Ten Things That Really Should Have Been Invented By Now
1. A Space Station that's a bit better than Mir
...I mean the full-fat, incredibly hi-tech revolving kind with its own gravity, where people go on holiday and stuff like that. There's really no excuse for this not existing, since we were able to send dogs into space on tourist trips (albeit one ways that ended with their oxygen running out) as far back as the fifties. One of the interesting things about being a Doctor Who fan is that you do get to see what people from the sixties and seventies actually thought the twenty-first century was going to be like; and in general they had us all as a technocracy ruled by computers, rather than a consumerist phantasmagoria in which most of our society's technical ingenuity went into inventing pink mobile phone covers. The interesting thing is, really, that technology just went in a different direction; the people of the seventies assumed everything would get bigger (bigger computers, bigger spaceships, bigger city-structures, and a bigger reach of the civilisation generally) - but in fact, we've worked hard at making everything smaller. So Blake's 7 has a Galactic Federation where everyone lives in domed cities, mind-control is perfectly simple, spaceships zip around everywhere... but the security cameras are still the size of a small tank. In the seventies, we really did think that everyone would live on the moon by now. And while we don't have a space station on the moon, or even any desire to build one any more, we do have the iPhone. I can't help but think that this isn't a square deal.
2. The Hovercar
I mean, it's the 21st century, and everything's still got wheels? The future's looking less like it did in Back to the Future 2 every minute. I don't really mind that we don't all have portable nuclear reactors on our car - namely because, even when the film was released, there was a large part of my brain which wondered what the hell would happen if someone crashed. And while I'm on the subject, the lack of any freely available jet-packs is similarly disappointing.
3. The Portable Hole
They've had them in cartoons for ages, and if it's good enough for Wile E. Coyote I don't see why it's not good enough for us. Admittedly it would place most secure installations at risk, but one could presumably build all houses / banks / government buildings / shops in anti-hole materials. Which would, admittedly, largely defeat the purpose of the hole in the first place. I still want one though.
4. A Half-Decent Robot
It's not really too much to ask for. Wavy arms with cans of spray-paint on the end, used to make cars just the right colour of red, simply do not count as robots and that's all there is to it. Until they make something that talks at least as well as C3P0, I'm officially unhappy.
5. Proper Solar Power
...because - and forgive me for getting slightly serious for a moment - the technology of solar power hasn't really advanced since the early seventies, and the only reason it's getting any more widespread is that the requisite materials can now be made far cheaper. And, as anyone who does even the slightest bit of reading on the subject knows, this is not unconnected to the oil business aggressively buying out and dismantling every solar power company that was beginning to look even slightly successful. Still, we've had a good forty years to figure out how to make it work, and no-one's got any nearer. Even to an eight year old, the solution has always seemed pretty simple; you send a whole bunch of suncatcher-type satellites up into geostationary orbit, get them to beam the energy down to receptor points, and then they send it all round the earth. Surely a scientist or two could work out how to make this happen? And no, I don't know how the "beaming" bit works, but they could probably do it with lasers or something. Fine, I've not worked out all the technical details, but it would definitely be a whole lot more useful than bluetooth. Oh, and speaking of lasers...
6. A Death Ray
Which is a no-brainer, really.
7. A Holophone
You know what I mean, one of those phones that shows you a holographic image of whoever you're talking to. I can't think of any excuse for this not existing, since communications is one of those things we really have got pretty good at. And yet - have we got good at it, really? Years ago, people had to go through the rather cumbersome process of writing letters. Then we invented the telephone, which meant you could actually have a conversation with someone, as well as getting the tone and inflection of their voice; not perfect, but an improvement. The trajectory from there is obvious - the vidphone, which to be fair we do have, even if it tends to be a jerky pixelated blob rather than a proper vidphone - and after that, the holophone. Instead, we've just developed lots of ways that make it easy to "keep in touch", rather than communicate. No-one actually says anything meaningful via text message, apart from Bad News You're Too Chickenshit To Give In Person - I'm thinking specifically of U R DUMPED messages here, which I must admit I've always wanted to send to someone - because it's more for checking you're still part of the collective than actual communication. Similarly, what's the point of Facebook, apart from turning society's mind into mush and making sure that previously healthy and normal people suddenly can't go three minutes without talking about Facebook? People might say it's handy for sharing photographs, but let's face it, no-one likes looking at holiday snaps anyway - and besides, it's not like emailing the dratted things is all that difficult. Apart from that, it's just means of absorbing yourself into a false and ephemeral network of "friends", of "staying in touch." But not ever, ever communicating. Because, more and more, communications technology is about providing convenient ways not to communicate.
8. The Flashdark
Which is a torch like implement that emits a little beam of dark, meaning that when you walk into a bright room you can point a flashdark at someone and they immediately won't be able to see anything. Not sure what the practical use would be, but the world needs one.
