Ever feel like you're living in the Future?

[Harpo]

AI is going to reach that point where non-users routinely dismiss/accuse people of using it (see also CGI & photoshop & smoke & mirrors)

 

[Swank]

I don't feel like I'm in the future. All of the "improvements" seem like the most banal applications of technology that just offer more avenues for advertising while allowing the broadest possible reach for those with the narrowest minds.

Otherwise, we've retired the Concorde, are trying to go back to moon after 50 years via a commercial company headed by the mentally ill, not a single major illness has been cured, no great step forward in materials or power generation have occurred and what we like to call "AI" is an idiot child that paradies our worst tendencies.

It isn't that I expected jet packs or space hotels. Just something better than the 1980s.

 

[The Big Peat]

Apparently today they used a genetically modified pig's kidney in a transplant on a human patient. That's a welcome to the future moment, right?

 

[Swank]

Apparently today they used a genetically modified pig's kidney in a transplant on a human patient. That's a welcome to the future moment, right?

Why isn't it a cloned human kidney grown in a genetically modified pig?

The first cloned vertebrate was 1958.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

What happened to the pig?

 

[Vince W]

Apparently today they used a genetically modified pig's kidney in a transplant on a human patient. That's a welcome to the future moment, right?

Next step, hyperpigs.

 

[Vladd67]

I remember years ago seeing a report that hospitals would have pig farms next door to them.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

I agree with @Swank . I've made the case before that we are entering a period of technological stagnation. In the 20th century we gathered the low hanging fruit (electrical engineering, rocket technology, combustion engines, aeronautics, fission and ultimately electronics). Future big advances are not going to be surrendered by nature so easily.

 

[Astro Pen]

Future Developments will be sociological.
The most dangerous sentiment is, "It can't happen here." - even as it does.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Future Developments will be sociological.
The most dangerous sentiment is, "It can't happen here." - even as it does.

Also, I would say Economics is a field in which huge advances can and should be made. Not much sign of it happening though.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The weather is going to have a much bigger role in shaping the future than previously thought. A modified pig kidney was recently transplanted into a human. There are plans in place for using modified pig livers and hearts as external organs, which was the original purpose of the modified pig kidney. How far away are modified pig brains. Desktop computers can use external cpu's. Here in the states, new housing is looking more and more like apartment complexes instead of individual house units. The job market is nothing like it used to be. The background scenes in the original Blade Runner movie come to mind. The space travel and human appearing androids are still just science fiction. As for flying cars, if a lightweight practical high power battery ever gets developed, prop driven cars won't be far off.

 

[paranoid marvin]

We could well have flying cars for the emergency services, perhaps even for freight and public transport. But it would be utter chaos if the public got hold of them for personal car use. I don't think we will ever see flying cars for piblic consumption.

 

[Swank]

We could well have flying cars for the emergency services, perhaps even for freight and public transport. But it would be utter chaos if the public got hold of them for personal car use. I don't think we will ever see flying cars for piblic consumption.

Clearly flying cars today would be subject to automatic control and programmed routing.

 

[AltThinking]

Future Developments will be sociological.

Don't know about that.
Just had a state election here on Saturday - same useless idiots returned. Only good thing was they got back with less than a majority so will have to cow-tow to the minor parties somewhat.
Seems to me that both sociology & economics are have become stuck in 1980's thinking in the West while the few advanced societies have been dragged backwards by current Western economics & greed.

 

[Astro Pen]

Don't know about that.
Just had a state election here on Saturday - same useless idiots returned. Only good thing was they got back with less than a majority so will have to cow-tow to the minor parties somewhat.
Seems to me that both sociology & economics are have become stuck in 1980's thinking in the West while the few advanced societies have been dragged backwards by current Western economics & greed.

Fortunately there is a ban on political discussion here, but I will quote Mark Twain
"If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."

 

[Astro Pen]

Rot or not rot. The bizarre notion of fungal computing. Maybe the birth of something new or mushroom pie in the sky.
However I do recall that one of the maze solving fungi mentioned here was used for optimising routing on the Tokyo transit system.

 

[Mans]

I think there is a conflict between nature and technology. Technology has occupied our minds. I don't think people today have experienced a pristine nature anymore.

Being under the shade of a dense willow on the downside of a mountain, while a stream with clear water is passing nearby with a calming sound. The sound of songbirds and a green landscape with tall grasses, colorful wildflowers, blue sky, and a flying flock of wild pigeons. No smoke, no soot, no plastic bottles, no smartphones, no computers, no Google, Twitter, Instagram... and no noise of cars and horns.

Oh, excuse me, I think I am talking about Paradise!

 

[JunkMonkey]

I think there is a conflict between nature and technology. Technology has occupied our minds. I don't think people today have experienced a pristine nature anymore.

Being under the shade of a dense willow on the downside of a mountain, while a stream with clear water is passing nearby with a calming sound. The sound of songbirds and a green landscape with tall grasses, colorful wildflowers, blue sky, and a flying flock of wild pigeons. No smoke, no soot, no plastic bottles, no smartphones, no computers, no Google, Twitter, Instagram... and no noise of cars and horns.

Oh, excuse me, I think I am talking about Paradise!

Ants, ticks, horseflies, other biting insects carrying interspecies communicable diseases, leeches, poisonous plants, irritating plants, more horseflies, piles of animal excrement, dead animals, foetid marshes, agressive carnivores, snow, rain, hail, frost, gales, landslides, avalanches... sometimes I run away to the nearest city to get away from all the rural wilderness I live in and enjoy some nice relaxing comforting civilization.

 

[Mans]

Ants, ticks, horseflies, other biting insects carrying interspecies communicable diseases, leeches, poisonous plants, irritating plants, more horseflies, piles of animal excrement, dead animals, foetid marshes, agressive carnivores, snow, rain, hail, frost, gales, landslides, avalanches... sometimes I run away to the nearest city to get away from all the rural wilderness I live in and enjoy some nice relaxing comforting civilization.

.

That is why, I pointed out, I was talking about paradise! LOL

There is NO ants, ticks, horseflies, other biting insects carrying interspecies communicable diseases, leeches, poisonous plants, irritating plants, more horseflies, piles of animal excrement, dead animals, foetid marshes, agressive carnivores, snow, rain, hail, frost, gales, landslides, cold, hot, avalanches... and so on!