Emerging Technologies....They Might Have Cured Cancer

[PleaseBlitz]

Use this thread to talk about the cool **** we'll have in the future.

 

First up, and I thought we had a thread on this already (if so, please merge), the Hyperloop.

 

Elon Musk just announced that he is planning to build one between DC and NYC.  Skepticism is warranted, but this would be just ****ing awesome.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/musk-says-he-has-verbal-approval-for-dc-to-new-york-hyperloop/2017/07/20/0754628e-6d62-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?utm_term=.cddf80f52a96&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

 

Quote

Transportation pioneer Elon Musk has been known to talk big and sometimes overpromise.

 

But the Tesla chief and rocket builder took it up a notch Thursday, offering a tantalizing but so-far-undocumented announcement that his tunnel-boring company had received a verbal government green light to build a super-high-speed pod-and-tube transportation system, which he calls Hyperloop, for travel between Washington and New York.

 

“Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins,” he wrote on Twitter.

 

If you are not aware of the Hyperloop concept, see here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

Edited June 9, 2022 by PleaseBlitz

[Llevron]

Ooh! I cant freaking wait for this. I wont be first in line, cause........things happen, but I cant wait for this to be a thing. How much do you think it would cost though? 

[PleaseBlitz]

To build it, or for a ticket to ride it?  The Acela is like $150 one way DC to NYC, so probably a bit more than that.

 

To build it, underground?  Billions. 

[dfitzo53]

So it'll be riding in those things that send your money to the teller in the bank drive through?

 

That's...like...everything I've ever wanted. 

[PleaseBlitz]

5 minutes ago, dfitzo53 said:

So it'll be riding in those things that send your money to the teller in the bank drive through?

 

That's...like...everything I've ever wanted. 

 

Lol. Musk has described it as a cross between an air hockey table and a gun. 

[Riggo-toni]

We blew $6 billion for Obama's bogus high speed rail scam with nothing to show for it beyond a 15 minute improvement for some suburban train line in Washington state.

Now, rather than blow money on something just to keep up with the EU, we're looking at something as groundbreaking as the moonshot.  I hope it goes through - it would be genuinely awesome...but it also has to get by the most graft-laden bureaucratic state and local governments in our country.

[DCSaints_fan]

Tunnels are really expensive.  There's no way building a tunnel all the way from NY to DC is going to be cost effective

[skinsmarydu]

What I know is that the Aloha system meant to fix an issue on my expo screen today sent us all into 70s land, having to zing the thing like (remember?) full service gas attendants handing my dad through the window. 

And me, the person who has been through the "write your orders on this pad and ding the bell" was completely ****in' lost without a screen to enter my orders on. 

 

I felt like the biggest moron on Earth...after all, I've been saying "Technology will kill us all" and it will...just not your lunch in a restaurant. 

[PleaseBlitz]

1 hour ago, DCSaints_fan said:

Tunnels are really expensive.  There's no way building a tunnel all the way from NY to DC is going to be cost effective

 

This is true.  However, the financial and social benefits of people being able to get from DC to NYC in half an hour would be enormous.  In both cost, difficulty and benefits, this would be similar to going to the moon in the 60s. 

 

Edit:  Although almost every American loved the concept of the Apollo program.  At least half the country hates DC and NYC. 

Here is another cool emerging technology.  MIT must be an interesting place to live and work.

 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603492/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-reversing-paralysis/

 

Quote

“Go, go!” was the thought racing through Grégoire Courtine’s mind.

 

The French neuroscientist was watching a macaque monkey as it hunched aggressively at one end of a treadmill. His team had used a blade to slice halfway through the animal’s spinal cord, paralyzing its right leg. Now Courtine wanted to prove he could get the monkey walking again. To do it, he and colleagues had installed a recording device beneath its skull, touching its motor cortex, and sutured a pad of flexible electrodes around the animal’s spinal cord, below the injury. A wireless connection joined the two electronic devices.

