Yuri2356
Test Screening
Er, is your keyboard broken or is that supposed to be a drunken homeless man?
Future era Ideas
- Thread starter mortalmadman
- Start date
sir_schwick
Archbishop of Towels
My quote was originally from the South Park were the future people took all the jobs.
Genetic Biasing: Genetic Biasing will simply allow scientists to design the unborn along any desired lineswithin the normal parameters of humanity. For example, they could give your child longer arms, but not four arms. Think Gatica.
Genetic Engineering: Genetic Engineering will allow scientists to design the unborn along any lines that work biologically. This involves some educated guesswork and experimentation.
Cryogenics: It will become possible to freeze people so they can be thawed out again and revived to life. This will make it possible to skip as far as you like into the future without experiencing any age effects. Important leaders, who only have to make major decisions every few years, will be among the first to use this technology.
Regeneration: Regeneration will allow scientists to take biological snapshots of adults, then treat them later to return them to the exact biological state they were in at the time of the snapshot. With repeated treatments this allows indefinite lifespan, but the downside is neurological damage and economic cost.
Biomutability: Biomutability allows scientists to take adults and convert them to some other designed biological form. This is the adult version of Genetic Engineering. Think the Proteus series.
Human Cloning: technically, human cloning simply allows the production of exact genetic copies of an adult, and as such is available contemporaneously with Genetic Biasing. However, the technology refered to here is a version of biomutability: the rapid creation of an exact adult copy of an adult.
Immortality: Regeneration gives immortality, but the technology referred to here is a biomutation causing side-effect free automatic regeneration.
Intelligence Increase: The intellect is a particularly complex system, and functional biomutation of it will be one of the last frontiers perfected.
Duralloy: Duralloy is a complex crystal of multiple metals, far stronger and lighter than steel. It requires magnetic field extension and a variety of metals.
Hyperdiamond: Hyperdiamond is diamond which is created by a process allowing it to be formed in large complex structures at the time of manufacture. It requires magnetic field extension. Hyperdiamond is sronger than duralloy, but requires more expensive equipment to manufacture, and that equipment works very slowly.
Transuranics: Very heavy elements, beyond Uranium on the periodic table, tend to decay very rapidly in the colliders where they are made. However, there is a stable island of elements beyond what can currently be made, and these elements will have a variety of
extremely useful properties.
Metastable Neutronium: Neutronium is found in the cores of collapsed stars. It is an unnaturally dense metal composed entirely of atomic nucleus. While it is very dense, it is even better than Duralloy per weight, and can thus be drawn very thin and used as a superior metal. For this to be possible, and to make it in the first place, you need the mastery of extended weak fields.
Exotic Matter: Exotic matter is not matter in the normal sense of the word. It has properties that are made possible only by distortion of spacetime, allowing it to hold wormholes open. The production of exotic matter requires mastery of the extended strong field.
Plasteel: Plasteel is actually a family of advanced polymers with the strength of steel, except that they can be made very cheaply from almost any raw material. Some plasteels are excellent conductors of light and electricity (glasteel), while classic white plasteel is an extremely good insulator.
Synthetic Food: Biological sources are an inefficient way to make food, and George Jettson knew it. One technology that is easily in the cards is total synthesis of food in chemical plants, almost from base elements.
Megaburb: The materials of the future will make the classic city obsolete. Future urban sprawl will consist of monolithic suburbs, each blanketing many square miles with a single unbroken building towering to the edge of the atmosphere.
Vendbots: In the megaburbs of the future, the old style of retailing, where you either go to a store of have something delivered by a person in a vehicle, will be replaced with a system of universal vending machines, capable of delivering anything to any point. These will be like dumbwaiters, whose elevator shafts thread all directions everywhere.
Buckyfiber: The first supermaterial of the future will be cheap buckytube fiber.
Fusion: Current experiments with Fusion produce less power than they take in. With increasing efficiency, this hurdle will be overcome. One way to increase efficiency, for fusion, is simply to increase size. A large enough tokamak, even with current technology, would almost certainly exceed the break even point, though it would be very expensive to build.
Minifusion: Initially, taking advantage of the safe, resource easy, pollution free power of nuclear fusion will require investment in very large power plants. However, with advancements, the efficiency of the process will be increased, allowing the size of the plant investment to be reduced.
Microfusion: In time, fusion plants will become even smaller than the cheap minifusion plants, so small it will be possible to build vehicles with fusion power plants.
Laser Cannon: Lasers require a large amount of power to be effective weapons on and of themselves, and the perfect aiming and silence are simply not worth the cost, leaving explosive based weapons the field. However, future technology will make large amounts of power more portable. One form of highly portable power is the microfusion plant. A tank using one for its engine can also use the power to run a laser cannon that is a truly formidable battlefield weapon.
CP Violation: In supercolliders, it is possible to create antimatter. As everyone knows, matter can be converted to energy, and a small amount of matter equals a whole lot of energy. Witness the atom bomb, when a few atoms convert to enough energy to level a city. You can also go the other way, and put in a whole lot of energy to create a little matter. When you do this, though, you always get one unit of regular matter and one unit of antimatter. Now, when matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. So, since almost everything is matter, antimatter amounts to a whole lot of dense energy. If you could mess with the process, so that when you convert energy into matter, you get more antimatter than regular matter, you would really have something powerful.
