What will be the next big revolution?

[EnumaElish]

Setting aside half of the land and 2/3rds of the aquasphere as a natural habitat.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Deep learning, particularly for machine vision, is not only advancing in leaps and bounds in recent years but has massive revolutionary potential. It sounds boring but just being able to see and easily figure out what they're looking at (across a range of situations) would be a huge boon to robotics. Whether it be factory arms capable of working without precision timing or diagnosis software for medical imaging.

 

[FritoTaco]

what we REALLY need is for someone to invent a robotic vacuum cleaner

Dyson already made a robotic vacuum. Unless you mean a human robot, which would be awesome!

 

[Amru123]

Next big revolution is going to be for water,food and oxygen.Because filthy rich might buy loads of water and store it when there is acute shortage leaving the poors horrified.
Who knows? Even we might develope a new technology to trap oxygen for storage and then the filthy rich will use it as if it belonged to them.

 

[RJLiberator]

1. Climate Change
2. Automated Economy (driverless cars, robot-based workers, how will the current economy evolve)
3. Genetic engineering of the human (solve more diseases, enhance life)

 

[FritoTaco]

Next big revolution is going to be for water,food and oxygen.Because filthy rich might buy loads of water and store it when there is acute shortage leaving the poors horrified.
Who knows? Even we might develope a new technology to trap oxygen for storage and then the filthy rich will use it as if it belonged to them.

By the time that happens, I will be on Pandora mining unobtanium speaking Na'vi.

 

[strangerep]

Dyson already made a robotic vacuum.

Heh, you missed the part of my post where I specified that it must "REALLY WORK". Even the latest Dyson model is too high to fit under certain types of furniture.

Unless you mean a human robot, which would be awesome!

Actually, I was thinking more like a robot human, than a human robot. (There are plenty of the latter at most government agencies I know of.)

 

[strangerep]

Hey, there are plenty of those around.

Er,... do you mean robots or sex toys?

They simply just cost half of your salary! J/K ...around 40%.

Hmm, that went over my head. What's "J/K"?

 

[EnumaElish]

I'd like to see multi-layered approaches to education which allow one to choose between a wide but fairly shallow knowledge and a narrower but deeper knowledge. [...] I'm also fed up with owning things that need choosing, maintaining, cleaning, checking, repairing and replacing, including my car and everything to do with running the house, and with shopping for food and consumables and so on. I occasionally appreciate the freedom of choice but often I'd be perfectly happy to accept something standard to avoid the hassle. Most of these things can be avoided individually (e.g. live in a hotel, use a hire car) but what I'd like to see is "everything as a service" (EAAS) at an affordable price, especially as I'm getting older (and grumpier) now.

Blockchain economy? https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...irms-rather-than-nothing.886043/#post-5572151

 

[Fervent Freyja]

Er,... do you mean robots or sex toys?

Hmm, that went over my head. What's "J/K"?

Just kidding.

 

[BillTre]

1) Climate change is going to happen and it does not currently look like enough is being done to damp its effects. This can be dealt by reacting to its effects after they occur or by taking thoughtful actions before they occur. Places that can do this the best will have the most well sustained local environments and will the most prosperous in the future.
Some of this might involve moving ecosystems from one place to another as they move polewards as temperatures rise.
Other approaches might involve engineering organisms of local environments so that they can survive and thrive their new hotter (or whatever) local environment. This would involve determining which species in an environment would be good choices for changing and how to make those changes successfully. Large controlled environmental plots would have to be set-up for testing the effects of things before releasing them.

Sounds like some genes were found that could be used for this for trees anyway.

 

[physicsBabyMetal]

What will be the next big old revolution?

Perpetual Motion Technology

 

[jedishrfu]

Perpetual Motion Technology

No that won't happen as it violates the laws of thermodynamics as we understand them today. There is no free lunch here.

Per PF rules we won't discuss or debate it either as its considered speculative science.

 

[physicsBabyMetal]

No that won't happen as it violates the laws of thermodynamics as we understand them today. There is no free lunch here.

Relax, it's a joke. But you does bring up one point, what happen if it does not violates the laws of thermodynamics, meaning it have a constant energy input? Actually there's two points, there have been free lunch for a long long time. Gravity have been keeping us firmly on the ground, without gravity we would have been "floating" around, and we never give anything back to gravity.

 

[jedishrfu]

Relax, it's a joke. But you does bring up one point, what happen if it does not violates the laws of thermodynamics, meaning it have a constant energy input? Actually there's two points, there have been free lunch for a long long time. Gravity have been keeping us firmly on the ground, without gravity we would have been "floating" around, and we never give anything back to gravity.

Rather than derail this thread you could discuss these two points in a separate thread. However your points are mixing apples and oranges. As we go about our business in the Earth gravity well we are constantly shifting between potential energy and kinetic energy and generating heat energy as a result. We don't get a free lunch and we don't violate the laws of thermodynamics.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Enhanced 3D virtual reality. It will be so real, you'll never want to leave.

 

[Student100]

I think strong AI is still a long ways away, and probably impossible using current approaches.

I take a somewhat more pragmatic view and believe battery technology will be the driving force of the many mini-revolutions that will sum into a completely unrecognizable future. :)

Fusion would be nice too, and it's only 30 years away!

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Fusion would be nice too, and it's only 30 years away!

It was only 30 years away 60 years ago.

 

[Borg]

Enhanced 3D virtual reality. It will be so real, you'll never want to leave.

I'm already there.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

I think quantum computers have the potential to be humanities next biggest revolution

Can we say that ordinary computers gave rise to the internet, cell phones, digital alarm clocks etc. ? If so then quantum computers will produce several revolutionary developments.

