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

Neat Idea

[SallyMac]

It's nice to see progress and innovation. It seems that even with the new age space race, there just isn't excitement in this country about what's next, what else, and what now, except as it pertains to Medicine.

I hope they can find space

[Anonymous Coward]

for the troll-free Slashdot thread.

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.

Duke Nukem Forever?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will I be able to go there and play Duke Nukem Forever?

I call prior art!

[rfischer]

How 'bout we draft some patents on these pre-natal inventions?

and profit, of course.

Oblig. Simpsons' Quote

[aceat64]

"Not only are the trains running on time, but now they're running on metric time!"

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...

[Tmack]

Yes, as has been posted in other replies to your post... but I feel that for metric time to be of any use scientifically, it should be based off of the current Second, rather than 10Metric Hours/Day. That way, all of the other metric units based on seconds would still hold with metric time, no conversions or new unit deffinitions necessary. Also, I think this would be much more relavent in a space travel or submarine setting, where the unit of "Day" is basically meaningless since there is no sun rise/sun set.

Minutes of 100 metric seconds would be 2/3 longer than current ones, allowing more excuses to be made for being late to work/meetings: "I meant I would be there in 10 metric minutes", hours of 10000 seconds would be about 3x longer, and a typical earth day would be about 8.6 metric hours long. While not very usable while on the planet, in space travel you could expand that to 10 metric hours per "day" (27.8 normal hours).

Just my thoughts..

Tm

Re:I thought...

[rusty0101]

Considering that the second is defined by the NIST as:
'exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of the cesium atom's resonant frequency'

I am not sure I want the 'second' to be the standard increment of time.

Remember, we use the second because we have divided the clock first into 12 hours, (12 day, and 12 night when the sun casts no shadow) then divided each hour into 60 increments called minutes, followed by another 60 increments of those called Minutes. 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).

The second is a convienence of earth bound existence. Once you step off earth, you need to adjust your clock to the local environment, meaning that the basic unit of time, (the second for us) is going to be different.

To go with a purely metric time, you would want to start by acknowledging that the local time is not going to easily map to the current Metric time. Now use a convienent multiple of the resonant frequency of the cesium atom. Options would be 10,000,000,000 oscilations, 9,000,000,000 oscilations (to be closer to the current definition) or 1,000,000,000 oscilations. (My recomendation.)

Are there some serious problems that this would present? Sure. Hz frequency measurements would all have to be revised. (and yes that would affect your cpu processor speed calculations) Speed of Light constants would have to be recalculated (these recalculations would really be a simple ratio function, but it would annoy all sorts of people.) Natural frequencies would have to be revised. Etc.

Just my own thoughts. (Now go take a look at some of the later definitions of the length of a meter, and see how these ideas would affect that.)

-Rusty

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.

metric time already failed

[Anonymous Coward]

The Frenchies tried to impose a ten-day week and a ten-hour day right after their revolution. It caught on about as well as esperanto.

Negative calories

[3770]

Screw those inventions. What I want is potato chips with negative calories.

Prior Art?

[bloodstains]

The question is, can exhibits from the Museum of the Future be used as prior art in patent requests.

Innovation...

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

Innovation is going to be the US export of the future. Outsource the crappy tech support, outsource the manual labor. Create a workforce of innovation. Own the world through patents and ideas.

Maybe this museum ill bring back some of the creativity that is so lacking in this current fed-everything-through-games-and-tv generation.

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.

Re:Spray On Clothing

[TheOtherChimeraTwin]

Mustn't.... visualism... slashdot... geeks... wearing... spray on clothing... arrrgGHHHHHH!

Content-Free, Thanks to Epimenides

[m0nk3ym1nd]

The place could fit in a shoebox. Won't it be populated entirely by ideas versus things? As soon as an idea is realized, oops! Get it outside quick before we have to change our name!

It's like the barber who shaves all and only those who never shave themselves...

This is Old News

[serutan]

I bought a season pass to that museum two years from now and went there twice next month.

A little late

[SuperKendall]

I would have liked to go, but sadly the announcemnet on the museum of the future seems to have occured most firmly in the past.

An inauspicious start...

Degrees in a circle?

[Trejkaz]

But there are 2*pi radians in a circle, using proper units.

Shouldn't we make sure there are 2*pi hours in a day or something?

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:Instant Sleep?

[stdcallsign]

They already have that, it's called NyQuil :P

Ahh yes.
The Sniffling,
sneezing,
headache,
stuffy-nose,
take-it-in-bed-or-you'll-wake-up-on-the-bathroom -floor
medicine.

Epcot

[DoctorHibbert]

Isn't this basically the same idea as Epcot?

Not invented yet?

[reality-bytes]

Surely if they've described the item / concept then they have just 'invented' it.

At least that what the USPTO believes.

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?

instant sleep

[waveclaw]

As a long time gamers, what is this sleep stuff I keep hearing about?

I it something that comes in can form? Or do I have to stop playing for 5 minutes to pop a pill?

From what I hear, as long as it tastes better than 'instant' coffee, this *sleep* stuff might just be worth trying. But I gotta go, too many spawns to camp.

Velcro sheep?

[nizo]

You wouldn't be able to mix velcro sheep and regular sheep, otherwise they will stick together, forming one large sheepmass.

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)