If You Could Bring One Sci Fi Technology to Earth

[Chirios]

Apart from any sort of "replicator" technology or any "infinite" energy sources, what would you choose?

[Formless]

FTL. Forget traveling to the stars, I want to cross the event horizon of the universe.

To see what is on the other side, natch.

Barring that, a Dimensional Flux Agitator with all the kinks and randomness worked out, for much the same reasons.

[Batman]

Depends. Do I have to worry about annihilating the universe if I introduce FTL travel or can I assume that this is the standard SciFi 'guess what-you were actually wrong about FTL shattering causality' situation? If the latter, FTL all the way, closely followed by artificial/antigravity and its corollaries. Rotary/not exceeding 1 g by much acceleration gravity is just so limiting.

[Ahriman238]

FTL if everything works as it does in fiction.

If not, Prolong from the Honorverse. A chemical therapy that is cheap enough to be universally applied, and can double or triple human life expectancy by retarding aging. Won't do the world any favors in terms of overpopulation, but what can you do? At least there will be more minds bent to solving the problem. Not drastic enough, I think and hope, to shatter civilization. Plus, I think it'd be kind of nice to be remembered as the father of the most profound medical revolution since a man first figured that people were healthier if they don't sleep in their own shit.

[Stofsk]

Apart from any sort of "replicator" technology or any "infinite" energy sources, what would you choose?

Lol, what else is left after that?

Those would be the one's I'd select. If they're already a given... well, FTL might be nice, some kind of drug to cure aging would be even better though (FLT isn't really all that necessary, if you have infinite energy already then you could just got slowboat style across the galaxy and be fine with it, or just colonise the solar system en masse, there's plenty of room in our own backyard. I'd rather live longer though).

Maybe some kind of matter transporter as well. Even if you don't want to use it to travel instantaneously to any point in the world (I would but whatevs), think of how industry and the economy would benefit from this. Disaster relief? Got a pile of wreckage you need cleared? Teleport it out of the way. Trapped people buried under a ton of stuff? Well you could teleport them out from under it and save them. I am positive you could apply it in other ways as well.

[Panzersharkcat]

Scaled-down-in-firepower Green Lantern power rings for everyone, programmed to only be able to attack defensively.

[Ryan Thunder]

Total Annihilation-esque 'nanolathe' reclamation and construction technology.

[wautd]

Antigravity for the short term.
FTL would be nice, but you'll need more than just FTL for interstellar travel.

[Darth Tedious]

A computer with Orac ability.
Being able to the whole world as a botnet with such efficiency as to reliably predict the future (as well as being able to hack anything and everything) would have countless advantages.

And before anyone points out the sociopathy of the idea, you shouldn't give me sci-fi tech like that in the first place- what did you think I was going to do with it? Hell, I'll make it benefit humanity as a whole when I'm done having fun.

[Zixinus]

Can we get a friendly (ie, does not want to annihilate humanity and politely helps it out because it finds it a good reason), superadvanced AI, completely with self-powered (for several centuries) super-advanced-computer that combined will tell you the answer to incredibly difficult technical problems? Stuff that we don't have the science for yet?

[Meest]

Clean or safe power generation everything else stems from there, fusion+ levels of power changes civilizations.

[Dwelf]

Is this the knowledge required to build the technology, A working example of the technology or both.

If it is a working example then I'm going to have to go with an Orbital Elevator.

[Darth Tedious]

Can we get a friendly (ie, does not want to annihilate humanity and politely helps it out because it finds it a good reason), superadvanced AI, completely with self-powered (for several centuries) super-advanced-computer that combined will tell you the answer to incredibly difficult technical problems? Stuff that we don't have the science for yet?

I did suggest Orac...
Just use him for good instead of what I'd do.

[Imperial528]

Apart from any sort of "replicator" technology or any "infinite" energy sources, what would you choose?

I would say a material that is electrically superconducting at room temperature, or even better, is permanently superconducting up to the point where you melt/burn it. And of course the knowledge required to replicate it.

Sci-fi power sources are nice and all, but superconductors not only allow us to do more with what we have (less transmission loss), but they also allow a lot of other advances, such as super efficient motors, or computers that generate almost no heat*

*Assuming processors can be made out of superconducting materials.

[Lost Soal]

Fully intact and complete 40K STC system. In addition to all the FTL and power generations technologies we want it'll also tell you how the build the inevitible exotic materials you need which could screw you over if you went for them idividually, depending on the small print.

[D.Turtle]

Well aside from the obvious copuot solutions of a computer (or AI or whatever) that holds a multitude of technologies thereby bypassing the restriction of only having one Sci-Fi technology brought to Earth, I would also go for some form of cheap, fast, reliable, usable FTL drive. Having just recently finished reading up on 11 years of Schlock Mercenary, I'll just go with a Teraport system (and Teraport denial system).