9. A Better Ironing Board
That version we've got at the moment is, quite simply, unforgivably shit and I'm sure it's remained more or less the same since 1936. Why put up with a vicious metal thing that keeps collapsing on you? In the vein of entry number 2, I'd rather think we should have worked out how to make one that hovers by now - in the absence of which, something a bit more elegant than what we've got seems like a pretty simple request. In fact, even the iron is a bit antiquated; you'd think we'd have come up with a better way than taking the creases out of clothes. And don't start talking about the trouser press, it doesn't count. Because I said so, that's why.
10. Shop Window Dummies / Wheelie Bins / Cooking Oil / Mobile Phones / Televisions / Children's Drawings / Some Landmark Building Or Other / A Communications Network / Diet Pills / Satnav / Insert Consumer Product Here that actually turns out to be evil and part of a plot to take over the world.
Because I'd like Doctor Who to be right about something.
...I mean the full-fat, incredibly hi-tech revolving kind with its own gravity, where people go on holiday and stuff like that. There's really no excuse for this not existing, since we were able to send dogs into space on tourist trips (albeit one ways that ended with their oxygen running out) as far back as the fifties. One of the interesting things about being a Doctor Who fan is that you do get to see what people from the sixties and seventies actually thought the twenty-first century was going to be like; and in general they had us all as a technocracy ruled by computers, rather than a consumerist phantasmagoria in which most of our society's technical ingenuity went into inventing pink mobile phone covers. The interesting thing is, really, that technology just went in a different direction; the people of the seventies assumed everything would get bigger (bigger computers, bigger spaceships, bigger city-structures, and a bigger reach of the civilisation generally) - but in fact, we've worked hard at making everything smaller. So Blake's 7 has a Galactic Federation where everyone lives in domed cities, mind-control is perfectly simple, spaceships zip around everywhere... but the security cameras are still the size of a small tank. In the seventies, we really did think that everyone would live on the moon by now. And while we don't have a space station on the moon, or even any desire to build one any more, we do have the iPhone. I can't help but think that this isn't a square deal.
2. The Hovercar
I mean, it's the 21st century, and everything's still got wheels? The future's looking less like it did in Back to the Future 2 every minute. I don't really mind that we don't all have portable nuclear reactors on our car - namely because, even when the film was released, there was a large part of my brain which wondered what the hell would happen if someone crashed. And while I'm on the subject, the lack of any freely available jet-packs is similarly disappointing.
3. The Portable Hole
They've had them in cartoons for ages, and if it's good enough for Wile E. Coyote I don't see why it's not good enough for us. Admittedly it would place most secure installations at risk, but one could presumably build all houses / banks / government buildings / shops in anti-hole materials. Which would, admittedly, largely defeat the purpose of the hole in the first place. I still want one though.
4. A Half-Decent Robot
It's not really too much to ask for. Wavy arms with cans of spray-paint on the end, used to make cars just the right colour of red, simply do not count as robots and that's all there is to it. Until they make something that talks at least as well as C3P0, I'm officially unhappy.
5. Proper Solar Power
...because - and forgive me for getting slightly serious for a moment - the technology of solar power hasn't really advanced since the early seventies, and the only reason it's getting any more widespread is that the requisite materials can now be made far cheaper. And, as anyone who does even the slightest bit of reading on the subject knows, this is not unconnected to the oil business aggressively buying out and dismantling every solar power company that was beginning to look even slightly successful. Still, we've had a good forty years to figure out how to make it work, and no-one's got any nearer. Even to an eight year old, the solution has always seemed pretty simple; you send a whole bunch of suncatcher-type satellites up into geostationary orbit, get them to beam the energy down to receptor points, and then they send it all round the earth. Surely a scientist or two could work out how to make this happen? And no, I don't know how the "beaming" bit works, but they could probably do it with lasers or something. Fine, I've not worked out all the technical details, but it would definitely be a whole lot more useful than bluetooth. Oh, and speaking of lasers...
6. A Death Ray
Which is a no-brainer, really.
7. A Holophone
You know what I mean, one of those phones that shows you a holographic image of whoever you're talking to. I can't think of any excuse for this not existing, since communications is one of those things we really have got pretty good at. And yet - have we got good at it, really? Years ago, people had to go through the rather cumbersome process of writing letters. Then we invented the telephone, which meant you could actually have a conversation with someone, as well as getting the tone and inflection of their voice; not perfect, but an improvement. The trajectory from there is obvious - the vidphone, which to be fair we do have, even if it tends to be a jerky pixelated blob rather than a proper vidphone - and after that, the holophone. Instead, we've just developed lots of ways that make it easy to "keep in touch", rather than communicate. No-one actually says anything meaningful via text message, apart from Bad News You're Too Chickenshit To Give In Person - I'm thinking specifically of U R DUMPED messages here, which I must admit I've always wanted to send to someone - because it's more for checking you're still part of the collective than actual communication. Similarly, what's the point of Facebook, apart from turning society's mind into mush and making sure that previously healthy and normal people suddenly can't go three minutes without talking about Facebook? People might say it's handy for sharing photographs, but let's face it, no-one likes looking at holiday snaps anyway - and besides, it's not like emailing the dratted things is all that difficult. Apart from that, it's just means of absorbing yourself into a false and ephemeral network of "friends", of "staying in touch." But not ever, ever communicating. Because, more and more, communications technology is about providing convenient ways not to communicate.