 

[Student100]

Can we say that ordinary computers gave rise to the internet, cell phones, digital alarm clocks etc. ? If so then quantum computers will produce several revolutionary developments.

Failing to build a quantum computer may be more interesting than actually succeeding.

 

[Pepper Mint]

Failing to build a quantum computer may be more interesting than actually succeeding.

How and why ?

 

[Student100]

How and why ?

Because it could make for some new, interesting, physics.

How? If I knew the answer to that I'd be about a million dollars richer.

 

[splash206]

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't have high hopes for self-driven cars and especially not genetic engineering. Leave the genes alone; this is an example of naive human hubris that's going to create an abomination(s). Even if we got the engineering right, what kind of mind is going to direct how the genes are manipulated, Donald Trump? Think about it. I say we leave nature alone and work on creating intelligent machines, that's a domain we can legitimately say we own.

Edit: Ok, on further thought let me qualify this a bit. There are some legitimate reasons to pursue gene modification research. For example in treating human diseases postnatal. Plus, I wouldn't be against some sort of genetic solution to extinguish mosquitoes. So, to put it simply, I'm OK with genetic research as far as a prophylactic effort to ease human (and animal) suffering, but I'm not OK with it as a hobby for biomedic entrepreneurs playing around and trying to make a buck by outwitting nature. Does that make sense?

No more pins in the leg. No more mechanical heart valves or anything like that. What about taking a brain and putting it in multiple machines when wanted? The typical humanlike robot would get boring. I'd want the jet pack then onto the ion rocket out to another solar system. No gene mods at all needed then. I may need a few neurons reconnected again soon though. If you do something why not do it big?

 

[splash206]

Hey, there are plenty of those around. They simply just cost half of your salary! J/K ...around 40%.

Not if rented in the red light district.

 

[Kevin McHugh]

No that won't happen as it violates the laws of thermodynamics as we understand them today. There is no free lunch here.

Per PF rules we won't discuss or debate it either as its considered speculative science.

I think you missed the sarcasm in that response.

 

[jedishrfu]

I think you missed the sarcasm in that response.

How can one know the difference between sarcasm and a serious statement online without assuming the poster is knowledgeable about the subject?

PF gets its share of speculative science and personal theory posts that we must remove because not to do so confuses serious students of STEM subjects who may think its valid science which is the primary mission of this site.

 

[Kevin McHugh]

How can one know the difference between sarcasm and a serious statement online without assuming the poster is knowledgeable about the subject?

PF gets its share of speculative science and personal theory posts that we must remove because not to do so confuses serious students of STEM subjects who may think its valid science which is the primary mission of this site.

I thought the banner with the "big" crossed out and replace with "old" was a dead give away. But I see your point.

 

[aa]

My brain has been foggy of late so I will leave out
details which I might have to shore up.

I don't remember exactly which authors describe these
theories. David Deutsch. Kurzweil gave
the idea of exponential progress (an evolving, replicating
system will increase its production at an exponential
rate). Multiple neuroscientists and biologists.

The history of life is a progression from RNA ("RNA world")
to bacteria to advanced cells to multi-cell clumps to
multi-cell clumps with division of labor ("organs"
hence the clump is called an organism).
The last step was the order of magnitude improvement
from evolution occurring on the time scale of organism
lifetime (70 years) to a brain being able to "evolve"
in real time, as it moves around in the world. (order of
minutes) Although it's true that learned information in
a human brain does not pass on to the children, neverthe
less it does represent a shift from evolution iteration
only occurring every few decades, to now evolution can
make improvements every few minutes. Due to the brain
being able to save some of its progress in external
items such as books and societies.
The level after individual organism with a brain,
is a group of brained organisms in a society.

Societies represented a big shift in
productive power. A system could be one
organism or a whole society. Evolution is about the
persistence of further and further increasing in
complexity, systems. The more complex the system (meaning
the more information required to assemble it from raw atoms),
the more power it has to steam roller
its competitors and thus take primacy of persistence
through time. I.e. more complex systems eventually
replicate and eat up more of space here on Earth, because
out of all the complex systems that evolve, although most
are garbage and are less efficient than e.g. a primitive
shark, finally one arises that is a great improvement
over the shark having taken best use of its additional
complexity.

A society is a group of humans plus some extra information
gluing them together. For example, a set of laws or a
library of books or a bunch of tents. (Not to mention the
engrams of the relationships/interactions/histories between
the humans residing in the humans' brains. Karma is a
statistical phenomenon. Karma is the sum of the engrams
located in all other people's brains that record things that
happened that are seen as being due to you.)
Some societies used their additional information better.
That's why the most recent
society of humans has out-powered the rest of all the other
societies put together.* The Founding Fathers put in
a lot of work to make their country the best they could, using
all previous hard-gained knowledge from previous humans and
attempts at government. Silicon Valley is to the U.S. as
the U.S. is to the rest of the world.

*and the other societies had centuries head start

Production is "creation
of organization* that conduces to replicating the
originator of said organization". A
"computer" like a human being is the most productive piece
of material available (when used right). Biotechnology is
the branch of
industry that most directly improves the productivity of said
computer, thus it is where the next revolution lies.

*organization meaning anti-entropy

 

[aa]

The U.S., like a real-time
learning brain, also allows itself to self-modify in a
short time span. Due to things like cycling of presidents
and lawful encouragement of modifications to the governmental
system itself, the U.S. embarked on a rate of evolution
order of magnitude bigger than previous societies.