http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/10 … index.html

1. Sometime within the next 50 years, a small animal or insect will be teleported. (a lot will probably die before a success occurs)

2. By 2500, cars, airplanes, rockets etc. will be obsolete.

3. People will be required to clone themselves and backup their personality. This will be automatic, of course - provided by the taxpayers. This type of "insurance" will be necessary, as terrorists (and the like) will target teleporters. The technology will probably never be stable, also.

Heh, reminds me of Phantasy Star II--

Not only is teleportation the best way to travel,

BUT,

in the game there was also a separate concept of a "Clone Lab"-- you would go there, and if a party member was dead, the Clone Lab "Grandma" would revive that member.  The whole game made sense and was neat, because of the way they treated saved games and data memory.

Almost as you said.  If you die, a clone can just carry on from the last time you backed up your data.
Phantasy Star II had so many neat concepts and is one of my Top 5 Games of All Time.

have you ever seen the miike file andromedia? a girl dies and her father keeps her memories alive on a computer...

I agree with all of these. With the advent of bug teleportation, which could lead to human teleportation, I see most current forms of locomotion becoming obsolete, so I guess you could pair those two together.

And Phantasy Star series . . . I still need to play those games! V_V

As a physicist myself (granted I'm in astronomy, but it's still physics) I would have to say:

1)No. Quantum and macro connection is not understood.  Information and matter are seperate realms.  99.99999999% sure it will not happen, but will be more than happy if it does (that means we can stop giving all our money to the Saudis for oil)!!

2)No.

3)No.  Very good for science fiction movies/stories/games, but no.

cheers,

-avatar!

You don't know the future. Anyway, this is just for fun. "Experts" claimed that atomic bombs could not be built, that in 1900 there was nothing else to learn, etc. The fact that it's really hard to teleport matter means that it will definitely happen, in my opinion. The benefits make it worth whatever sort of exotic (dangerous, costly) technologies will have to be developed.

   Information, as far as I know, exists. It is energy if it is not matter. Matter and energy are the same, according to that fellow named Einstein. Therefore information is matter. Am I right or wrong?

   If information is neither matter nor energy, then what is it?

I know about that movie, since I like his movies, but I haven't seen it yet. That does sound similar to a twilight zone episode from the 1980's series in which a dead woman was trapped in a computer hologram.

Wasn't the computer "Synergy" from Jem something along those same lines? ;)

I'd be pretty happy if this shit actually went down because I'd save money on shipping when I buy CDs. Not only would it be cheaper than EMS, but teleportation would be a lot quicker. Try to lose my package in the mail now, Japanese web sites!

.

It'd only be a matter of time before teleportation costed money. Remember, there will never be an effective, free method of shipping ever. Someone will claim the need to collect funds... what happens when a teleporter goes down or needs (let's say) laser fuel?!

as a fedex driver i demand you delete this thread

This and Zane's responses made me laugh. ^_~

A common misconception is that matter and energy are the same.  They are releated, but they are NOT the same.  By your logic one could argue that the force of gravity and distance is the same thing.  They're completely different notions, but there is a direct relationship between them, as there is a direct relationship between matter and energy.
That is all.

cheers,

-avatar!

I see your point about the quality of relatedness. My take on the issue is that matter can be converted to energy and vice versa, so it's hard for me to think of them as not being the same. This reminds me of the current issue in astronomy about the big bang; how it didn't happen in space, but created space. It also reminds me of the way people are afraid to eat fat, thinking it will make them fat, when simple carbohydrates actually make people fat. This is really a matter of the subtleties of English or the inadequacy of English, whichever you prefer.

I have to admit, one never truly knows were scientific discoveries can lead.  Most people have heard of quantum mechanics, yet they shy away from it figuring that it is really complicated and has nothing to do with anything in their life.  Yet, were it not for our understanding of quantum mechanics (though it is incomplete), computers as we know them today would not exist!  I'm skeptical (as a good scientist should be) but I do think it would be awesome if teleportation devices actually existed...  Of course, you have to wonder how collisions would turn out...I'm thinking ugly.

cheers,

-avatar!

