Imagine a world where one invention changes society

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-05-08 11:15am

I don't suppose this lie detector would work over a BBS too?

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-05-08 11:29am

Jumping on the 'Niven sure was good at this' bandwagon ....

Perfect transplantation technology -- of everything from kidneys to all of your skin -- without synthetic organ technology. This means a huge demand for 'spare parts' that results in the future crime of 'organlegging,' basically kidnapping people to harvest their parts. The criminal gangs that flourish in this market are a key plot element of several Niven stories and the focus of a couple of his main characters, like Gil "the ARM" Hamilton.

It pops up as 'urban legend' (drunks waking up in the park missing a kidney) now and then today, but Niven was writing this stuff decades ago.

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2005-05-08 12:14pm

I remember reading a short story called The Pause Button, (IIRC) which involved people being able to "pause" time by increasing the speed at which their brains work by a few million times. As I recall, it led to world peace or somesuch, as everyone was able to pause and take literally as much time as they'd ever need to work out the solution to a problem.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2005-05-08 12:35pm

*Reads above*
Agreed. I always thought if I had three wishes, one of them would be able to pause time. Or, more acuratly, change the flow of time whenever I wished so one Hour for me, was one second in normal time.

speaker-to-trolls · Post by **speaker-to-trolls** » 2005-05-08 01:53pm

Chmee wrote:Jumping on the 'Niven sure was good at this' bandwagon ....

Perfect transplantation technology -- of everything from kidneys to all of your skin -- without synthetic organ technology. This means a huge demand for 'spare parts' that results in the future crime of 'organlegging,' basically kidnapping people to harvest their parts. The criminal gangs that flourish in this market are a key plot element of several Niven stories and the focus of a couple of his main characters, like Gil "the ARM" Hamilton.

It pops up as 'urban legend' (drunks waking up in the park missing a kidney) now and then today, but Niven was writing this stuff decades ago.

More importantly, the demand for spare parts meant that every crime was made capital, so that the government could harvest criminals' organs to meet that demand.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-05-08 01:55pm

speaker-to-trolls wrote:
Chmee wrote:Jumping on the 'Niven sure was good at this' bandwagon ....

Perfect transplantation technology -- of everything from kidneys to all of your skin -- without synthetic organ technology. This means a huge demand for 'spare parts' that results in the future crime of 'organlegging,' basically kidnapping people to harvest their parts. The criminal gangs that flourish in this market are a key plot element of several Niven stories and the focus of a couple of his main characters, like Gil "the ARM" Hamilton.

It pops up as 'urban legend' (drunks waking up in the park missing a kidney) now and then today, but Niven was writing this stuff decades ago.
More importantly, the demand for spare parts meant that every crime was made capital, so that the government could harvest criminals' organs to meet that demand.

Yeah, the government's hypocritical complicity in organlegging was an insightful part of the Known Space universe.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-08 02:52pm

Falkenhayn wrote:a drug in the water supply that randomly determines the ethnicity of a child regardless of parentage.

It'd be really hilarious to release that without telling anybody, and then sit back and laugh your head off as three quarters of the marriages in the world fall apart as every man on Earth becomes convinced his wife is habitually cheating on him. That has to be the ultimate practical joke.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-05-08 05:05pm

Chmee wrote:Yeah, the government's hypocritical complicity in organlegging was an insightful part of the Known Space universe.

Patchwork Girl.. Was that Niven? Same premise.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2005-05-08 05:55pm

SirNitram wrote:
Chmee wrote:Yeah, the government's hypocritical complicity in organlegging was an insightful part of the Known Space universe.
Patchwork Girl.. Was that Niven? Same premise.

Yes, Patchwork Girl was Niven. One of the Gil the Arm stories.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2005-05-08 06:33pm

Beowulf wrote:
SirNitram wrote:
Chmee wrote:Yeah, the government's hypocritical complicity in organlegging was an insightful part of the Known Space universe.
Patchwork Girl.. Was that Niven? Same premise.
Yes, Patchwork Girl was Niven. One of the Gil the Arm stories.

What were the others? Gil was pretty cool, I liked the take he did for psi there.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2005-05-08 06:44pm

An orgasm drug. Pop one pill and you pop one off. Imagine the effects.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-05-08 07:07pm

SirNitram wrote:
Beowulf wrote:
SirNitram wrote: Patchwork Girl.. Was that Niven? Same premise.
Yes, Patchwork Girl was Niven. One of the Gil the Arm stories.
What were the others? Gil was pretty cool, I liked the take he did for psi there.

I think all the Gil the ARM short stories are collected in the anthology "Flatlander" ...

Losonti Tokash · Post by **Losonti Tokash** » 2005-05-08 07:07pm

Ender wrote:An orgasm drug. Pop one pill and you pop one off. Imagine the effects.

There was an antidepressant that had that as a side effect, IIRC.

