What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?
-
At best it would prop up capitalism until we can replace it with something better.
It's literally just giving people more money to shove into the capitalist system. You don't change a system by feeding it.
I won't say it's a bad thing... but it's not a solution. It's a stop gap.
UBI will be necessary when the combination of AI and robotics creates a permanent 35+% unemployment rate. We will have to institute UBI, or reduce the population by that much. Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
-
The viewscreen from Star Trek. It's actually real but nobody really wants to use it.
Phones, tablets, and laptops have had video chat for years. Apple brought it to actual TV a couple years ago. The idea is you use the Apple TV set-top box, and you get a squared-S-shaped clip that mounts an iPhone to the top of a TV so the rear camera array can point out into the room. You pair the two, and your whole TV turns into a viewscreen, just like on the starship Enterprise.
I've explained this to a few people and the reaction is usually "okay why TF would I wanna do that?" So imagine a Thanksgiving or Christmas, or other "big family holiday" thing where you have that one person who won't participate because it's their partner's family's turn to see the kids or whatever... so, the Apple TV is like $100. And somebody is gonna have an iPhone. And these days, everyone has a TV, at least in the west, and they're 55" or bigger. So you get the TV in the corner of the room and you set it up so you're broadcasting the whole living room and maybe part of the kitchen or dining room, and you connect it to another family/part of the family who is doing the same. And your TV is now a window into that other living room, and people can go up to the screen and interact, or wave from across the room. Now if it's like Thanksgiving and it's based around eating, you could even run the end of the table up to the TV (so the TV is basically sat at one end of the table with no one in between) on both sides so when you look down the table, you're looking into that other room.
It gets used a lot in a business setting, we've multiple rooms at work set up for this.
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
I would just like complete control of my various web things. be able to restrict banking activity by source (so like lock my savings to only move between my checking and no where else), be able to make temporary credit card numbers that I can not only limit the amount of a single charge but max total that can be charged and daily charge and monthly charge and also be able to limit it to one payer. So like I make it and use it to pay for something than can go back and click on the the vendor payed and say lock it to only that vendor. Have an investment account where I can setup a variety of investments by percentage and have it keep those percentages as markets move. oh and have a local location for all my things where you can get any help including for their website although thats not exactly technology.
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Socialism
-
I would just like complete control of my various web things. be able to restrict banking activity by source (so like lock my savings to only move between my checking and no where else), be able to make temporary credit card numbers that I can not only limit the amount of a single charge but max total that can be charged and daily charge and monthly charge and also be able to limit it to one payer. So like I make it and use it to pay for something than can go back and click on the the vendor payed and say lock it to only that vendor. Have an investment account where I can setup a variety of investments by percentage and have it keep those percentages as markets move. oh and have a local location for all my things where you can get any help including for their website although thats not exactly technology.
For the credit card thing, there used to be an app called Private that you could set up temporary numbers with. I think you could do some level of recurring payments with it too. Not sure it's it's been enshittified yet though
-
For the credit card thing, there used to be an app called Private that you could set up temporary numbers with. I think you could do some level of recurring payments with it too. Not sure it's it's been enshittified yet though
oh I guess I have to add all without apps. Some of this stuff even then exists to some degree but its kinda sad its not implemented just generally. There is so much computers could do but there just is no incentive to maximize customer capability. If anything they tend to look to monetize any feature or limit it in a way to make it shitty or make money for the company outside of their normal streams. Like schwab has this robo adviser but its way limited and forces you to keep a lot in cash yet at the same time is very slow to rebalance (the reasoning they give for the cash is to deal with rebalancing which should allow it to do it relatively quickly.)
-
I've thought the same thing, Trying to hold a video call between families using a phone or even a laptop is such an awkward experience, especially if you want to just hang out virtually for an extended time like you said.
But it wouldn't even have to involve a separate box or docked phone. Everyone's got a smart TV that can run apps, so all it should take is a USB webcam with a decent far-field mic.
But yeah, in general I'm surprised this isn't more of a common use case.
In theory that should work if the app can access a USB port on the TV and use the webcam. I haven’t heard of it being done though. The Apple solution works and it’s intended to be used like that.
But really, a lot of smart TVs run Android and Android has a surprising amount of supported devices (I suppose due to it basically being Linux). I bet you could hook a DVD burner up to an Android phone, and I’m sure a third party file manager could read files off a disc. Burning though? Should be possible but you’d need an app to talk to the DVD writer. And that, I’ve never heard of. You’d think a webcam would be easier but I think the software stack in an Android phone would only use its internal cameras without an app. The camera app for example is only going to look at the installed ones. It doesn’t know to look at the USB interface for more. But a third party camera app might.
I have a USB C hub and I do have an old Android phone (Galaxy S10, 2019). I do not have a webcam or DVD writer though.
That said, now that I think about it, if you hook a Samsung phone — not sure about others — up to a TV with USB C to HDMI, it kinda becomes a little desktop computer with the TV as monitor. I wonder, if you initiated a video chat, if you could do it with just a Samsung phone. Or really any phone that will display mirror to a TV.
-
It gets used a lot in a business setting, we've multiple rooms at work set up for this.
