Your Favorite Technology That Didn't Come To Pass

One pill that gives you all the nutrition you need and makes you feel completely full and satisfied would be one of the greatest inventions in the history of the world. It could reduce obesity and poor diet related problems in developed nations and feed the rest of the world, freeing them from the slavery of subsistence farming or trying to scrape together enough food.

Of course in reality it would be patented to hell.

> Of course in reality it would be patented to hell.

Patents are not like copyrights. They expire.

Copyright stops expiring when Mickey Mouse's copyright risks to expire.

I have to vote for the missing option:

Direct Neural Interfacing.

If those medical shows are to be believed (I know, I know) we have made some rudimentary progress in that regard -- I remember an episode of house where a patient basically had the ability to move what was essentially a "mouse pointer" up and down on a screen.

That's a far cry from a datajack and deck, though...

Fusion Power Plants

Most of the options listed may sound nice, but are not practical.

But we need fusion (or some other non-CO2 emitting virtually endless source of affordable energy.)

The Science Fiction of the 50's and 60's envisioned a world where there was a robot servant in every household. Well we don't have robots that look like C3PO but there is almost a computer in every household, and roombas are becoming popular

That's more of a textbook than a teacher.

They're talking about the sci-fi version, which is basically a specialized AI that has access to all that information.

If you've read The Diamond Age, the Primer is a good example.

Nah, you'd always get some greedy *%%!@bag who went back for seconds - and other people who decided they were pillarians and wouldn't eat them.

Maybe... but they could add stuff to the pill so you don't care.

You mean like fission? If all (literally all, including all transport) of the world's energy was from the fission, we would have enough uranium (assuming zero incease in efficiency) for at least 300 years from proven reserves. If you add thorium into the mix, we have enough for several thousand years. And if that's not enough, the Moon is rich in both uranium and thorium.

So, we do already have a vitually unlimited source of carbon-free energy. It's just that evironmentalist pseduo-scientific FUD prevents us from using it.