Energy Transmuter: An energy transmuter is a matter creating particle collider that uses CP Violation to produce slightly more antimatter than matter. It burns all the antimatter it produces to power itself, to create its next batch, and still has antimatter left over. The only cost is a tiny amount of regular matter, which is a very very cheap price to pay.
Element Transmuter: With an energy transmuter you have so much cheap energy that you can literally use matter from energy creation to make whatever element you like. This reduces the value of all rare materials, as nothing cannot simply be produced by the local power plant.
Minitransmuter: The minitransmuter is a shrunken version of the Element Transmuter, suitable for a moderately small business. It produces both power and materials in abundance.
Replicator: Replicators use even smaller transmuters than minitransmuters, combined with advanced imaging and 3D material holography to produce exact copies of any small item and only requiring any rubbish, or even air, for raw material, making business as usual economics a thing of the past.
Warm Superconductor: Superconductors have been known for some time, in fact since the dawn of the 20th century. These materials conduct electricity without resistance, which gives them many weird and valuable properties. However, they require extreme refrigeration, or expensive materials, or both. In the future, scientists will discover ways to make superconductors that work at room temperature.
Superloops: If you take a superconducting wire and loop it around itself, you put almost any amount electricity into this loop, and it will travel around in circles forever without degrading, since there is no resistance. This is a battery par excellence.
Laser Rifle: Lasers require a large amount of power to be effective weapons on and of themselves, and the perfect aiming and silence are simply not worth the cost, leaving explosive based weapons the field. However, future technology will make large amounts of power more portable. One form of highly portable power is the superloop. Backpack superloops make man portable combat lasers possible.
Supercomputers: A variety of materials and technical advances will improve computers, but the key technology will be the warm superconductor, making superconducting computers common and large. These supercomputers will be necessary for controlling many of the other advanced technologies of the future.
Metastable Metallic Hydrogen: Hydrogen under the right temperature and pressure conditions becomes a solid metal, one predicted to be light, strong, and superconducting. However, a way will have to be found to manufacture it outside of the core of Jupiter, and to keep it stable once it is outside of those conditions. The discovery of a cheap process for producing metastable metallic hydrogen will make older superconductors obsolete.
Quantum Computer: All atoms exist simultaneously in many universes, and affect each other sometimes. By harnessing the vast number of parallel circuits in a computer based on quantum properties, scientists will be able to run an almost infinite number of calculations simultaneously.
Unified Field Theory: Since the basic field forces were discovered, scientists have been trying to find a way to link the forces together as one equation. Someday they will succeed, and this will make a whole line of new force fields possible.
Graviton Blocking: The first byproduct of the UFT will be a graviton blocking field. This will make levitation possible, since it will make things weigh as much or as little as desired.
Forcefield (Expanded Magnetics): Normally, magnetic fields stay within specific bounds, dictated by quantum orbitals. UFT will make it possible to distort magnetic fields outside of their normal boundaries, and this will only be the first field extension mastered. Expanded magnetic fields are not electrical fields, but rather they act on all matter regardless of charge. They are the force fields of Lost in Space, and the Tractor Beams of Star Trek.
Stunray: One early use of the weakest versions of expanded magnetics is the stun ray. Stun rays are like directed EMPs, causing unconsciousness in fauna and crashes in automata and they even short out simple electrical systems. Such non lethal weapons have a variety of uses.
Invisibility: Another early use of expanded magnetics is light warping. Actually, this technology creates the effect of total transparency in all electromagnetic spectra, not just visible light.
Superfield (Expanded Weak Field): The weak force, which keeps neutrons together with protons in atomic nuclei, is much stronger than magnetics. Expanding it beyond the nucleus is much harder, but once you have done so you have a very powerful force.
Ultrafield (Expanded Strong Field): The strong force, which binds protons together in an atomic nucleus, is extremely strong, even stronger than the weak force, but short range. Expanding it to macro sizes makes something truly awesome.
Genetic Engineering: Genetic Engineering will allow scientists to design the unborn along any lines that work biologically. This involves some educated guesswork and experimentation.
Cryogenics: It will become possible to freeze people so they can be thawed out again and revived to life. This will make it possible to skip as far as you like into the future without experiencing any age effects. Important leaders, who only have to make major decisions every few years, will be among the first to use this technology.
Regeneration: Regeneration will allow scientists to take biological snapshots of adults, then treat them later to return them to the exact biological state they were in at the time of the snapshot. With repeated treatments this allows indefinite lifespan, but the downside is neurological damage and economic cost.
Biomutability: Biomutability allows scientists to take adults and convert them to some other designed biological form. This is the adult version of Genetic Engineering. Think the Proteus series.
Human Cloning: technically, human cloning simply allows the production of exact genetic copies of an adult, and as such is available contemporaneously with Genetic Biasing. However, the technology refered to here is a version of biomutability: the rapid creation of an exact adult copy of an adult.
Immortality: Regeneration gives immortality, but the technology referred to here is a biomutation causing side-effect free automatic regeneration.
