1. Teleportation. It will allow people to cover huge distances in matter of minutes. Imagine what that will do for all those people who are separated from their loved ones because they work in different places. I could work here but live in Philadelphia, for example. That would be pretty fantastic. Of course, teleportation will never be free or uncontrollable. I'm sure there will be terminals where you'll have to pass through document checks and customs and pay a fee, but the mere possibility of this kind of travel will be amazing.
2. Human cloning. This will be an invention which will finally bring about a decisive victory for feminism and gay rights. Women will no longer have to go through the trauma and danger of pregnancy and childbirth. Men will be able to have their own children without being at the mercy of whether a woman wants to carry their child to term. Gay couples will be able to have kids easily. No wonder that conservatives are so terrified of cloning.
Which scientific advances are you looking forward to the most and why?
14 comments:
Just teleporting will do for me. I've wanted to teleport since I was ten. Desperately. But if it was, I imagine the corporate house that funded the research would patent the process and product and sell it for roughly five times by annual income :(
Life extension therapy and hyperspace travel so I can have the time and the means to explore the universe in the privacy of my own spaceship.
What is the maximum number of years you would like to live?
I'd like to live until the end of the universe, just to see what happens.
Teleportation is only likely to happen if we ever manage to give up our physical bodies. Otherwise, though (probably) not in any violation of the laws of physics, it's just too difficult a problem (scanning the quantum state of a an entire flesh and blood human being in a finite amount of time, which is what would be necessary for this, is probably an intractable problem, especially as it'd mean killing the person in the process).
-Mike
Well, now you had to go and get all practical on us. :-) Couldn't there be some new means of transportation that would be super fast, though?
I think human cloning is probably a bad idea. What if it turns out that cloned humans have a life expectancy of only 40 years, say, because of bad health problems which sexual reproduction prevents? The only way to find out is to do the experiment and likely sacrifice lots of cloned humans to a lifetime of substandard existence. Cloned animals, as I recall, do not do terribly well.
Physics of the future : how science will shape human destiny and our daily lives by the year 2100 / Michio Kaku.
You might like this book, it's all about how science will shape our lives in the future. Technology, energy, medicine and more.
I'd just like to have more time in my day, maybe some sort of time device that slows everything down.
Teleporting in practice would mean digitally sending and reconstructing a copy then destroying the original. I think I'll pass.
The technology to clone is already here. The barrier is society's acceptance. Until then it will remain in the shadows.
Re. the cloning, I would imagine that rich women would be able to avoid the "danger and trauma" of childbirth. Middle and lower class women will still be having babies the old fashioned way. I've only had 2 kids, but didn't find it to be a traumatic experience. But then I grew up on a farm and am not really squeamish about the life / death processes.
I would like to live as long as there is more of this universe to explore and learn about. I like learning even if I do not like people. :)
I'm excited about regenerative medicine, myself --- when we've learned enough about how the body works that we can induce it to repair itself completely when it is damaged.
I love the idea of teleportation, because I hate to travel (though I like being in new places --- it's just the transit that's so draining), but I share the other commenters' reasons for not actually thinking quantum teleportation can work for people.
(Also, like Izgad, I would not mind living rather longer than the 90-some years I am probably going to live!)
I'd also be excited about personal genome mapping becoming cheaper; that one's already happening, but it's still out of my price range.
I think the version of teleportation showed in the film "Surrogates" with Bruce Willis is quite realy in the future. Everybody is at home and a robot performs his (her) business.
But Modern high-tech allow you to send sounds, image and even the smells by this time. Teleportation is not necessary.
I think the important scientific advance in medicine will the decryption of genom of aging and possibility to change it.
Human cloning: so much for diversity.
And what marvellous technology for an authoritarian racist government to get their mitts on.
I would like live web-cams situated all over the solar systems. Imagine peering over the edge of your morning coffee to see some exotic beastie swimming deep under the ice of Europa ! Of course, "live" in that case would be suitably delayed by the speed of light, but I could live with that.
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