FastForward Radio
Long Shot Futures, Part 2
Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon talked about long shot futures - futures that they think aren't likely, but are hoping for anyway!
We can always be surprised.
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The topics:
- Michael Sargent returned to FastForward Radio as our chat show host this week.
- Both Michael Sargent and Phil Bowermaster are in the Denver area and are feeling the effects of the Democratic Convention. Our regular chat host Michael Darling is helping out with the convention and we hope to get a report from him about all that in the coming weeks.
- A coffee mug is up for grabs. The member of the audience who contributes the best long shot scenario wins a coffee mug. We had great contributions both last week and this week. We'll be announcing our winner shortly.
- Stephen posted a poll asking "How will the US primarily power cars in 15 years?" As of the time of this show 81 people had participated. The interesting result - only about 1/3 believes that gasoline or diesel from conventional sources will still be the primary source of fuel. About half of respondents picked hybrids or EV's.
Stephen realized that he left hydrogen off the list. After the show Stephen's wife pointed him to the recent rollout of the Honda FCX Clarity. Its a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
Stephen also neglected to include cars powered by compressed air. He thinks he should rerun the poll with these other options.
- Cognitive Enhancement. We already have drugs that deliver low levels of cognitive enhancement. But we asked whether we'll have cognitive enhancement in 20 years that could make a normally intelligent person smarter than anyone has ever lived before.
- Life Extension.
- Wireless transmission of power. Will Brown published a post about the wireless transmission of electricity. Everyone agreed that charging your laptop wirelessly is a coming thing, but charging your EV wirelessly as you drive might be a bit of a longshot still.
- Faster than light travel. This week Phill published the 34th edition of our "Better All The Time" feature. One story in it concerned the possibility of a warp drive. By warping space it would be possible to travel vast distances without breaking the light speed limitation.
- How much of a long shot is a practical working quantum computer?
- And is a quantum resolution Star Trek Transporter possible, in spite of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?
In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain.
Our front bumper is a sample of Marginal Prophets' "The Difficult Song."
Our exit music this week is from Jeff MacDougall. The song is "High."
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Comments
The technology doesn't seem to be all that long a shot, but the application I note here may well qualify.
Sadly.
See you all "on the air" if I can ...
Posted by: Will Brown | August 24, 2008 01:09 AM
Here is my longshot future: I'm really looking forward to a paradigm shift in personal travel--not just from the perspective of what kind of fuel we use to power our vehicles, but for the whole experience. In this future, I get up in the morning and tell my travel AI what time I want to be in the office (or wherever!), and it tells me what time I need to be ready to leave (based on traffic patterns and what everybody else is currently planning to do).
At the scheduled time, I step into my personal travel pod--no need to drive, so I can stretch out, sleep, eat, listen to music, work, look at the scenery, etc. The pod coordinates with all the other pods on the roads to dynamically choose the best route and drops me off at my chosen location, then parks itself somewhere until I am ready to leave again. Pods can be hooked together for families or larger groups traveling together or to carry larger amounts of stuff. Rich people can get fancy pods, and some who don't want to own can share or rent pods. Kids of a reasonable age can be ferried to activities without assistance. My pod can even go on its own to pick up the grocery order or other errands. In fact, I can think of lots of things to keep my pod busy!
At the moment, I still think this is a pretty longshot future, since you need to not only solve the current fuel/energy issues, but also develop the AI and (probably the most difficult and costly) create the infrastructure. None of this is physically impossible though, and research steps along these lines are already in progress (DARPA challenge for example), so I hope to be around long enough to see it happen!
Posted by: Leslie Kirschner | August 24, 2008 12:38 PM