Intelligence Increase: The intellect is a particularly complex system, and functional biomutation of it will be one of the last frontiers perfected.
Duralloy: Duralloy is a complex crystal of multiple metals, far stronger and lighter than steel. It requires magnetic field extension and a variety of metals.
Hyperdiamond: Hyperdiamond is diamond which is created by a process allowing it to be formed in large complex structures at the time of manufacture. It requires magnetic field extension. Hyperdiamond is sronger than duralloy, but requires more expensive equipment to manufacture, and that equipment works very slowly.
Transuranics: Very heavy elements, beyond Uranium on the periodic table, tend to decay very rapidly in the colliders where they are made. However, there is a stable island of elements beyond what can currently be made, and these elements will have a variety of
extremely useful properties.
Metastable Neutronium: Neutronium is found in the cores of collapsed stars. It is an unnaturally dense metal composed entirely of atomic nucleus. While it is very dense, it is even better than Duralloy per weight, and can thus be drawn very thin and used as a superior metal. For this to be possible, and to make it in the first place, you need the mastery of extended weak fields.
Exotic Matter: Exotic matter is not matter in the normal sense of the word. It has properties that are made possible only by distortion of spacetime, allowing it to hold wormholes open. The production of exotic matter requires mastery of the extended strong field.
Plasteel: Plasteel is actually a family of advanced polymers with the strength of steel, except that they can be made very cheaply from almost any raw material. Some plasteels are excellent conductors of light and electricity (glasteel), while classic white plasteel is an extremely good insulator.
Synthetic Food: Biological sources are an inefficient way to make food, and George Jettson knew it. One technology that is easily in the cards is total synthesis of food in chemical plants, almost from base elements.
Megaburb: The materials of the future will make the classic city obsolete. Future urban sprawl will consist of monolithic suburbs, each blanketing many square miles with a single unbroken building towering to the edge of the atmosphere.
Vendbots: In the megaburbs of the future, the old style of retailing, where you either go to a store of have something delivered by a person in a vehicle, will be replaced with a system of universal vending machines, capable of delivering anything to any point. These will be like dumbwaiters, whose elevator shafts thread all directions everywhere.
Buckyfiber: The first supermaterial of the future will be cheap buckytube fiber.
Fusion: Current experiments with Fusion produce less power than they take in. With increasing efficiency, this hurdle will be overcome. One way to increase efficiency, for fusion, is simply to increase size. A large enough tokamak, even with current technology, would almost certainly exceed the break even point, though it would be very expensive to build.
Minifusion: Initially, taking advantage of the safe, resource easy, pollution free power of nuclear fusion will require investment in very large power plants. However, with advancements, the efficiency of the process will be increased, allowing the size of the plant investment to be reduced.
Microfusion: In time, fusion plants will become even smaller than the cheap minifusion plants, so small it will be possible to build vehicles with fusion power plants.
Laser Cannon: Lasers require a large amount of power to be effective weapons on and of themselves, and the perfect aiming and silence are simply not worth the cost, leaving explosive based weapons the field. However, future technology will make large amounts of power more portable. One form of highly portable power is the microfusion plant. A tank using one for its engine can also use the power to run a laser cannon that is a truly formidable battlefield weapon.
CP Violation: In supercolliders, it is possible to create antimatter. As everyone knows, matter can be converted to energy, and a small amount of matter equals a whole lot of energy. Witness the atom bomb, when a few atoms convert to enough energy to level a city. You can also go the other way, and put in a whole lot of energy to create a little matter. When you do this, though, you always get one unit of regular matter and one unit of antimatter. Now, when matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. So, since almost everything is matter, antimatter amounts to a whole lot of dense energy. If you could mess with the process, so that when you convert energy into matter, you get more antimatter than regular matter, you would really have something powerful.
Energy Transmuter: An energy transmuter is a matter creating particle collider that uses CP Violation to produce slightly more antimatter than matter. It burns all the antimatter it produces to power itself, to create its next batch, and still has antimatter left over. The only cost is a tiny amount of regular matter, which is a very very cheap price to pay.
Element Transmuter: With an energy transmuter you have so much cheap energy that you can literally use matter from energy creation to make whatever element you like. This reduces the value of all rare materials, as nothing cannot simply be produced by the local power plant.
Minitransmuter: The minitransmuter is a shrunken version of the Element Transmuter, suitable for a moderately small business. It produces both power and materials in abundance.
Replicator: Replicators use even smaller transmuters than minitransmuters, combined with advanced imaging and 3D material holography to produce exact copies of any small item and only requiring any rubbish, or even air, for raw material, making business as usual economics a thing of the past.
Warm Superconductor: Superconductors have been known for some time, in fact since the dawn of the 20th century. These materials conduct electricity without resistance, which gives them many weird and valuable properties. However, they require extreme refrigeration, or expensive materials, or both. In the future, scientists will discover ways to make superconductors that work at room temperature.
Superloops: If you take a superconducting wire and loop it around itself, you put almost any amount electricity into this loop, and it will travel around in circles forever without degrading, since there is no resistance. This is a battery par excellence.
