel.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je4ujk1 wrote

Replying to Plate_Of_Soup (#2,443,517)

We don't have a cable that can reach to geostationary without breaking under its own weight. It's theoretically possible with nanotubes, but we'd need to mass-produce 7cm nanotubes, line them all up parallel and glue them together, and we're not there yet.

We do have cables that could get to LEO, which would let us build an orbital ring. That'd arguably be even better than an elevator, but it'd take more coordination between countries.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je4vg6o wrote

Replying to ktElwood (#2,442,302)

Imagine everyone living for 250 years. Personally I'm not willing to sacrifice an extra 150 years of life just to kill a few billionaires.

Society would not collapse. Anti-aging could actually save us from an upcoming demographic crash. As populations urbanize, birth rates go down, and most advanced nations are way below replacement rates.

Meanwhile, between cheap solar, probably fusion (see my other reply), and cultured food production, our per-capita impact on the planet could well shrink by a lot over the next fifty years.

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hellrail t1_je51otz wrote

Nothing, because what not is that shall not be yet, dummy

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je593kl wrote

Replying to Plate_Of_Soup (#2,446,428)

Spider silk is really strong but not as strong as the nanotube cable would be, and not quite strong enough for a space elevator.

With the orbital ring, you only go, say, 150 miles up. You have a ring in any circular orbit around the planet. This ring does not have to be solid; the key is a bunch of hunks of iron, moving at faster than orbital speed. Those are electromagnetically deflected by passing through rings, which are cabled to the ground. The deflection pulls the rings upwards.

Getting to 150 miles altitude is just like a space elevator. After that, you use the momentum of the orbiting metal to launch you to orbital speed. You have to keep accelerating the metal chunks, so you need a bunch of solar panels.

All this can be done with today's technology for a few billion dollars in launch cost, you'd effectively get lots of space elevators instead of just one, and it could get payloads to orbit for $0.05/kg. But you'd need all the countries along a great-circle path around the planet to work together on it.

Before doing all that though we could do a launch loop, same basic idea but it's just a couple thousand miles long, and instead of the metal orbiting the planet it travels in an arc and back along the ground.

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Plate_Of_Soup t1_je5cnw2 wrote

Replying to ItsAConspiracy (#2,449,101)

So 1) geostationary satellites equipped with solar panels from as many points along the great-circle ad possible, 2) spider silk equivalent between the satellites to create the loop, and 3) anchorpoints for payload delivery?

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je5iiuh wrote

Replying to Plate_Of_Soup (#2,449,771)

For the orbital ring? Not geostationary. Lots of little rings, say 10 meters wide, with attached solar panels, hanging stationary just 150 miles up, cabled to the ground. They're held up there by the momentum of the iron chunks, circling the earth at faster than orbital speed, each one deflected by the electromagnets of each little ring so it doesn't shoot out to a higher orbit.

Here's a video but that's a more advanced version that's actually solid all the way around the ring.

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Bewaretheicespiders t1_je5lah4 wrote

>GI or Artificial General Intelligence is in its nascent stage with ChatGPT.

Its nooooooooot ChatGPT is as narrow as an imagenet classifier.

>Flying cars

Its called an helicopter

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theWunderknabe t1_je76660 wrote

Replying to NoRich4088 (#2,452,280)

I would say the active camouflage would be the least useful thing among this list. Developing space technologies on such a scale is sure to give a return on terrestial life, creating living space on or beneath the ocean has obvious advantages, as have solar and wind power clusters in appropiate locations.

Perhaps the holodeck thing is actually the least useful, but even that is creating massive technological progress from the sub-technologies required to get there.

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alecs_stan t1_je7i0fn wrote

Flying cars are not happening because we don't want them to happen not because we don't have the tech.

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WildGrem7 t1_je7p7mu wrote

Replying to ItsAConspiracy (#2,446,023)

If you think we will have viable working fusion for the masses in 10 years, you’re delusional. They haven’t even broken Q>1 yet and to make it vaiable the need far far greater than that and far more frequent than the 1 or so reactions a day they’ve been able to achieve. Not to downplay the advancements that we have had in the last decade - they are huge - but the cost of getting that Q up to the needed 5-10 will be astronomical then actually getting reactors up and running will take a lot least a decade alone if you compare them to current nuclear reactors from scratch to energy production. You’re looking at…………30 years. Minimum. Lmao.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_je81cc9 wrote

Replying to WildGrem7 (#2,467,394)

You talk like there's only one fusion project. Plenty of projects do a lot more than one shot a day. Helion does way more.

Get up to speed on what's actually happening in the field before you write it off so confidently.

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Puzzleheaded-Law-429 t1_je89rvr wrote

It’s pretty crazy to me that we haven’t solved male pattern baldness yet. Yes I know there are things you can take to slow and reduce it, and maybe reverse it in some cases, but the results seem pretty inconsistent.

I’m talking about an outright cure that is simple and 100% effective, in the same way that we’ve eradicated polio and the measles, etc. (I’m not saying baldness is a disease, to be clear)

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