About 15 years ago I made a bet with a friend that we'd be going to Mars before 2010. Well, I lost that one. I also had my hopes up we'd have a running fusion reactor by 2010. Oh well. On the other hand, there aren't many things that have happened over the past 15 years that I didn't think would happen - there's mostly stuff I didn't even realize might happen. While it was always kind of clear that teleportation wouldn't be a reality, tricoders wouldn't be a reality, artificial limbs would, but would need time to be perfected, Star Trek style communicators and automatic doors were already reality back then and we most certainly wouldn't be tapping into the prospect of the zero-point field to extract infinite energy, there's some stuff I didn't know to think of that would turn out the way it has. Eg:

- parallelism (parallel CPU/GPU architecture)
- string theory
- robots that dance, but would still be useless
- the US space program being a bit of a laughing stock
- we would still have warm bear

There's just one thing from popular sci-fi that has made its way into reality: ion thrusters, especially what with all the fail regarding cloudbusting before the 90s.

The post-2k years seemed like such a mystical thing - largely due to the efforts of popular media. But still.

However, one shouldn't be easily deterred and I just recently came across something that seemed rather intriguing (at least in writing): anti-matter propulsion prospects. In short, it would seem, we've overcome many of the thoretical obstacles of building an anti-matter drive - now we're stuck with things like fuel shortage and certain construction issues. Though still impossible, anti-matter propulsion is certainly one thing I didn't think would be that probable at this time. If we could tap into a source of anti-matter or somehow resolve the problem of obtaining it in greater quantities, we'd most certainly accomplish a very real leap forward in both planetary energy issues as well as propulsion. While admittedly dangerous and in need of very delicate handling, an anti-matter meltdown would still be infinitely cleaner than any fission or fossil fuel explosion, not to mention two orders of magnitude more efficient than fusion and three times more so than fission.

So - what are the awesomest technological advances you never thought possible or probable over the past 10-15 years?

Apparently someone just created shoes that lace themselves up like in Back to the Future 2.

Yeah, I'm easily entertained.

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So - what are the awesomest technological advances you never thought possible or probable over the past 10-15 years?

15 years ago, I was on vacation. Of course, it was time to call home, some 500km away.

In the evening, we'd go for a walk, about 2 km, some 30 minutes.
There would be a phone office. It was a large new building which housed 8 phones in separate booths.
Since it was evening, it wasn't as hot and there simply wasn't any air conditioning anywhere.
First one would go to the operator in a separate booth and give them the number to call. There was a row of seats, where one would queue up and wait.
Operator would do their stuff, reserve an international call, and then wait for telephone company to call them back.
After some 30-45 minutes, your call would go through.
Everyone would then cram up into designated booth and try to talk. Line quality was ok-ish, but considering such absurd distance, there was plenty of delay, echo and other interference.
Calls were expensive, so the entire duration was carefully timed as to not exceed 2 minutes.
During the entire 2 or 3 week vacation, this was the only call one could afford.
This was followed by a walk back. All in all, it took two hours.

The year was 1994.

The next year, one of our group got a portable phone with a corporate account. It weighed 7 kilos and had to be installed in a car. If car wasn't running, it would drain the car battery in about 5 hours.

What luxury, imagine being able to go to car, and call home.

In 1996, I got one of those first affordable phones, weighing merely 400g.

Today, my phone is capable of playing HD video, has more computing power than 5 my year old laptop and I make video calls to anywhere in the world for free. In addition, the entire knowledge of library of congress is available via a simple query.

In 15 years I went from living in stone age, where the place you were currently at was all there was in entire world to living in Star Trek universe where everyone has a communicator and everything is just a keypress away. Teleportation? How quaint.

I was very, very young 15 years ago, but I can say that I never really realized how big the internet would become. It's only in retrospect that I realize I witnessed the development of the second printing press which has forever changed the world.

I'm more excited to see what happens with the internet and personal computing technology in the next 15 years than I am to see what our space programs do, etc.

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Original post by irreversible So - what are the awesomest technological advances you never thought possible or probable over the past 10-15 years?

Storage never ceases to amaze me. I can remember using the old 5 1/4 floppy disks:



They'd only hold about a meg of data and were pretty unreliable. You could crease them and break them, reading and writing was slow and you had to mess around with bits of sticky tape to make them read only.

Now, I can get Micro SD card:



They're tiny and I can get an 8Gb one for a handful of your english pounds. They go all the way up to 64Gb(!) which is ridiculous compared to the ~1Mb of those old floppies. Oh, and they're robust - I've put them through a washing machine and they've come out working just fine.

Possibly the most amazing thing is that this is so common now that everyone takes it for granted. Big things like getting someone on the moon are still viewed with awe, but these dinky little things are everywhere and no one bats an eye.

I'm banking that 15 years from now there won't be books in schools. Think of how much money schools will save if instead of purchasing large sets of books every year, they just loaned out e-readers and transferred the licenses when class was over. Laptops and e-readers will save on book purchases, paper, trash removal, and reduce the required space of lockers.

15 years ago I would not have imagined the proliferation of phone technology. I figured more people would have cell phones. I did not see them becoming small computing/messaging devices that EVERYONE would have.

I figured by 2010 we would have flying cars. Not everywhere, but at least for the ultra-rich. I'm still waiting for Moller to get off his ass. Also, I imagined in 2000 that by now we'd have more nuke plants and be using hydrogen fuel cells for cars. Pretty shitty that we haven't made ANY advancements in car engines.

I'm looking to see personal electricity machines in greater use. Think of all the energy we waste on life on a given day that isn't captured. How about hooking up turbines to all the exercise bikes in the local gym? There's a rowing machine where I'm pumping out 100 watts continuously for several minutes, why not use the energy to convert some water to hydrogen to power a car? Or put it back into the grid. Degenerative braking even for gas cars, energy could go into a battery that you can discharge at home.

I also think that pretty soon the fear factor of technology will tone down and records and information will be stored on personal chips, accessible via the internet. Also, historically mechanical devices will convert to digital ones. So for example, your car steering wheel and gas/brake pedals will be converted into a much smaller digital joystick. This will allow the car to be redesigned for maximum efficiency and much more comfort, especially for drivers.

Oh also, maybe not 15 years from now but definitely in my lifetime I expect that there will be very few "sitting desks" for working. Within the next decade people will be discovering how much crippling stress sitting for hours every day does to your body. There will be more standing desks or convertible sit to stand work stations that allow people to do office work while standing up.

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Original post by irreversible I also had my hopes up we'd have a running fusion reactor by 2010.

We've had a "running fusion reactor" in the form of the Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor since the 1960s. To be fair, they probably can't produce net power, but the successor of this design, the Polywell fusor, might have a chance. If only they had gotten more funding a few years ago... Now the navy's funding them and they can't talk about their work anymore.

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Original post by ChurchSkiz Oh also, maybe not 15 years from now but definitely in my lifetime I expect that there will be very few "sitting desks" for working. Within the next decade people will be discovering how much crippling stress sitting for hours every day does to your body. There will be more standing desks or convertible sit to stand work stations that allow people to do office work while standing up.

Where I work if you want a sit/stand workstation you can get one. Not many people do, but the option is there... This isn't particularly high-tech.

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Original post by Oberon_Command Quote: Original post by irreversible I also had my hopes up we'd have a running fusion reactor by 2010. We've had a "running fusion reactor" in the form of the Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor since the 1960s. To be fair, they probably can't produce net power, but the successor of this design, the Polywell fusor, might have a chance. If only they had gotten more funding a few years ago... Now the navy's funding them and they can't talk about their work anymore.

They must need new power plants for their railguns on their warships.