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Kinsfire
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 11:59 am    Post subject: Musings Reply with quote

My muse is at it again. Not only do I have my three online stories (which are still proceeding, although ItSW has hit a friggin' snag with Chapter 11), but my wife and I are beginning the plotting of what threatens to be a trilogy. We're doing some serious studying for this little beggar.

As an odd little aside, since we're setting this in the near future, what sort of believable tech toys would you think might show up? Things like handheld wireless videophones with built-in GPS, fuel cell cars, that sort of thing. (No handheld phasers, please, unless you can point me at the research that shows we're REALLY close to it right now.) They might never get used, but having some ideas always helps.

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Tygon
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I always had a thing for smart fabrics. you know, fabrics that can change color or even structure, get wider or tighter, adjust to your body, such things.

Also powerful, cell phone sized computers would make sense.

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Nameless
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Segways. Twisted Evil Laughing

Direct computer input into the optical nerves.

GPS implants with a direct link to the NSA. Evil or Very Mad

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Styx
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maglift cars with auto pilot.
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Galadrion
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How far in the future are you talking - five years, ten, thirty? An exact year isn't necessary, but narrowing it down to within half a decade will give me a better frame of reference for speculation.

Lessee - right now, Moore's Law looks to be holding with an interval of about three years. (For those who don't know, Moore's Law states that every x years, the number of transistors on a state-of-the-art processor chip will double. When he first made the statement, x was five years. It's down to about three now, and will probably continue trending lower in an asymptopic pattern - look for it to drop below two in about ten to fifteen years. Call it fifteen, and we're talking processors roughly 40-50 times as powerful as todays, with concurrent developments.) So that gives you a baseline for computer development, assuming no paradigm shifts - the "handheld phasor" phenomenon you spoke of.

Mm... cell-phone size computers... well, PDAs are starting to blur the line. Give it another two years, and we'll probably have PDAs which are actually more capable as computers than today's laptops... if the producing companies can come up with a working solution for market demand. The problem could be resolved in either (or both) of two ways: either bring the price of such a toy down into the range of today's PDAs (around $150 - $350), or change public perception of them from "digital toys" to "electronic tools". Should Palm's/Sony's/Dell's marketing department solve this problem, we could have these toys almost immediately... and that includes vidphone capability, GPS, and a number of other goodies which are easily available today, but considered in the "grown-up boy's toys" catagory.

Hm... so many possibilities. Tell you what: you tell me what sort of thing you're interested in, and I'll start speculating. Personal weaponry? Nanotech? Computer tech? Body modification? Transportation? And what are your requirements?
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Tygon
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

people, people, he said NEAR future. I agree that cybernetics will come... but not in the near future.

Kinsfire, I have a question. How near is that future? can you give us a year? Also, how do your predict the world's development? Good, as in clean, environmet friendly technology and a stable international stage. Normal, as in like it's today, just more modern. Or bad as in sprawling, stinking metroplexes and megacorporations that basically do what they want while the governents can only watch helplessly (I'm thinking Shadowrun here Smile)

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Galadrion wrote:
Hm... so many possibilities. Tell you what: you tell me what sort of thing you're interested in, and I'll start speculating. Personal weaponry? Nanotech? Computer tech? Body modification? Transportation? And what are your requirements?


Nanotech is a good point. We're almost there. Robots that are small enough to enter blood vessels can already be build. Nanites would be the ultimate surgery tool. Imagine cutting away tumors without having to open the body.

Genetics are also something to concider. Sceenings for genetically caused deseases like chest cancer are already done nowadays. Then there is the always popular discussion about the 'designer babies'.

I know, these things seem like distant sci-fi, but in 20 years they could very well be reality.

Thinking about it again, cybernetics may be possible too then... but certainly not without nanotech. At least no cybernetics that require nerve links.

I doubt the mag lift cars though. It would require rebuilding the entire road system. too expensive.

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Nameless
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tygon wrote:
Thinking about it again, cybernetics may be possible too then... but certainly not without nanotech. At least no cybernetics that require nerve links.

If I remember correctly, there were some articles on nerve links being done on an experimental stage for paralyzed people. So that may not be that far out.