I predict that by the space year 2000ad, we'll be driving flying cars, will have robot butlers and we won't have to work because computers the size of skyscrapers will be doing all of our work for us. Disease and death will be eradicated and we will reproduce by just taking a pill.

And we'll all wear silver jumpsuits.

If that doesn't turn out to be true, I'm going to be bitterly disappointed.

Yes, that is amusing stuff. It's funny that they actually made flying cars 60 years ago or so.

  But now it seems that computers might be working us, rather than doing anything for us.

  Technology doesn't help in reducing workloads. We still work 40+ hours a week. Employers simply find more stuff for us to do. Technology does help in making certain tasks easier, but the same quantity of work still exists. Even with teleporters, I'd still bet we'd be stuck with 40+ hour work weeks. Getting around and moving materials would be trivial, but more jobs would be created, new tasks would have to be performed. A workload of sorts will always exist.

   To not have to work would be to eliminate the needs of humans. If humans stop needing things, then there would be nothing to do. With that in mind, almost any future prediction based on technology is plausible, since humans need technology. But to predict that humans won't have to work indicates that we have eliminated our needs.

  Now, I can get crazy. Let's say some alien race wants to take care of us, no strings attached. In that case, we wouldn't have to work. There are other things I thought of, but, um..no. I have to leave some cards under the table.

Having alien races come to Earth... when do you think it will happen?  Will it be this century? 

That sort of leads to what will happen?  Will we try to just destroy them out of fear or will there be a genuine attempt at fostering relations with aliens?  I'm influenced by watching too much science fiction tho haha..  Will they be benign like Vulcans were, or will they have ulterior motives like Taelons, or will our planet just get vaporised from orbit like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....

I watch too much tv... haha

Well we would have loads to do - we would be free to explore ourselves artistically, philosophise, explore the universe. There would be no shortage of things to do. Granted, many people would just sit on their asses doing nothing but I hope we'd evolve passed that at some point.

You're right though - technology doesn't help to reduce workloads. But it should. Every time someones job is replaced by a machine, computer, factory in some third world country, I think that they should still get their salary minus the running costs of the replacement. We would effectively work to get ourselves replaced by better and more efficient replacements - a new goal and a new way of approaching the idea of work and productivity. Eventually, we would all be replaced and all of our needs would be filled by those machines and computers (I'm hoping even those third world factories will be replaced too).

Then we could paint, write music, or whatever - find our true talents.

That's my vision of the future.

But then I genuinely was disappointed when we hit the year 2000 and didn't have robot butlers. I think I'm a futurist - is that a real word? I'm all for forward motion and leaving the past behind. Bring on those flying cars. Bring on those silver cities in the clouds. Bring on those teleporters.

Making contact with intelligent civilizations is an interesting concept.  The fastest speed we know of is the speed of light.  Theoretically it is the fastest speed there is (in a vacuum), and it is impossible to go any faster (yes, there are other "theories" about being able to go faster than the speed of light, but those are not given any credence by scientists).  The nearest star to our own is 4 light-years away.  Thus, to say hello and get a response from someone in the nearest star to us, would take a minimum of 8 years.  If there is intelligent life at the edge of our galaxy (the edge nearest to us), it would take about 35,000 years to exchange greetings.  Of course our galaxy is just one of billions which are MUCH farther away from us than anything in our own Milky Way, well you can see why many are skeptical of whether we will ever visit/be visited by/contact alien civilizations.

cheers,

-avatar!

An interesting thing to ponder is that the minds that have been investigating the laws of nature are human minds. As far as I know, no aliens are making scientific breakthroughs on the Earth. So, everything is being conducted from a human point of view, with our imaginative capabilities. Aliens would not be subject to our limitations - they would have their own. In some ways they would be inferior and others, superior. The speed of light is a limit in a vacuum, according to the investigations that have been conducted by human beings. Some aliens may have reached a different conclusion.
Humans see a certain part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some aliens may be unaware it exists and see in some other method of energy transfer, one which we are unable to detect. The universe is 5% 'normal matter'. That fact leaves open possibilities for alien configurations that may be capable of doing things we could never understand. In fact, merely thinking about aliens might be a waste of time.