What exotic science fiction technology would you finance research into, if you had billions of dollars?
What exotic science fiction technology would you finance research into, if you had billions of dollars?
I'd like to support solarpunk development. I just want to live a simple life, with high tech in cooperation with the environment. We need it badly. I would fund so many community libraries. Don't misunderstand me though. I still want space travel, but I no longer trust capitalists with it.
An end to the problem of aging, and death. Whether that means turning into cyborgs, I don’t care. I just want to choose when I die. Not having dying slowly happen to me like a terminal illness. Plus life is way too short. If I get tired of immortality let me off myself. But let me at least get tired of it first.
Nanotech robots for garbage recycling.
Imagine if we dumped our trash into one end of a big fuckoff machine and out the other end it came out in microscopic pieces into hoppers for reuse or correct disposal.
Throw in an old appliance and out the other end comes the aluminium from the body, the steel, the copper from the wiring, the silica... you get the idea.
The fiction part would kind of keep me from doing that. And I fully believe that everything that actually is possible is already being worked on as quickly as possible.
So, maybe just pay for a whole lot of renewable energy plants all around the globe. Buy up all fossil fuel plants, demolish them and put in renewables instead.
Or fund a fully open smartphone with modular components like a PC with good specs and an optional keyboard.
Consciousness storage and transfer
Those machines that can make food instantly for sure. Put a few of those bad boys in the right place and we've solved world hunger. Also, healthy tasty food for those of us who can't cook and can't afford to eat at restaurants.
Granted, people in the restaurant would largely lose their job, but we can retrain them for something else like we did with stagecoach drivers, telephone operators and honest politicians before them 🤷
I don't know how plausible this is, but a way for trans men and trans women to exchange sexual traits. There might be an answer elsewhere in that there are animals that can change sex in certain conditions so there is some biological evidence of possibility in a singular case. However it seems anti-poetic that we have genetic females who want to be genetic males and genetic males who want to be genetic females and the answer that we currently have as society is for them to go fuck themselves.
I guess for more realistic, then deep dive VR.
Space based mirrors for asteroid mining. Bounce a sh*tton of light from the sun around and just melt asteroids. Love that in the Troy Rising series.
Lots of problems getting there irl (need a better way to get out of the gravity well, and light speed lag for command and control would be a real issue) but the idea is just too fun.
I’m convinced that, despite his denial, Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory was a Red Scare-dodging caricature of historical materialism / scientific socialism. I’d put my money there.
room temp superconductors.
Giving it all away to mutual aid groups to have them figure out local issues.
Fusion, nuclear propulsion, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, biomining, biological fuel cells
Also clean energy but personally virtual reality 100%. Give me that SAO experience, damn it. Just without y'know the bad stuff
Edit: mandatory Link
Hoverboards obviously.
Arcologies or greenhouse super domes for food production of any kind wherever it's desired
Or carbon nanotube mass production so we can build mile-high connected super structures
- Space tether.
- Nuclear fusion.
- Home assistant robots
It's not really science fiction since there are scientists working on it right now, because capitalism is the brake of development. I would invest on photonic computer research, that would help advancement of society in all aspect.
Being able to photosynthesize. It wouldn't be that hard either, we already can, just not to make food.
Matter transporters for work and holodecks for play.
Replicator. But that kinda seems impossible so that Black and Decker rehydrator thingy from Back to the Future II.
A better battery would be nice.
Universal translator
Cybernetics hands down.
I would stay in relatively achievable things like a sugar fuel cell or microbial food production. Things we don't quite have yet but not do to the knowledge not being there.
Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can't fix inequality -- that just seems to be what the humans want.
However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.
Especially if you plan to survive long enough to get off this stinking rock -- you're going to need to concentrate resources, because the public sector only seems to be able to succeed at space travel under a very specific set of hard-to-replicate circumstances. Whereas greed, inflated egos, and concentrated power are easy to replicate.
Your objections will be noted.