See my post above, about the optical nerve link, that is already in experimental stage. Or at least a link to the retina. Only a few hundred pixels at the moment, but give it a few years...

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Galadrion
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 6:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yup, all these points are why I requested a more specific timeframe than "near future". Depending on one's definitions, "near future" could mean "next year"... or it could mean ca. 2050 (Shadowrun timeframe). After all, that's within my projected lifespan.

Hm. Other ideas... transportation. Supersonic passenger flights? We have the technology... but the use of it is currently on hold, with no resolution in sight (that I've heard). Space flight? Same situation, more or less. Now, how 'bout we combine the two? If we get a science-friendly administration sometime soon, and some aggressive corporate development, we could have a viable commercial space program within twenty years... heck, we could have it within three, but that would take more commitment from several sources than I see as realistic.

Environmentally friendly transport... it's possible. We've got commercially available "electric" (battery powered) cars, fuel-cell powered cars... They're a little more expensive than comparable IC-engine vehicles, but that's to be expected, since the support infrastructure is already there for IC. Give it a few years, again with a cooperative administration, and we could have an "enviro-friendly" infrastructure in place to make the new options viable competitors, maybe even a better choice.

Here's a thought - and several of you will recognize where I derived it from. The car changed society, not only in the obvious and expected ways (transportation, the expansion of cities), but in ways which, from apparent performance, were totally unpredictable (think about the car's effect on dating behaviors). The source where I got this observation points out that the computer chip might be considered the next development to affect society in so many fundamental ways - I'd change that to the Internet, though it's a minor quibble. Now, somewhere out there, right now, there is another gadget which is going to revolutionize the world in the same way. You probably know about this device already, but haven't considered it in this light. Now, what is it? And how will it affect things?

Hm... I may have just hit on something here... I'm going to have to think about this, but I may have the dynamite here to break my current writer's block...
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Kinsfire
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 9:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gods, I love this board, and these folks!

We're looking at the start of this megillah being by no later than 2025. (Just asked the wife, and we agreed on that part. Personally, I'm leaning toward it starting no later than 2015, but we'll iron that out. Smile Probably settle in the middle.

One thing I thought of is invisibility fabric, BTW. There's a version right now, that relies on a projector, but the guy is working on making it so that a surgeon could wear gloves designed for this, and continue surgery, without blocking the view of his goal. (I've actually seen photos of the projector version. It's cool. If I can find that link, I'll post it.)

And as for where you got that thought from - R.A.H., R.A.H., R.A.H.!

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Galadrion
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 11:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Laughing Ay-yup! Now, your "invisibility fabric" - add that to my comments on processors (which, ten years down the road, should be about ten times as powerful - whatever that may mean), which would allow the fabric to be a self-contained setup. Picture a full-body suit made of that fabric. Kinda makes the "gillie suits" today's special forces use look "old hat", huh? And a single suit would work in any terrain - an advantage that they don't have today.

Now, add another gimmick I've heard bandied about. A processor which takes incoming environmental noise and generates a countering "damper wave" - custom-tailored white noise for the environment. Not - quite - realistic with today's processors, but perhaps possible with a processor an order of magnitude faster than todays. Add that to the chameleon suit. Now you have the perfect infiltrator's suit! Renders the wearer nearly invisible, makes him (or her) nearly silent... with appropriate caution (and a little bit of training), a special forces infiltrator could be the equal of the legends about the ninja.

Of course, those processors get hot - and, by the same token, eat power. The current P4 chips (not the rest of the computer, just the processor!) uses about 75 watts! And produces the same heat, out of a fraction of the surface area. Makes for a very visible "hot spot" on infrared scopes - not to mention, a nasty burn if it's too close to skin. How's this for an idea? There's a gadget a friend of mine has been toying around with - converts a sizable temperature gradient (like, say, between the processor chip and the outside air) into electric current. Feed that into a recharging circuit, and viola! you have a decent way to (a) dampen that heat signature, and (b) reclaim some of that waste energy back into your batteries. Of course, there'll still be some loss - I'd consider the defeat of the entropy effect to be one of those pesky paradigm shifts. But you could extend the life of your batteries a bit. How much depends on your conversion effeciency.