Laser Rifle: Lasers require a large amount of power to be effective weapons on and of themselves, and the perfect aiming and silence are simply not worth the cost, leaving explosive based weapons the field. However, future technology will make large amounts of power more portable. One form of highly portable power is the superloop. Backpack superloops make man portable combat lasers possible.
Supercomputers: A variety of materials and technical advances will improve computers, but the key technology will be the warm superconductor, making superconducting computers common and large. These supercomputers will be necessary for controlling many of the other advanced technologies of the future.
Metastable Metallic Hydrogen: Hydrogen under the right temperature and pressure conditions becomes a solid metal, one predicted to be light, strong, and superconducting. However, a way will have to be found to manufacture it outside of the core of Jupiter, and to keep it stable once it is outside of those conditions. The discovery of a cheap process for producing metastable metallic hydrogen will make older superconductors obsolete.
Quantum Computer: All atoms exist simultaneously in many universes, and affect each other sometimes. By harnessing the vast number of parallel circuits in a computer based on quantum properties, scientists will be able to run an almost infinite number of calculations simultaneously.
Unified Field Theory: Since the basic field forces were discovered, scientists have been trying to find a way to link the forces together as one equation. Someday they will succeed, and this will make a whole line of new force fields possible.
Graviton Blocking: The first byproduct of the UFT will be a graviton blocking field. This will make levitation possible, since it will make things weigh as much or as little as desired.
Forcefield (Expanded Magnetics): Normally, magnetic fields stay within specific bounds, dictated by quantum orbitals. UFT will make it possible to distort magnetic fields outside of their normal boundaries, and this will only be the first field extension mastered. Expanded magnetic fields are not electrical fields, but rather they act on all matter regardless of charge. They are the force fields of Lost in Space, and the Tractor Beams of Star Trek.
Stunray: One early use of the weakest versions of expanded magnetics is the stun ray. Stun rays are like directed EMPs, causing unconsciousness in fauna and crashes in automata and they even short out simple electrical systems. Such non lethal weapons have a variety of uses.
Invisibility: Another early use of expanded magnetics is light warping. Actually, this technology creates the effect of total transparency in all electromagnetic spectra, not just visible light.
Superfield (Expanded Weak Field): The weak force, which keeps neutrons together with protons in atomic nuclei, is much stronger than magnetics. Expanding it beyond the nucleus is much harder, but once you have done so you have a very powerful force.
Ultrafield (Expanded Strong Field): The strong force, which binds protons together in an atomic nucleus, is extremely strong, even stronger than the weak force, but short range. Expanding it to macro sizes makes something truly awesome.
Mind Reader: With understanding of mind/brain patterns, and powerful enough computers, scientists will gain the ability to actually read thoughts off a subject brain. At first, this will only be useful for interrogation and such.
Imprinter: If you can read a mind, and know what brain form goes with what thought, then you can alter that brain form to produce a desired thought. The imprinter creates thoughts in the subject brain. At first this will mainly be useful for education and training, but some governments will use it for re-education. Others will use the technology for frivolous purposes.
Telepathy Implant: The telepathy implant will use miniaturized mind reader and imprinter technologies, along with a communication carrier wave, to allow minds to communicate directly with each other or with devices. This technology will be used for a variety of purposes.
Thought Projector: The thought projector will be in improvement on the telepathic implant, allowing the projection of thoughts into willing or unwilling minds without implants or special helmets.
Telepathic Arts: Telepathy will be a whole new medium of expression, and as such will accrue a whole new canon of artworks.
Cyborg Minds: At some point, human minds will become so symbiotic with cybernetic aids, implants, and auxiliaries, that the cybernetic/biological line will become blurred. Much of the actual mind will come to be in the cyber medium.
Total Uploading: Eventually, it will become possible to totally upload your entire mind into a cybernetic medium, initially only into hardware tailored to it, then as a pure conversion to software.
Telepathic Hivemind: Once telepathic implants become common, people will begin to join together as hive minds, soul blurring into soul. Some will be abhorred by this, others will be fatally attracted to it. For a benevolent form of this, think the Taelons. For a malevolent form, think Borg.
VR Chamber: Virtual reality attempts to be a full simulation, immersive and interactive experience in an artificial world. At first, this will only be possible within specially constructed machinery.
VR Panels: In time, computer displays will become so good and so cheap that it will become possible to put them in everything. Every wall, and every surface of every object will be screens, and it will be possible to have them all work together to produce a VR experience anywhere, and for people to affect each others VR experiences.
VR Glasses: VR glasses are appliances that a user can wear to be able to privately see and hear heads up VR input imbedded in everything. These will precede VR Panels, for those on the cutting edge; exist alongside them for those desiring privacy, and will outlast them for old foggies afraid of getting implants.
VR Implant: VR implants will be shallow telepathic implants, restricted to sensory input. They will be superior to panels, and will become all but obligatory, as the only way to interact. Not having them will be like being illiterate or not having a cell phone or credit card.
VR Projection: In time, VR implants will become unnecessary, as the technology will exist to project VR directly into the brain without any sensory display or devices. Nevertheless, this is less intrusive than telepathic projection, since it only affects the senses, leaving the mind itself free to make what it will of the illusions.
VR Arts: Virtual Reality will be a whole new medium of expression, and as such will accrue a whole new canon of artworks.
