We all know that there are phenomenal things happening in technology as it develops at an exponential rate. Followers of TED Tv can tap into a vast pool of mind blowing ideas – which as they say are ideas worth spreading. Many of them are taking us beyond the realms of elements incorporated into science fiction books, films and television programmes.
Yahoo have installed an interactive wall in their premises – and I don’t remember seeing this on anything like Star Trek – but perhaps I missed that episode.
It seems to me though that we are getting to the stage where science fact is happening faster than science fiction. It used to be that we had to first accept a concept as being believable before it could be manifested as reality – this process alone could take years if not decades or even centuries. How long did it take for Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines to develop into something that could actually fly? Was that because his ideas were just lost in time or did they not happen until ‘mankind’ was ready to adopt such alien activities?
I can accept that there are many ideas which still reside in the realms of the ridiculous and impossible. For quite a few of us we would be quite happy for them to stay as fictional inspirations but there seems to be rather a lot of interest in these seemingly impossible concepts which would suggest to me that someone somewhere thinks that they are possible.
I am not sure that I fancy having my molecules being zapped across the Universe in the interests of teleportation – not unless a few things can be re-configured en route. Now I can see a market for a bit of that. If it was possible for the molecules to be just rearranged slightly to do shed a few pounds, tone muscles, eliminate grey hair, do a boob job, face-lift and so on then I can see quite an interest in the market for that. Get even cleverer and perhaps someone could come up with a way of utilising the spare flab molecules into a source for power – now that would be worth considering. Hmm – although that smacks a bit of “The Matrix” where humans become a collective battery providing power. I suppose that you can take things just a bit too far.
So what do you think – are we going to overtake ourselves and our creativity? Are we adapting and accepting at an exponential rate too? If so, what might we see in the next ten years that today seem impossible? How will this affect running a business?
What have you seen that is fantastic science fact?