The reason is quite simple: From everything we know FTL is impossible. Therefore the only way to get it is by cheating. Also, having a usable FTL system would open so much more of the universe to us, that it would fundamentally change pretty much everything. It would open up so many opportunities that had seemed impossible before.

[Zixinus]

I don't see much of the point behind getting an FTL drive. Yeah, you have it, but you still need a spaceship to take much advantage of it.

And even if you get a space-capsule with it on board out into orbit (either by the FTL technology or more mundane means) going around won't mean that much: sure, space technology will be a whole lot more awesome, but you still have a whole bunch of other problems like Peak Oil and so on.

[Ugolino]

TARDIS.

[Purple]

Holodecs from Trek. Screw FTL and magic medicine. This thing would make me rich beyond belief.
I would build my self an entertainment empire and live out my days rich and happy.

[Solauren]

One Ancient Knowledge Database, modified to work on human physiology, please.

Failing that, FTL

[lordofchange13]

I want the device from 40K,that uses the warp to answer any questions correctly. If I cant have that how about a crap ton of element zero from mass effect, and a manual on how to use it. ezo is antigrav,artificial grav,FTL,wormholes,and force fields all in one!

[Formless]

Those would be the one's I'd select. If they're already a given... well, FTL might be nice, some kind of drug to cure aging would be even better though (FLT isn't really all that necessary, if you have infinite energy already then you could just got slowboat style across the galaxy and be fine with it, or just colonise the solar system en masse, there's plenty of room in our own backyard. I'd rather live longer though).

FTL would be nice, but you'll need more than just FTL for interstellar travel.

What part of "escape the event horizon of the universe to explore the Multiverse" is so hard to understand? You don't waste FTL on piddling around in your galactic neighborhood colonizing planets and shit for shits and giggles. That's thinking small, thinking within the cliches of sci-fi rather than transcending them. FTL is for exploring where no one has could have gone before even with a telescope.

[Formless]

You know, certain forms of FTL already double as transporters as well. The terraport has already been mentioned, and there is the stargate, wormholes, the Portal Gun, etc.. With these you get a two-in-one: mundane utility combined with awesome exploration potential!

[lordofchange13]

Transporters are easily the most useful things ever, especially if they come with transporter style scanners, but even if not, they win.

Think of a few things from Star Trek that they enabled:

1) Ben Sisko, while attending school in San Francisco, was able to eat dinner with his father in New Orleans every day. This was a little line in a DS9 episode I caught recently - nothing special to Star Trek, but think about that in terms of our day to day lives.

When looking for a job, you don't have to stick to it locally. You can commute anywhere, without spending any time on the actual commute. Upside is all companies in the world are options to you. The other side of the coin is all workers in the world are open to the companies.

If you place an order, it can be sent to you almost instantly. On-demand deliveries may be possible, meaning companies need to spend less money on local warehousing. Special order? Not a problem. Indeed, local distributors may be obsolete, depending on just how the transporter works.

And, like with Sisko, friends and family live far away? No problem, you can visit them any time anyway.


2) Everything Stofsk listed counts too. I'm reminded of a DS9 episode I watched earlier in the week. Odo is trapped on a mountain slowly dying... then, glow, he's safely in the Defiant's sickbay.


3) Transporters can move huge quantities of things like water, and filter out disease in the process. Some part of the world have scarce and dirty water? No problem, we'll beam some instantly cleaned water right in.

A big problem with starving people today is distribution. There's plenty of food in, for example, America, but getting it to people who need it is impossible. Imagine if we could just beam all that stuff to poor villages.

More than food, we can beam people out to work in other countries and still go home to their own country every day. We can beam equipment in.

Need a house? We'll build it in a factory in Europe and beam it, pre-fabricated, to your plot of land anywhere in the world.

4) "Beam me up." Want to open up space? There's no easier way than beaming a pre-built station straight into space! In the real world, what goes up will probably come down... but we can still use rockets to get it to orbital velocity, and beam up fuel from the ground, so it needn't carry the whole thing with it!

Transporters would do more for the space program than FTL ever could.




The only downside is the economics may be really weird. Centralized production, competition driving wage prices down.... we'd probably need some social changes to account for that in a sane way.

Actually powering the thing may be difficult too, but that can be bootstrapped fairly easily. Build transporters in on the ground then beam the new ones into space where they can work with limitless solar power! The economics with people are more worrying than any energy concern.


But wow, so many possibilities.

Dose the philosophical aspect still apply? about how the transporter kills you and makes a copy at the destination,but the water,food, and manufacturing are really good uses.

[Terralthra]

Agreed with Destructionator XIII - transporters as shown in ST would be revolutionary to our economy and society.