Automated Facilities: A variety of institutions could be totally automated. Not only will factories come to be worker free, but also transportation, retail, medical care, construction, even police work. At first the automation will take the form of fixed facilities, in which appliances and vehicles are controlled by a central computer.
Fleet Drones: In time, sensitive, versatile, multipurpose machines will be manufactured to be the hands and eyes of fleet controlling central computers. Nevertheless, these fleet robots will be an industrial investment.
Household Drones: Drones will eventually move from the industrial fleets into the home. Each household or small business will have one or more drones controlled by the house computer.
Robots: The leap to true robot status , the house computer will have to go inside the drone body itself. The first of this type will be tempbots, created to be rented out on a temporary basis. These robots, with their own brains, will not have convincing human bodies or true artificial intelligence, but they will often seem capable of passing a turing test, and will learn and develop personalities and aspirations of their own.
Minibots: Early robots will be human size because that is naturally to humans. However, later robots will often be much smaller, hand sized, working in cooperative flocks. This is an efficient configuration.
Microbots: For some applications, swarms of insect sized robots will be superior.
Artificial Intelligence: Supercomputers will eventually reach a break point where they begin programming themselves faster than they can be programmed. They will reach true artificial intelligence. One application is in ubiquitous surveillance. Initially, AI will only exist in really huge computers, however.
MiniAI: Small AIs, for the household or small business, will become common with increases in technology.
MicroAI: Eventually, AIs will be small enough to fit in a small drone body.
Simbots: Simbots are drones with bodies designed to simulate humans convincingly. Early simbots will only be better looking robots.
Fleet Simbots: Early, institutional AIs will be used to augment convincing simbots, making for the most advanced possible subhuman drones. The fleet simbots own brain will be an advanced robot brain, and it will be able to commune with a true intelligence.
Androids: Androids are robots that can pass for human in every way. Their bodies look human, and they have internally contained AI brains. Androids will be legally considered human.
AI Government: Artificial intelligences will not have the benefit of evolution. While technically intelligent, and very capable in many ways, they will have a wild, unrefined nature at first. By studious application, economically independent AIs (Corporationbots) will become respectable, reliable, wise people, except real, real smart, and these bots will present themselves for public office.
Pet Nanotech: At first, nanotechnology will consist of tiny machines designed to make copies of themselves in carefully designed nutrient solutions, and to respond to simple radio frequency commands to do other tasks. Such nano will be good for various kinds of delicate work, such as medical and electronic applications, but will be limited to controlled conditions with ideal materials.
Propogating Nanotech: To overcome the limitations of pet nanotech, scientists will design nanomachines that use very common materials, allowing them to reproduce outside of the lab. Such nanomachines will find many industrial applicatons, from manufacturing to construction.
Adaptive Nanotech: Propogating nanotech will be limited to the availability of the material for which the nanomachine was designed, so scientist will develop nanomachines that adapt to find ways to use new materials, whatever is available, to perform the same functions (or different functions that might not be anticipated). Adaptive nanotech will be hugely productive.
Antimatter Mass Production: In supercolliders, it is possible to create antimatter. As everyone knows, matter can be converted to energy, and a small amount of matter equals a whole lot of energy. Witness the atom bomb, when a few atoms convert to enough energy to level a city. You can also go the other way, and put in a whole lot of energy to create a little matter. When you do this, though, you always get one unit of regular matter and one unit of antimatter. Now, when matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. So, since almost everything is matter, antimatter amounts to a whole lot of dense energy. Most supercolliders produce antimatter rather inefficiently, but in the future there will be machines specifically tuned to creating as much antimatter as possible.
Antimatter Munitions: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. Thus, you can put a little bit of antimatter, suspended in a magnetic field, in a missile or bomb, and it is incredibly powerfull. If you have really good materials, you can even use antimatter as the propellant in specially designed cannons and rockets.
Antimatter Engines: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. If you have really good materials you can use antimatter as the fuel for specially designed vehicle engines.
Antimatter Beam: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. Fortunately, antimatter comes as charged particles, just like matter, and these can be manipulated by magnetic fields. In fact, you can make an antiproton beam weapon, but the beam converts the air to a plasma all along its path before it hit its target, so it can only be used by well armored or disposable firing devices.
Controlled Singularities: With energy transmuters and extended strong fields it will be possible to create and maintain small singularities. These will have many useful properties. One is that they are great energy sources, another is that they are great weapons, and others include industrial processes like materials production.
Teleportation: With energy transmuters and extended strong fields it will be possible to create and maintain small singularities and with exotic matter it will be possible to spin them into wormholes and hold them open. This will make teleportation possible. At first it will only be possible to teleport from one wormhole device to another. Later, it will become possible to teleport from a wormhole device to some other point. And eventually, it will become possible to teleport from place to place without equipment.
Vacuum Energy: Every part of the universe is permeated by quantum particles tunneling into existence and then out of existence. These exist too short a time to interact with anything, normally, but future technology will make it possible to harness these quirks of nature, to stabilize them selectively and at will. The first application will be to create energy from nothing.