Speak of the devil, here it is.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2005-05-08 07:35pm

Zor wrote:An Cybernetic Implant that links up to moter control, vision and thought parts of the brain that is manditory. If someone points a gun at someone, or holds a knife to someones neck or is about to beat someone, or tries to steal something, the implant takes over, stops him/her from doing it and walks his ass down to a jail cell to serve his term.

Zor

Welcome to the universe of Ghost in the Shell, give or take.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2005-05-09 05:13am

One recent book that I thought pulled this off well was "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, which is about tiny wormholes being used as cameras leading to the end of privacy.

Chmee wrote:I think all the Gil the ARM short stories are collected in the anthology "Flatlander" ...

I was going to suggest "The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton" was more comprehensive, but it turns out you're right.

JointStrikeFighter · Post by **JointStrikeFighter** » 2005-05-09 05:21am

Yeah 'kight of other days' was sure as hell an interesting future.

And i know i know, But cmon Bi-Centennial man, it rocked

Diamedes · Post by **Diamedes** » 2005-05-09 06:15am

The Gil stories are great.

Another great story along these lines is "Business as Usual, During Alterations" by Ralph Williams. In it some concerned galactic civilization decides that our current civilization is too greedy and violent, so they decide a matter duplicator is the best way to completely destabilize us. The story's told from the perspective of a NYC department story manager who has to deal with the chaos when people enter the store with the duplicators. It's more of an Outside Context introduction of the technology, but still amusing.

Another interesting one is "Zap," by James P. Hogan I believe, about a world where if any three people punch in one's personal termination number into a phone three times, that individual dies. There's a twist I won't spoil, but let it be said it's a polite society, with lots of simmering.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2005-05-09 06:46am

I don't think the idea of a 100% accurate lie detector could even work in a scifi story, since you could ask an uberFundie and an atheist "Does God exist?", get two different answers and both know their answers to be true, or logically equivalent. What if you asked someone when hyperdrive will be invented, and they say "2147"? The lie detector itself would have to have an amber 'I dunno' LED.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2005-05-09 07:32am

Winston Blake wrote:What if you asked someone when hyperdrive will be invented, and they say "2147"? The lie detector itself would have to have an amber 'I dunno' LED.

You've got that the wrong way round. 'I dunno' would be the truth, anything else would be a lie.

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2005-05-09 06:04pm

You miss the point. A lie detector detects whether the individual is lying or not. So you could ask different people the same question, eg 'Does God exist' and get different answers, none of which are lies.

The fact that no lie =! truth is not going to be mentioned by a fundy using the detector to show that his words are 'the unvernished truth' to the masses.

Elmca · Post by **Elmca** » 2005-05-11 11:32am

The Truth Machine by James Halperin is a pretty good "lie detector" novel. I also think Ben Bova or Greg Bear wrote one, too. The Bova/Bear novel dealt with the problems of half-truths and self-delusions pretty well.

As for inventions that will change the world: I think one is almost here.

Camera phones can already take a picture of a crime in progress. What will happen when camera phones can take video and upload it constantly to a central depository, complete with time/date stamps? You're going to get bands of "vigilantes" who do nothing except keep thier cameras turned to anyone they think looks suspicious to them.

Diamedes · Post by **Diamedes** » 2005-05-11 08:03pm

Junghalli wrote:
Falkenhayn wrote:a drug in the water supply that randomly determines the ethnicity of a child regardless of parentage.
It'd be really hilarious to release that without telling anybody, and then sit back and laugh your head off as three quarters of the marriages in the world fall apart as every man on Earth becomes convinced his wife is habitually cheating on him. That has to be the ultimate practical joke.

I read a story somewhere about grad students in a genetics lab doing this, though to everyone, adult or child. They did a few other things too, like turned people into dwarves with the goal of conserving resources.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-11 09:27pm

Diamedes wrote:I read a story somewhere about grad students in a genetics lab doing this, though to everyone, adult or child. They did a few other things too, like turned people into dwarves with the goal of conserving resources.

You know, maybe somebody could suggest this to Sheppard, cause this has to be the ideal sadistic superweapon to use on the Dominate of Draka.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2005-05-12 08:13am

On the subject of inventions that change the world, it has often been quipped that a Star-Trek quality holodeck will be the last invention mankind ever makes.

Although I personally could come up with a list of reasons the invention of a matter teleportation device could bring about the collapse of civilization, too.

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2005-05-20 08:15pm

The best what-if novel I ever read was called "Afterlife". Can't recall the author, though..

It's about a man who gets revived in a future where it's confirmed that you can go to heaven, and there's a machine that can do it for you. Society has changed radically and in very unexpected ways. For example, once you are treated so you have a ticket to afterlife (which only the richest can afford, alternatively a lifetime of meditation and dedication), you are free sport to be killed. Real ghosts, zombies, and whatnot appears as sideeffects of this technology and much more.