Right, business, and using tech most consumers don’t have. So that is definitely a thing. What I’m saying is, most families have access to it with consumer grade stuff.
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Telemetry free consumer products would be nice
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Abolishing the concept of money. Probably won't happen but it would be pretty cool.
-
Abolishing the concept of money. Probably won't happen but it would be pretty cool.
Money is a useful idea, and useful ideas are notoriously hard to kill.
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
We could be solarpunk. Like, right now. With everything using clean energy and plants everywhere.
-
The viewscreen from Star Trek. It's actually real but nobody really wants to use it.
Phones, tablets, and laptops have had video chat for years. Apple brought it to actual TV a couple years ago. The idea is you use the Apple TV set-top box, and you get a squared-S-shaped clip that mounts an iPhone to the top of a TV so the rear camera array can point out into the room. You pair the two, and your whole TV turns into a viewscreen, just like on the starship Enterprise.
I've explained this to a few people and the reaction is usually "okay why TF would I wanna do that?" So imagine a Thanksgiving or Christmas, or other "big family holiday" thing where you have that one person who won't participate because it's their partner's family's turn to see the kids or whatever... so, the Apple TV is like $100. And somebody is gonna have an iPhone. And these days, everyone has a TV, at least in the west, and they're 55" or bigger. So you get the TV in the corner of the room and you set it up so you're broadcasting the whole living room and maybe part of the kitchen or dining room, and you connect it to another family/part of the family who is doing the same. And your TV is now a window into that other living room, and people can go up to the screen and interact, or wave from across the room. Now if it's like Thanksgiving and it's based around eating, you could even run the end of the table up to the TV (so the TV is basically sat at one end of the table with no one in between) on both sides so when you look down the table, you're looking into that other room.
I feel like the end result here would be saying hi like a normal phone call, and then kind of awkwardly ignoring and avoiding the tv for the rest of the night. All the problems with video conferencing, but multiplied.
-
I've thought the same thing, Trying to hold a video call between families using a phone or even a laptop is such an awkward experience, especially if you want to just hang out virtually for an extended time like you said.
But it wouldn't even have to involve a separate box or docked phone. Everyone's got a smart TV that can run apps, so all it should take is a USB webcam with a decent far-field mic.
But yeah, in general I'm surprised this isn't more of a common use case.
The problem it that sound is limited in physical space, so you can move around a room, talking to one person and then another.
Your proposal is like getting two groups of people to stand on opposite sides of a room and then communicate by shouting at each other.
-
Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Augmented reality overlaying historical photos and 3d models so you can literally see history as your walking.
Imagine being able to visit The White City that was built for the World's Fair in Chicago. Or seeing New York before sky scrapers dominated the landscape.
-
I find it funny who ubi proponents say we need UBI because capitalism failed to have wages match cost of living and simultaneously say UBI will fix it with capitalism.
Housing is expensive because there isn't enough. If capitalism could fix it, then housing would have at a minimum matched inflation and should have decreased in price because of technology improvements. So giving people more money absolutely cannot fix the housing crisis. UBI would be a handout for landlords.
When demand is the problem in a supply/demand economy, you can't fix it with more demand (cash).
Capitalism fails to meet housing demand because it is constrained by regulations about things like single family zoning, setbacks, parking minimums, or minimum floor areas; and because the perverse incentives of current taxation schemes regarding the inelastic supply of land don't incentivize land owners to put their land to its highest and best use.
Housing is a bad example of capitalism failing because the problems developers face are extremely well known and understood. Remove the frivolous regulations, adopt a georgist tax policy, and build good public infrastructure, and you'll get far more housing than you currently have far faster than you are currently building it. Could government do better? Maybe... but I have yet to see that evidence.
-
Capitalism means that they stop building before the price dips below wildly profitable, because capital is risk adverse. Capitalism won't, not can't, fix these problems.
A large institution may be risk averse. But a smaller firm trying to gain ground in the market would likely be more than happy to take on the risk and slimmer margins. After all, if capitalism wasn't okay with slim margins, then restaurants and grocery stores wouldn't exist.
-
The problem it that sound is limited in physical space, so you can move around a room, talking to one person and then another.
Your proposal is like getting two groups of people to stand on opposite sides of a room and then communicate by shouting at each other.
Think of it like two groups of people in separate rooms with a large open window between them. Not everyone is trying to talk one on one to the other group all the time. And sometimes just feeling like you're in the same physical space can be nice.
It's not perfect, but in many circumstances it's worlds better than having tiny portable windows that mostly facilitate one on one conversation.
-
As I said to the other person, there can be a donation and request system to make sure everyone gets what they need, without tying money into it and having this weird limit of the amount of stuff people can get, and tying the idea of value to it all.
What if you make a request and no one wants to donate what you need? Would you not then want a way to incentivize someone to make the donation, or incentivize someone else to make more of what you need?
-
UBI would be amazing for the economy. It's basically Trickle UP economics. The money will still eventually end up in the pocket of some rich guy, but at least it will grease the gears of the economy on the way up.
UBI would be amazing for the economy.
Citation needed