Proton Generator: Every part of the universe is permeated by quantum particles tunneling into existence and then out of existence. These exist too short a time to interact with anything, normally, but future technology will make it possible to harness these quirks of nature, to stabilize them selectively and at will. One application will be to create matter from nothing. Theory has it that the protons of the universe, created in the big bang, have a shelf life that will expire, causing the universe to end. This technology staves that terminus off indefinitely, and as such it has a profound impact on the future, on a vast scale. The future is highly pleased with this and has the power to express that pleasure.
FTL: Faster than light travel is possible by using a wormhole to temporarily enter a pocket universe with a higher lightspeed and reduced inertia, accelerating to a multiple of lightspeed, then switching back into this universe at the desired speed. On small scales, this technology is the same as teleportation, but it also affects the future mightily. A wonder, maybe a spaceship equivalent.
Time Travel: By exceeding the speed of light, you can go back in time. What that does I don't know. Gets a wonder.
Imprinter: If you can read a mind, and know what brain form goes with what thought, then you can alter that brain form to produce a desired thought. The imprinter creates thoughts in the subject brain. At first this will mainly be useful for education and training, but some governments will use it for re-education. Others will use the technology for frivolous purposes.
Telepathy Implant: The telepathy implant will use miniaturized mind reader and imprinter technologies, along with a communication carrier wave, to allow minds to communicate directly with each other or with devices. This technology will be used for a variety of purposes.
Thought Projector: The thought projector will be in improvement on the telepathic implant, allowing the projection of thoughts into willing or unwilling minds without implants or special helmets.
Telepathic Arts: Telepathy will be a whole new medium of expression, and as such will accrue a whole new canon of artworks.
Cyborg Minds: At some point, human minds will become so symbiotic with cybernetic aids, implants, and auxiliaries, that the cybernetic/biological line will become blurred. Much of the actual mind will come to be in the cyber medium.
Total Uploading: Eventually, it will become possible to totally upload your entire mind into a cybernetic medium, initially only into hardware tailored to it, then as a pure conversion to software.
Telepathic Hivemind: Once telepathic implants become common, people will begin to join together as hive minds, soul blurring into soul. Some will be abhorred by this, others will be fatally attracted to it. For a benevolent form of this, think the Taelons. For a malevolent form, think Borg.
VR Chamber: Virtual reality attempts to be a full simulation, immersive and interactive experience in an artificial world. At first, this will only be possible within specially constructed machinery.
VR Panels: In time, computer displays will become so good and so cheap that it will become possible to put them in everything. Every wall, and every surface of every object will be screens, and it will be possible to have them all work together to produce a VR experience anywhere, and for people to affect each others VR experiences.
VR Glasses: VR glasses are appliances that a user can wear to be able to privately see and hear heads up VR input imbedded in everything. These will precede VR Panels, for those on the cutting edge; exist alongside them for those desiring privacy, and will outlast them for old foggies afraid of getting implants.
VR Implant: VR implants will be shallow telepathic implants, restricted to sensory input. They will be superior to panels, and will become all but obligatory, as the only way to interact. Not having them will be like being illiterate or not having a cell phone or credit card.
VR Projection: In time, VR implants will become unnecessary, as the technology will exist to project VR directly into the brain without any sensory display or devices. Nevertheless, this is less intrusive than telepathic projection, since it only affects the senses, leaving the mind itself free to make what it will of the illusions.
VR Arts: Virtual Reality will be a whole new medium of expression, and as such will accrue a whole new canon of artworks.
Automated Facilities: A variety of institutions could be totally automated. Not only will factories come to be worker free, but also transportation, retail, medical care, construction, even police work. At first the automation will take the form of fixed facilities, in which appliances and vehicles are controlled by a central computer.
Fleet Drones: In time, sensitive, versatile, multipurpose machines will be manufactured to be the hands and eyes of fleet controlling central computers. Nevertheless, these fleet robots will be an industrial investment.
Household Drones: Drones will eventually move from the industrial fleets into the home. Each household or small business will have one or more drones controlled by the house computer.
Robots: The leap to true robot status , the house computer will have to go inside the drone body itself. The first of this type will be tempbots, created to be rented out on a temporary basis. These robots, with their own brains, will not have convincing human bodies or true artificial intelligence, but they will often seem capable of passing a turing test, and will learn and develop personalities and aspirations of their own.
Minibots: Early robots will be human size because that is naturally to humans. However, later robots will often be much smaller, hand sized, working in cooperative flocks. This is an efficient configuration.
Microbots: For some applications, swarms of insect sized robots will be superior.
Artificial Intelligence: Supercomputers will eventually reach a break point where they begin programming themselves faster than they can be programmed. They will reach true artificial intelligence. One application is in ubiquitous surveillance. Initially, AI will only exist in really huge computers, however.
MiniAI: Small AIs, for the household or small business, will become common with increases in technology.
MicroAI: Eventually, AIs will be small enough to fit in a small drone body.
Simbots: Simbots are drones with bodies designed to simulate humans convincingly. Early simbots will only be better looking robots.
Fleet Simbots: Early, institutional AIs will be used to augment convincing simbots, making for the most advanced possible subhuman drones. The fleet simbots own brain will be an advanced robot brain, and it will be able to commune with a true intelligence.
