Living in the Future

[smokingwreckage]

Thread re-title: "Living in the FuturAMA"

[Suden]

Oh well, even without vacuum tube transit, we are still living in the future. Here's Louis C.K. on "Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy"

 

The first link is his Conan appearance, it's shorter, but considerably safer for work: http://www.maniacworld.com/everything-is-amazing-nobody-is-happy.html

 

The second is a clip from a live concert, much better sound and longer, awesome routine, but heavy with the profanity:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk

 

 

[buglips*the*goblin]

It's because Star Trek lied to us and made us think human beings would find productive uses for new inventions and still behave halfway normal.

 

Although it is funny to watch old Next Gen episodes and see Riker in Ten Forward looking at a PADD and thinking he's checking his Facebook.

 

"Sent Wesley on a very important mission to find Snipe parts."

 

-Pimp*Daddy*Picard, Doc_Beverley, LaForgetastico, Datarama123, and WORF_RULES666 like this

[smokingwreckage]

Humans always sucked this much. Whatever we have is about 60% of what the world owes us.

[Spike]

Seems an awful lot of money to throw around just to shave less than an hour off of a commute. While I suppose the theory is sound, I keep imagining the stations looking a bit like the lines for one of those fancy roller coasters...you know..the sort that have only a few dozen seats per train and that require park workers to help get all the passengers seated and restrained....and at the other end of the ride a whole new glut of problems associated with motion sickness. (Ewww) and waiting in line would eat up the minutes shaved off the commute.

IMO the real problems (traffic jams, fuel consumption, smog, road-rage) can be far more easily solved by eliminating the need for most people to commute in the first place. There must be a better way to fix the ratio of good-paying jobs and affordable places to live.

[smokingwreckage]

Eliminate humans behind the wheel and you eliminate most of the problems with traffic. AI cars for the win!

[buglips*the*goblin]

When the truck with the goblin face comes, I'm sacrificing you to it in a bid to prove myself a worthy minion.

[TGP]

Nice purpose for Wesley.. ..in fact isn't that more or less how they wrote him off the show?

 

Although it is funny to watch old Next Gen episodes and see Riker in Ten Forward looking at a PADD and thinking he's checking his Facebook.

 

(...and how many of Riker's Facebook SpaceBook™ friends are hot, drop dead gorgeous, alien, space babes... )

 

• Riker with a PADD. What 10-15 years before the Apple iPAD?
• Kirk and Spock using wee little gray computer terminals on every desk surface, was it 10 years, 15? before the first MAC?

 

Am I the only one noticing how Trek was always ahead of Tech? But in trying for the far future it only managed to be 10-15, 20 at most, years ahead??

Edited August 15, 2013 by TGP

[smokingwreckage]

I like how they have machines everywhere that can read/write matter down to the molecule and make scrambled eggs ex nihilo, but they still need to use buttons... or anything at all really.

[Dibbler]

I laughed out to an episode in star trek, I think it was season one. They encounter an alien lab, with alien tech that is massively better than human tech. McCoy (how is that spelled?) is super excited, look at all this, this thing, that thing,

 

nanosecond lasers,

 

and so on.

We have nanosecond pulsed lasers today. In fact, the state of the art devices get pulses one tenth of that (in the hundreds of femtoseconds). Humans are awesome! :)

[smokingwreckage]

We're tinker gnomes :D

[Doug Sundseth]

There must be a better way to fix the ratio of good-paying jobs and affordable places to live.

 

Why must there be? I mean other than that other people's problems are really easy to solve right up until it's your responsibility to solve them.

[kristof65]

Eliminate humans behind the wheel and you eliminate most of the problems with traffic. AI cars for the win!

 

Except that computers and automated machinery aren't exactly as reliable as most people think they are.

 

Yes, taking the humans out from behind the wheel eliminates a whole lot of issues - like following too closely, inattention, gawking at accidents and other things, etc - but a whole host of other issues will remain, and become so noticeable that people will demand to be back in control.

 

The biggest of those issues would be lack of maintenance and upgrades of the AI vehicles

 

[buglips*the*goblin]

Ask my mom about computers in cars, and how her 2013 Focus is actively trying to kill her with multiple instances of randomly deciding that steering, transmission, and other critical systems aren't necessary.

 

The Bluetooth works fine, though. You know, the essentials.

 

When she complained about the murdercar, Ford replied succinctly: "we're aware of the problem".

 

Good. Now dispatch an exorcist.

[dispatchdave]

Ask my mom about computers in cars, and how her 2013 Focus is actively trying to kill her with multiple instances of randomly deciding that steering, transmission, and other critical systems aren't necessary.

 

The Bluetooth works fine, though. You know, the essentials.

 

When she complained about the murdercar, Ford replied succinctly: "we're aware of the problem".

 

Good. Now dispatch an exorcist.

I like how you wrapped up two of my jobs in one post: dispatching and exorcism. Good job!