 

The result: a system that read the monkey’s intention to move and then transmitted it immediately in the form of bursts of electrical stimulation to its spine. Soon enough, the monkey’s right leg began to move. Extend and flex. Extend and flex. It hobbled forward. “The monkey was thinking, and then boom, it was walking,” recalls an exultant Courtine, a professor with Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

In recent years, lab animals and a few people have controlled computer cursors or robotic arms with their thoughts, thanks to a brain implant wired to machines. Now researchers are taking a significant next step toward reversing paralysis once and for all. They are wirelessly connecting the brain-reading technology directly to electrical stimulators on the body, creating what Courtine calls a “neural bypass” so that people’s thoughts can again move their limbs. 

Edited July 21, 2017 by PleaseBlitz

[LD0506]

Big splashy projects always get the attention and fire the imagination, but it's the smaller things that really do change the world.

 

Landing men on the moon was way cool, but all the tech that resulted in the digital age and computers and flat screens, etc., had a much wider effect. That's the stuff I like to look for.

 

We are in the barest investigative steps for what might be done with graphene but the potential is amazing. Seriously efficient batteries and solar cells would transform the grid as we know it. Stable room temp superconductors if only used in electric motors would be a change on par with computers. Aerogels for insulation could usher in a range of consumer products unheard of.

 

These things by themselves would be transformative, their widespread introduction and interaction, the synergy of multiple materials and techs coming to frution together could change the world.

 

Genuinely effective electric cars, elimination of environmentally iffy 1785 technologies such as coal or lead acid batteries, actual working answers to large scale seawater purification, the possibilities are immense and could usher in an age of hyperloops etc. that would build on the foundational advances of material tech.

[No Excuses]

We've needed a revolution in transportation for quite some time.

 

Although it's funny that he wants to build a system that transports NY to DC in 30 minutes. 

 

When last year I couldn't even get from my home in NE DC to work in NW DC using the metro in 30 minutes. 

 

From what I hear, NYC's MTA is in a complete meltdown right now as well.

 

Someone innovate public transportation in cities please.

 

[gbear]

My money for next new innovation to be developed is cheaper desalination. I think potable water will be as valuable as oil in the next 50-100 years unless we can find away to use the vast amounts of sea water for our water needs from drinking to irrigation.

[Malapropismic Depository]

If only this provided serious competition to the airlines, then maybe we'd see in improvement in airline service.

But realistically it will probably compete with them in maybe 1 or 2 markets.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

Those microbots that can be carried by a beam of light are pretty sweet. Can put cameras on those bad boys and shoot them all over the galaxy.

 

Im also pretty pumped about the ability to upload my consciousness, becoming immortal for all intents and purposes.

 

Oh, and sex bots. Don't forget about the sex bots.

[Corcaigh]

 

[Malapropismic Depository]

You know what would be an amazing technological and science breakthrough ?

To be able to go into a public restroom, and have automatic devices - like automatic sink faucets, soap dispensers towel dispensers, and toilet flushers.

Okay, I should clarify that.....ones that actually work, would be a new, gigantic breakthrough.

[Corcaigh]

From Elon's 'Boring Company'

 

 

 

[Riggo-toni]

How about automated gloryholes...I know Jerry Jones was asking about that...

1 minute ago, Malapropismic Depository said:

To be able to go into a public restroom, and have automatic devices - like automatic sink faucets, soap dispensers towel dispensers, and toilet flushers.

 

[FanboyOf91]

5 minutes ago, Riggo-toni said:

How about automated gloryholes...I know Jerry Jones was asking about that...

 

 

 

[FanboyOf91]

That moment when you realize the creator of the Segway was an idiot.

[LD0506]

4 hours ago, gbear said:

My money for next new innovation to be developed is cheaper desalination. I think potable water will be as valuable as oil in the next 50-100 years unless we can find away to use the vast amounts of sea water for our water needs from drinking to irrigation.