Androids: Androids are robots that can pass for human in every way. Their bodies look human, and they have internally contained AI brains. Androids will be legally considered human.
AI Government: Artificial intelligences will not have the benefit of evolution. While technically intelligent, and very capable in many ways, they will have a wild, unrefined nature at first. By studious application, economically independent AIs (Corporationbots) will become respectable, reliable, wise people, except real, real smart, and these bots will present themselves for public office.
Pet Nanotech: At first, nanotechnology will consist of tiny machines designed to make copies of themselves in carefully designed nutrient solutions, and to respond to simple radio frequency commands to do other tasks. Such nano will be good for various kinds of delicate work, such as medical and electronic applications, but will be limited to controlled conditions with ideal materials.
Propogating Nanotech: To overcome the limitations of pet nanotech, scientists will design nanomachines that use very common materials, allowing them to reproduce outside of the lab. Such nanomachines will find many industrial applicatons, from manufacturing to construction.
Adaptive Nanotech: Propogating nanotech will be limited to the availability of the material for which the nanomachine was designed, so scientist will develop nanomachines that adapt to find ways to use new materials, whatever is available, to perform the same functions (or different functions that might not be anticipated). Adaptive nanotech will be hugely productive.
Antimatter Mass Production: In supercolliders, it is possible to create antimatter. As everyone knows, matter can be converted to energy, and a small amount of matter equals a whole lot of energy. Witness the atom bomb, when a few atoms convert to enough energy to level a city. You can also go the other way, and put in a whole lot of energy to create a little matter. When you do this, though, you always get one unit of regular matter and one unit of antimatter. Now, when matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. So, since almost everything is matter, antimatter amounts to a whole lot of dense energy. Most supercolliders produce antimatter rather inefficiently, but in the future there will be machines specifically tuned to creating as much antimatter as possible.
Antimatter Munitions: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. Thus, you can put a little bit of antimatter, suspended in a magnetic field, in a missile or bomb, and it is incredibly powerfull. If you have really good materials, you can even use antimatter as the propellant in specially designed cannons and rockets.
Antimatter Engines: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. If you have really good materials you can use antimatter as the fuel for specially designed vehicle engines.
Antimatter Beam: When matter and antimatter collide, they wipe each other out and both go back to being a whole lot of energy. Fortunately, antimatter comes as charged particles, just like matter, and these can be manipulated by magnetic fields. In fact, you can make an antiproton beam weapon, but the beam converts the air to a plasma all along its path before it hit its target, so it can only be used by well armored or disposable firing devices.
Controlled Singularities: With energy transmuters and extended strong fields it will be possible to create and maintain small singularities. These will have many useful properties. One is that they are great energy sources, another is that they are great weapons, and others include industrial processes like materials production.
Teleportation: With energy transmuters and extended strong fields it will be possible to create and maintain small singularities and with exotic matter it will be possible to spin them into wormholes and hold them open. This will make teleportation possible. At first it will only be possible to teleport from one wormhole device to another. Later, it will become possible to teleport from a wormhole device to some other point. And eventually, it will become possible to teleport from place to place without equipment.
Vacuum Energy: Every part of the universe is permeated by quantum particles tunneling into existence and then out of existence. These exist too short a time to interact with anything, normally, but future technology will make it possible to harness these quirks of nature, to stabilize them selectively and at will. The first application will be to create energy from nothing.
Proton Generator: Every part of the universe is permeated by quantum particles tunneling into existence and then out of existence. These exist too short a time to interact with anything, normally, but future technology will make it possible to harness these quirks of nature, to stabilize them selectively and at will. One application will be to create matter from nothing. Theory has it that the protons of the universe, created in the big bang, have a shelf life that will expire, causing the universe to end. This technology staves that terminus off indefinitely, and as such it has a profound impact on the future, on a vast scale. The future is highly pleased with this and has the power to express that pleasure.
FTL: Faster than light travel is possible by using a wormhole to temporarily enter a pocket universe with a higher lightspeed and reduced inertia, accelerating to a multiple of lightspeed, then switching back into this universe at the desired speed. On small scales, this technology is the same as teleportation, but it also affects the future mightily. A wonder, maybe a spaceship equivalent.
Time Travel: By exceeding the speed of light, you can go back in time. What that does I don't know. Gets a wonder.
That's enough for about two ages, I think.
The future will not occur in a vacuum, the people that create it will be influenced by fiction of the past. They will find what it contained because that is what they will look for and because that fiction, as a whole, encompassed the possible--and thus the real.
To do it as a mod, you would have to leave out the earlier ages so you could reuse old engine possibilities. For example, the Megaburb could replace Planted Forest and simply produce massive food (ie housing). You can't do that if Forest is Forest. Maybe you could have the base terrains look like fully developed, ie mined grassland, hills, and mountains; and irrigated plains and deserts--all with railroads. The functiions of irrigating, mining, building roads, building rairoads, and planting forest could be reused for new techs.
But if it was a fifth era in Civ4, they could add whole new functions.
