What's Always Next?

bettiwettiwoo writes "In its 'What's Next' issue, Time has a charmingly silly piece called What's Always Next? , in which is provided '[a] sampling of the future that wasn't': things that have been predicted since day dot, but have somehow never materialized. The examples they give are: videophones; moon colonies; food in pills; cars that drive themselves; jet packs; and moving sidewalks. ... There are, after all, so many and varied things -- ranging from the very serious to the down-right silly -- that are predicted time and again, yet seem curiously absent in our daily lives. Examples: global catastrophies of the Armageddon kind (be they population overload, total environmental disasters, plagues, asteroids, or nuclear wars); a secure and bug-free Windows; the end of Madonna's singing career (her 'acting' career was, I believe, still-born)." So what are you waiting for?

Comments

Rejuv

[beq]

Since the 1930s, effective anti-aging treatments (making us effectively immortal) have been predicted. So far, nothing. (Not that this would be a good thing for overpopulation but...)

Re:Rejuv

[Angry Toad]

Do a google news search for "resveratrol". This is some potentially huge news that got only a few writeups here and there a couple of weeks ago. They even posted a "Science" section story on Slashdot about it, but most people there seem to have largely missed what a big story it may actually be.

Executive summary: Not only have some people at Harvard Medical School worked out how the caloric restriction effect works, they have demonstrated that in yeast, flies, and likely in mice a particular class of polyphenols (resveratrol being the most effective thus far) can be used to stimulate the same system in eukaryotes and extend lifespan some 30%.

It works by engaging a stress response mechanism which appears to stabilize cells against aging damage in times of environmental stress - ie, you get more time to reproduce once the (mild!) famine is over and you haven't wasted your reproductive years just scrounging for food.

Of course nobody has yet demonstrated that it will work in humans, but at this point there is no clear reason why it wouldn't work...

I'm still waiting for my paperless office

[Bogatyr]

I'm still waiting for my paperless office. It hasn't happened yet: no matter how much I cut back, my coworkers always want to print repeated drafts of documents to review interim versions, print emails and notes for archiving where they can find them, and so on.

who says they aren't here yet?

[*weasel]

food in pill form - well any moron could have told you that was pure science fiction - it's all a matter of density and quantity. we -could- do it, but you'd need a plate-full of pills.

jetpacks - just like flying cars, it's primarily a safety issue. we have the tech - but no-one wants the cast of Friends crashing their hover-porsche into people's homes. on the ground there are trees, and curbs and bushes to slow them down when they leave the road. not so above.

cars that drive themselves - well honda's already park themselves. darpa is holding an unmanned vehicle race through the desert - i can't imagine commercial applications will take too much longer.

videophones - are already here. videoconference much? just because the consumers have decided that thus-far, the cost outweighs the benefit doesn't mean science is holding anything back.
it's simply a matter of consumer adoption.

moving sidewalks - already here - in malls, in airports. why aren't they in manhatten? because who pays for that? who benefits from a moving sidewalk downtown? when there's a business case for them, they exist. when it's left to the public sector, and there's no tangible benefit to outweigh the cost - the just don't exist.
once again, a problem of business, not of science.

plague - hello, HIV/AIDS, cancer ?

now how about the things we have that we never thought to ask for?

the internet, gps, multivitamins, the ISS, remote surgery, the genome map, cellphones, tazers, velcro, stain resistant dockers, nano-tube-spun ropes, teflon, sunscreen, moores law, p2p networks, etc?

"the Future is Here

[nounderscores]

...It just isn't evenly distributed yet" - William Gibson.

It's true.
we have flying cars. forget the moller skycar, the future is the xantus powered lift aircraft.

we have jet packs, but now affordable backpack aircraft only nearly nobody wants to build them.

I think some people can't handle the future. they're too afraid of getting smushed up by it.

Re:It's a Long List

[arth1]

Not all predictions turned out exactly the way that speculative fiction envisioned them:

- Sliding doors exist (mainly for elevators), but don't say "swwiiish" whenever they open and close.

- The tricorder doesn't exist as such, but there's PDAs and mobile phones that can do much of the same, and much that the original tricorders couldn't do. Many of them even look like a tricorder, due to it being a practical design.

- Computers speaking. Thankfully, they don't speak in a monotone tin-bucket voice. (The exception being my Asus motherboard BIOS, which tells me in a metallic semi-feminine voice "no CPU instarred" twice before booting.) Luckily too, we don't have thousands of computer voices speaking simultaneously from every cubicle. This most likely because the cubicle was never predicted.

- Voice recognition. Unfortunately, we have that on too many phone services. If, like me, you have a voice that makes James Earl Jones sound like a puberty boy, they're not too helpful.

- Stasis/hibernation. It exists, but if you want to time travel that way, only your sperm can go.

- Jumpsuits. They exist, and presumably some people wear them, but I can't remember the last time I saw one in real life. Possibly due to the fact that most people still need to go to the bathroom every now and then, and there's no transporter that can take care of that need for us yet.

- Designer drugs. Yes, we have them, but they're nowhere near as sophisticated or readily available as in speculative fiction. We also have the smokeless cigarettes, but it's not a plexiglass tube filled with crystals, nor do they make you zonk out.

- Androids. Replacement bodyparts are common, but few if any of them are improvements on the originals.

- Laser weapons. Sure, but they don't make Moog sounds when used, and are more useful for guidance than payload.

- Universal nudism and free sex. What happened? After a short burst in the 60's, this one seems to have died... *sigh*

Regards,
--
*Art

Food pills

[jc42]

The "food pill" concept does have a fundamental physical limitation. By "food" we usually mean things like proteins and carbohydrates, not things like vitamins, and "pill" usually means something rather small
that can be swallowed with one gulp.

Our daily requirement of protein and carbohydrate is on the order of hundreds of grams. To get 100 grams of carbos, you need at least 100 grams of material, and typically a bit more (unless you're gulping down pure sugar). This would be well beyond the size range of what we would usually call a "pill".

You can put things like vitamins and a few "supplement" materials in pill form, because we only need those in sub-gram amounts. But you're not going to put significant amounts of amino acids or sugars into a pill, not in the quantities that we need them. The universe just doesn't work that way.

Also, we need a significant amount of water per day. Our biochemistry only works in a water medium. If you could reduce the proteins and carbos to a digestible but waterless form for less bulk, you'd just have to consume the water some other way. You might as well leave the water mixed with the proteins and carbos and consume them together. It's a lot more satisfying to the palate than downing pills and drinking large quantities of water.