12 Crackpot Ideas That Could Transform Tech

InfoWorldMike passed us a link to an entertaining article with a sort of 'top 12' innovative technologies that could change the world. Some of the techs include solid-state drives, holographic and phase-change storage, artificial intelligence, e-books, desktop web apps, and quantum computing/cryptography. For each of these technologies, expert observers weigh in on the potentials and pitfalls of these disciplines. Here are Esther Lim's comments on e-books: "Another issue, besides the prohibitive cost and cumbersome nature of e-documents, concerns the vast portion of the contracts that were signed and agreed upon before e-books came onto the scene ... That raises questions not just in terms of what rights the user has, but what rights the publisher has vis-à-vis the copyright holder." We've discussed almost all of these technologies on the site at one point or another. Which is the most important? Which one do you think we'll never 'get right'?

Comments

I also have a crackpot idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace all RAM with cheese. It's just as practical as anything in the article, and seems more realistic.

Superconducting computer are 'psychoceramic'?

[Canthros]

Somebody's been hitting the thesaurus pretty hard. (Correction, the thesaurus just fell down the stairs.)

Crackpot

[ObiWanStevobi]

Still to inside-the-box for me. Personally, I'd think infinite improbability has much more interesting ramifications. If only there wasn't that darn Total Existence Failure thingy to worry about. Technical enterprise, who cares? I'm talking about undergarments suddenly jumping three feet to the left.

Perhaps we can start out small and work on a bistromathic processor and a finite improbability drive and work our way up from there.

Re:I also have a crockpot idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace all RAM with cheese.

Some observations from experience:

• Swiss cheese loses about 10-25% of the bits.
• Parmesan has really long access time.
• Cottage cheese is really fast, but don't expect your data in linear order.
• Gorgonzola will make your computer literally smell like bird crap.
• Brie is currently too expensive to be economically viable.
• American can be stacked up to 50-100 slices high. This increases bandwidth but requires a large case.
• Velveeta doesn't perform as well as the others listed, but it retains its performance the best, so by the second or third day it becomes the clear winner.

I hope this helps!

Flying cars!

[SnarfQuest]

What about flying cars? I've been promised my own flying car "real soon now" for ages! If they can't give me a simple thing like my own flying car, how can you expect them to do any of these other complicated things?