

List of Emerging Technologies - dm2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies

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dm2
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.

~~~
leastfixedpoint
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.

~~~
dm2
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface)

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)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_\(Star_Trek\))

~~~
leastfixedpoint
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.