The future has always bothered me because space travel will inevitably be real important, and you can't represent it in a civ context. But really, it is not implausible that this whole tech tree could be set on Earth is because technology outpaces need. You don't need space cities because you have 1000 cubic mile megaburbs on earth. You don't need to mine the asteroids for nickel iron,becauase you can turn seawater into duralloy. You don't need to build big solar energy concentrators in space becauase you can build pure matter to energy transmuters in your back yard.
However, the fact remains that it is just postponing the question of how to end. The same solutions apply. Maybe you put in a spaceship victory condition using the most advanced techs, except these techs seem plausibly as far as you can go. "Vacuum Energy--why did you stop there?" just doesn't seem like something anybody would say.
The thing is, with the future as a lure it adds to the whole span of history.
I know I used to play sim city 3000, the whole time salivating to build a Spaceport in the year 2050.
The future will not occur in a vacuum, the people that create it will be influenced by fiction of the past. They will find what it contained because that is what they will look for and because that fiction, as a whole, encompassed the possible--and thus the real.
To do it as a mod, you would have to leave out the earlier ages so you could reuse old engine possibilities. For example, the Megaburb could replace Planted Forest and simply produce massive food (ie housing). You can't do that if Forest is Forest. Maybe you could have the base terrains look like fully developed, ie mined grassland, hills, and mountains; and irrigated plains and deserts--all with railroads. The functiions of irrigating, mining, building roads, building rairoads, and planting forest could be reused for new techs.
But if it was a fifth era in Civ4, they could add whole new functions.
The future has always bothered me because space travel will inevitably be real important, and you can't represent it in a civ context. But really, it is not implausible that this whole tech tree could be set on Earth is because technology outpaces need. You don't need space cities because you have 1000 cubic mile megaburbs on earth. You don't need to mine the asteroids for nickel iron,becauase you can turn seawater into duralloy. You don't need to build big solar energy concentrators in space becauase you can build pure matter to energy transmuters in your back yard.
However, the fact remains that it is just postponing the question of how to end. The same solutions apply. Maybe you put in a spaceship victory condition using the most advanced techs, except these techs seem plausibly as far as you can go. "Vacuum Energy--why did you stop there?" just doesn't seem like something anybody would say.
The thing is, with the future as a lure it adds to the whole span of history.
I know I used to play sim city 3000, the whole time salivating to build a Spaceport in the year 2050.
Mr. Blonde
Dr. techn.
I think before they even think of a future area they must balance the game. At the moment the only reason for being in the modern age is to go for space race victory, the game is in most cases decided until the middle of the industrial age. The modern area needs certainly improvement. A future area is an option if they can keep the game balanced and challenging until then, but for me the furure age can also be left to modders to be implemented.
That is a truly cool list of techs you made. A little short on social techs and long on physics, but a good base to work from nonetheless.
As for worries of outer space making future tech nonsense, I'm not terribly sure we will ever make a serious attempt to enter space. Consider the cyberpunk genre. Definitely future tech, but no trace of space technology beyond souped up versions of today's communications satellites.zs
As for worries of outer space making future tech nonsense, I'm not terribly sure we will ever make a serious attempt to enter space. Consider the cyberpunk genre. Definitely future tech, but no trace of space technology beyond souped up versions of today's communications satellites.zs
sir_schwick
Archbishop of Towels
This is every scientific pipedream in the field of Physics and Genetics.
What would they do? Memetics might give a building that just produces mega culture. Psychohistory could give a wonder like the Great Library. Since this is Civ4 we're talking about though, rather than just a mod, Psychohistory could do something really good. Maybe reveal absolutely all other civ's advisors in the same way "investigate city" gets you a look at a city screen. Another social tech could instantly convert an entire conquered population to your own nationality.
Such pschosocial techs would synergize with cybernetic and genetic advances. For example, an AI could really do psychohistory. VR would enhance memetics.
Also, MOO3 has oodles of social techs to mine.
Another thought is that if we're talking about new game engine features, the future could use Remote Working (in which you control a robot from your home). This would enlarge the "fat X," allowing a city's citizens to work tiles more than two squares away.
(Incidently, I've put the pipedream tech list together as an actual tech tree on paper, four full ages with what each tech does sketched in. The final age is only the 12 most "far out" techs, most for "spaceship" parts. Maybe it will turn into a mod, and in the process get more techs, like Core Tapping and Underwater Development--using a blue "land" terrain to substitute for water on the Earth map.)
Such pschosocial techs would synergize with cybernetic and genetic advances. For example, an AI could really do psychohistory. VR would enhance memetics.
Also, MOO3 has oodles of social techs to mine.
Another thought is that if we're talking about new game engine features, the future could use Remote Working (in which you control a robot from your home). This would enlarge the "fat X," allowing a city's citizens to work tiles more than two squares away.
(Incidently, I've put the pipedream tech list together as an actual tech tree on paper, four full ages with what each tech does sketched in. The final age is only the 12 most "far out" techs, most for "spaceship" parts. Maybe it will turn into a mod, and in the process get more techs, like Core Tapping and Underwater Development--using a blue "land" terrain to substitute for water on the Earth map.)
sir_schwick
Archbishop of Towels
If anything you could have a few 'game-ending' techs that would require at least two players to own before their effects coudl be used. You would get the instant assimilation, missle shield, one-turn unit production, all resources and lxuuries, etc.
Similar threads
