Museum of the Future

Magnavox writes "In Boulder, Colorado tonight there is going to be a rather unusual announcement about the DaVinci Institute's effort to create a Museum of Future Inventions. This will be a museum where they exhibit things that haven't been invented yet, like spray on clothing, instant sleep, genetically engineered Velcro sheep, and metric time. Pretty creative stuff. Some of the people they have involved are Dr. Paul MacCready, inventor of the Gossamer Albatross and Paul Dusenbery, Founder of the Space Science Institute. This looks like serious competition for Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum."

Comments

Metric time - been done

[Anonymous Coward]

Metric time? Metric time has already been invented - one of those things the French came up with in revolutionary times. (It didn't take off.) I am not making this up.

I thought...

[Mad_Rain]

I thought metric time already invented?

Or at least it was at the time of this posting: 41.911 UMT. :)

Re:I thought...

[chthonicdaemon]

The last two breakdowns were based upon the fact that the number 60 has more even combinations than any number less than it (1,60;2,30;3,20;4,15;5,12;6,10).

In fact, you should ask yourself 'why 12 and 30' rather than 'why 60'. 12 and 30 come up directly from the lunar cycle -- roughly 12 lunations in a year, roughly 30 days in a lunation. It was natural to divide the days into 12 again (hours), and to divide these into 30. This is what the Babylonians did. 60 is the least common multiple of 12 and 30, which is probably why it was chosen as the division for minutes and seconds.

For more fascinating information on the calendar and time in general, check out Mapping time.

Spray On Clothing

[epiphani]

has been around for quite a while. People just think its a lot like nudity, thats all. Try woodstock or martigra for references.

And of course, there is even a japanese company selling spray on stockings, so I wouldnt call it future technology. But I'd definitely like to see more of it.

but spray paint clothing does exist

[Anonymous Coward]

painted clothing

Competition?

[Jason1729]

This looks like serious competition for Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum.

The Science Fiction Museum has much more realistic content.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Largely Irrelavant

[beaststwo]

When I was in grad school (1990), I read the book "Megamistakes" by Steven Schnaars, Professor of Marketing at the City University of New York. An amazingly interesting book that can be read cover to cover in a few hours. Professor Schaar's book talks about science and technology forecasting and how wildly wrong such forecasts almost always are. He then goes on to talk about why forecasts go wrong.

The uptake of the book is that even the "best of the best" forecasters are only right one prediction in nine. The record falls off sadly as you move away from that top tier.

So while hearing visionaries talk is fun and can be enlightening, they seldom represent anything likely to actually happen. After all, isn't Popular Science still telling us about how we'll drive personal aircraft instead of cars in a few years?

Re:Degrees in a circle?

[LWATCDR]

okay you have got to win the obscure reference of all time award. It is a shame that you probably will not get modded up for this since almost no one will get it.
Bravo.

Re:now and then

[Barryke]

in Eindhoven, Netherlands there was a
wonderfull place called the Evoluon that had very that.
Inventions not yet invented, mostly real and some simulated but looking 100% real.

The fun part was that you could touch almost anything, sadly not including
the o-so-fantastic flexible-elastic LCD postcards that played a recorded audio and videomessage.
Still waiting for that one to arrive.

Anyways, its been lots of years since they closed now. :(
I guess its very expensive to maintain such a collection.

PS: a Evoluon movie (122MB)