 

Quote

Researchers have achieved a major turning point in the quest for efficient desalination by announcing the invention of a graphene-oxide membrane that sieves salt right out of seawater.

At this stage, the technique is still limited to the lab, but it's a demonstration of how we could one day quickly and easily turn one of our most abundant resources, seawater, into one of our most scarce - clean drinking water.

 

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-create-a-graphene-based-sieve-that-turns-seawater-into-drinking-water

[Elessar78]

5 hours ago, No Excuses said:

We've needed a revolution in transportation for quite some time.

 

Although it's funny that he wants to build a system that transports NY to DC in 30 minutes. 

 

When last year I couldn't even get from my home in NE DC to work in NW DC using the metro in 30 minutes. 

 

From what I hear, NYC's MTA is in a complete meltdown right now as well.

 

Someone innovate public transportation in cities please.

 

In a way, we already have created the means to alleviating rush hour congestion. 

 

It's the humans getting in the way. Not enough companies allow people to remote in. Not enough companies experiment with varying start times. The education system needs to find a way to accommodate working families. There's a whole host of tech out there that can solve this. But people still live under an industrial age mentality when they set up organizations. 

[Diehard Otis]

This news genuinely frightens me.

 

My sentiment is motivated by by the damaging ripple effect it will have on the domestic economy.  

 

If this project does indeed come to fruition and is put online, how many jobs will be permanently eliminated due to a more efficient mode of transportation (here in the most populous corridor of the country)?  And we're talking about quality, good paying, living wage jobs.  The kinds of jobs that people not only support their families with, but transportation is a field that many individuals build productive careers in.

 

Think about it.  

 

(For those of you that live in the Northeast) if you were to travel to New York tomorrow, how would you do it?  Would you fly?  Take a train?  A shuttle bus?  Hell...an Uber?  Well even if you drive, the very act of you travelling supports commerce and contributes to economic productivity.  Someone has been trained to fly that jet, or engineer that train, or drive that bus.  And besides, there are support jobs that must be competently filled in order to facilitate your journey.  There is a ripple effect.

 

Now say this hyperloop is an option.  Sure, not everyone travelling to NY will consider that option, but what happens if 15% of the market does?  How many jobs will be eroded by its existence?  Will that dip in tax receipts make a noticeable difference to the states and local governments along that route?  Or would it be more of a hidden cost?

 

Our shifting economy does have benefits.  Of course!  But there are tangible costs as well:
http://es.redskins.com/topic/414355-wp-disabled-and-disdained-plus-all-things-white-rural-america/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/21/the-real-reason-for-disappearing-jobs-isnt-trade-its-robots.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html

 

Technology kills jobs.

 

This development, along with the country's changing demographics, and the structural fragility of the economy are the most critical issues of our lifetimes.

 

Think that's hyperbole?  Okay.  But how do you envision whole segments of our population behaving when there simply aren't enough jobs in our economy to employ folks at 2017 levels?  And to be clear here, I'm talking about people that not only want to work but participate as labor or management in our economy presently.  

 

I fear social dislocation.  Because the robots are coming.

 

Let me end with this: ever find yourself in the store ready to check out & you gravitate to the self-checkout line - because it's easier?

 

Think about that.

 

[gbear]

Don Quixote lives!  I like the spirit of worrying about the poor displaced, and yet we live with much more free time, more disposable income, and higher quality of life than any time in history. This is due to the march of history and increases in technology.  The march of tech allowed us to prove Malthus wrong. We need technology to continue to advance. I celebrate it while still worrying for the displaced.

[Elessar78]

3 hours ago, Diehard Otis said:

This news genuinely frightens me.

 

 

Think about that.

 

Automation is just going to accelerate. It's been happening since the industrial revolution. Jobs and needs will evolve as they'll always have. People will find ways to live productive meaningful lives. Don't fear the future.