Hm. I mentioned this to you in connection with something else, Kinsfire. Battery breakthroughs. That could tie in here. Ring the changes on the theme - there's a wealth of ideas here.

Powered suits - or powered armor suits. Robotech, Bubblegum Crisis, Starship Troopers (the book, not that blasphemous celuloid butchery), name your favorite fictional body armor. It can all tie back in.

Weaponry. I have the plans for a man-portable railgun - no longer have the finished item, but I have built and played with it. I also toyed with ideas for a pistol-sized varient, but better batteries would help a great deal.

Also, that "phaser pistol" you mentioned? It's workable, with today's technology, though again, advancements would help. I have a project book that details plans for making a handheld laser gun, capable of igniting pine at 50 yards with a 2 second burst. It is pistol-sized - in fact, the case they mention using is the casing for a LazerTag gun. Uses four 9v batteries, good for around a minute of burn time.

How about sonic weapons? With better power and a decent processor, the "Weirding Module" from the Dune books is realistic. Eighty-kilohertz pressure waves through a resonant focusing chamber (about like a shotgun barrel) could be focused out to about 75 - 100 yards... and it'll pulverize materials like wood or brick. Don't even think about what it'll do to glass or ceramics - and a lot of light armors in use today are ceramic-based. It could make a good squad support weapon - think about it's possible uses on a SWAT team against body-armored opponents. Those clowns who held off the cops for an hour down in California several years back would have been peeled like grapes and forced to surrender or die in about 30 seconds...

So far, I've been throwing out ideas which are possible with today's technology, or incremental advances on same. If you're interested, let me know and I'll start throwing out ideas that I think are possible but involve breakthroughs in theory that I'm not certain will happen soon. Things involving fusion, room-temperature superconductors, and "smart" materials, for instance...
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Cateagle
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, there's one idea some friends and I hatched many (very many) moons ago when I was in college; 'bout a year ago it appeared as an advanced idea in some science magazine. You have two low power lasers in parallel set at a frequency to ionize the air along their path; across these ionized paths, you set a suitable current and you get interesting effects on any target these beams touch - at low levels it'd be a nice stun weapon.

Thoguthfully,
Cateagle

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Nameless
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The "sonic cancelation / damper wave" is already in production. There are headphones (I don't remember from who, but one that is known for quality headphones) has it to reduce outside noise. Seems to work, not perfectly, but...

Power requirements for CPUs:

The P4 is incredibly inefficient. The CPUs (and DSPs) in handhelds have a lot more processing power per watt. And if one makes a dedicated device, especially for tasks that allow massive paralell computing then it can get even more efficient.

I agree with Galadrion, there is a lot of stuff out there that can be built (within a few years) if the will to do so (and to invest a lot of money) is there.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Galadrion wrote:
Also, that "phaser pistol" you mentioned? It's workable, with today's technology, though again, advancements would help. I have a project book that details plans for making a handheld laser gun, capable of igniting pine at 50 yards with a 2 second burst. It is pistol-sized - in fact, the case they mention using is the casing for a LazerTag gun. Uses four 9v batteries, good for around a minute of burn time.


Phasers are a technology that's totally out of the air. It's supposed to be an interdimensional beam.

Lasers on the other paw are working better and better. I think they build a 10 Watt laser LED. With that thing you CAN build a pistol sized laser that can burn a hole into 1 meter think concrete. and it runs on batteries. Not long, but it does.

Anyway, with the year 2025 you can do quite a lot stuff. I mean, compare the years 1975 to the year 2000.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 12:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Galadrion wrote:
Now, add another gimmick I've heard bandied about. A processor which takes incoming environmental noise and generates a countering "damper wave" - custom-tailored white noise for the environment. Not - quite - realistic with today's processors, but perhaps possible with a processor an order of magnitude faster than todays.


Oh great! Now everybody will say I stole that idea from you Sad

BTW: stealth helicopters use the very same system to reduce their own sound signature.

You have something that emits sound waves? add something that emits the countering sound waves and you'll have no sound at all.

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