8. The Flashdark
Which is a torch like implement that emits a little beam of dark, meaning that when you walk into a bright room you can point a flashdark at someone and they immediately won't be able to see anything. Not sure what the practical use would be, but the world needs one.
9. A Better Ironing Board
That version we've got at the moment is, quite simply, unforgivably shit and I'm sure it's remained more or less the same since 1936. Why put up with a vicious metal thing that keeps collapsing on you? In the vein of entry number 2, I'd rather think we should have worked out how to make one that hovers by now - in the absence of which, something a bit more elegant than what we've got seems like a pretty simple request. In fact, even the iron is a bit antiquated; you'd think we'd have come up with a better way than taking the creases out of clothes. And don't start talking about the trouser press, it doesn't count. Because I said so, that's why.
10. Shop Window Dummies / Wheelie Bins / Cooking Oil / Mobile Phones / Televisions / Children's Drawings / Some Landmark Building Or Other / A Communications Network / Diet Pills / Satnav / Insert Consumer Product Here that actually turns out to be evil and part of a plot to take over the world.
Because I'd like Doctor Who to be right about something.
posted by Nyder O'Leary at
12:54
5 Comments:
I've seen your shirts. You've never used an ironing board shit or otherwise. Trouser presses ! I think living on the southside is making you soft.
1 - Teleporter. Alright, this is a tough one, but not as tough as, say...
2 - Tractor beam. A beam that drags shit. Are we really not up to that? WTF? We're really still gravity's bitch and it's 2008 already. COME ON SCIENCE! Sheesh
3 - Force fields. Again, how hard can that be? I just dont think the nerds are focused on the tasks at hand. Nanotechnology? On its way. Forcefields... er... we hit a snag...
4 - Decent hangover cure. Solpadene and hair of the dog dont count as decent. Also, we ought to have some salve that takes away drunkenness a wee bit better than black coffee. We ought to have anti-drink that gets you unlocked in an instant. I blame the kebab industry. This is serious!
5 - Spot cream. Sort that out.
6 - Space pills! You know...an entire 3 course meal with a glass of chianti and an espresso - in a pill. I sincerely believe we're too distracted by the search for cures and the like.
7 - Floating cities that meander about the world's great oceans. Er...catching fish and researching spot creams and space pills.
8 - Suspended animation. Fuck space travel - if we had SA I could bear to nip off to Austrailia on one of those thrombosis flights.
9 - 3 wishes. I had em worked out to a tee when I was small. Well, the first one at any rate. The other two were kind of backup in case the Genie told me to shove infinite wishes up my hole. In which case I would have gone Dr Evil on the second one and got a posh motor with my last. Why does this have to remain in the realm of fantasy - where is the wishing technology?
10 - gills. Why dont we have gills by now? And wings! Where are my beautiful wings! Ugh - I feel so gypped after writing this.
Whaddya mean, I never used an ironing board? Of course I don't, the current models are rubbish! Keep up, won't you?
1 Voice controlled computers which answer back with a menacing monosyllabic voice - Stephen Hawking doesn't count.
2 X Ray specs - for all the obvious reasons.
3 A decent hatching tool on any CAD package. I have used three completely different ones in the last year and all of them are crap.
I know thats a bit geeky and won't help mankind greatly but for love of god can it be that hard.
4 All over nylon body suit - with that baby there will be no need to update the ironing board. Comfy too I reckon.
5 Creds - I want to buy stuff in Creds, would sure beat the piss weak Australian Dollar though I don't think we could ever get the Brits on board.
6 The power to read thoughts - Domestic strife a thing of the past or maybe not I should ask the wife and see what she thinks.
7 A babel fish like device - enough said, in any language. Useful for the above also.
8 A dish washer that packs and unpacks itself - since female emancipation these have become as sought after as the philosopher's stone.
9 Come to think of it The Philosopher's stone or better still a solution to the riddle of life that includes the use of ether - Ether, those Victorians knew what they were talking about.
10 A genetically inferior slave race at by beck and call - see number 8.
Nice list ohora. X-ray specs - you fucker! And a decent hatch. I find myself singing "I'd give my snatch for a true associative hatch" in full Morrisey falsetto every other day. How hard can it be?
You can keep yer nylon suit though, I'm saving my creds for a (see number 8) version of number 10 that's not total number 2.
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