Sci-fi Predictions, True and False (Video 2)

Video Sci-fi Predictions, True and False (Video 2) 27

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 26, 2014 @04:50PM from the time-keeps-on-slipping-into-the-future dept.

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You might want to go back to Video 1 before watching this one (or reading the transcript). This video is the second part of our recording of a panel discussion at the recent science fiction convention in Detroit. Panelists include writer and forensic science expert Jen Haeger; professor and generally fascinating guy Brian Gray; and expert in Aeronautical Management and 20-year veteran of the Air Force Douglas Johnson. In this video, they continue running down a list of science fiction predictions, both successful and unsuccessful, and evaluating how realistic or far-fetched each now seems. (Alternate Video Link)

Male Speaker1: Last month somebody put out a paper application to demonstrate how you could do a tractor beam in a river actually using, I don’t know what the focusing technology was but basically turning water – currents of water in the flow path of the river into actual macro scale tractor beam to manipulate objects in the river and/or anybody of water technically and move it around, both repelling it and bringing it forward. So that’s kind of fascinating.

FeMale Speaker1: Is that with resistance or like?

Male Speaker1: Actual, you could do it like a tugboat. Yeah, it’s not, I don’t know what the focusing mechanisms are but it can hold a great deal of mass.

FeMale Speaker1: Is it a magnet?

Male Speaker1: No.

Female Speaker 1: How do they work?

Male Speaker2:No, it’s the very irregular pattern of waves.

Male Speaker1: Okay.

Male Speaker2: That creates a feedback circle so I don’t understand the pattern at all but it was

FeMale Speaker1: Like water waves you mean

Male Speaker2:Waves in water

Males Speaker1: Which is, it’s just a scaled up analog of the quantum photon traps because that’s the way to reverse quantum level if you generate waves it will blockade and trap around and you can actually move the object. In that vein, actually I’ve seen an application video in the last month or two where somebody had setup a system of ultrasonic speakers and about six panels of speakers and it’s actually a research group in Japan, it’s not attached to Sony actually, but they were demonstrating, the engineers were tuning the speaker set and then taking a beaker full of Styrofoam beads and just dumping it in. It would spread and you would actually have beads levitating in the middle of open air. The box they got it is about 3’to 1 meter on the side and the engineers are going to be tweaking nobs and the beads are suddenly going in vertical shape, back to horizontal shape, back to a spread pattern, into a single ball, into kind of tree landscape. So somewhere between levitation and tractor beam effects, that was still kind of small scale, but it’s getting there.

Male Speaker3: And another thing we’ve got, well, today is Gerd headset but they are saying in the thing I found was the Bluetooth headsets. Unfortunately unlike Star Trek where the communication officers are the only one talking, everybody that wants to be obnoxious can go down the street talking to themselves, that’s my personal opinion there.

Male Speaker1: Actually I am very surprised, I am yet to see anybody doing a Bluetooth headset that doesn’t looks like you had an earpiece.

Male Speaker3: Yes.

Male Speaker1: Because that would be very cool, people go why do you have a giant cylinder hanging out of your ear it goes through the earlobe, not going to _______that would be cool.

Male Speaker3: But that’s ______their comparison to that.

Make Speaker1: Another one that I am fond of again, there are numerous authors wrote about in various times, in various iterations, and various power sources, but the most famous perhaps being Heinlein, Starship Troopers, but we have powered exoskeletons now. We have both controlled manually through hand controls as well as with the development of the mind reading hardware in Japan, that’s straps on, it’s the reading version of the deep brain stimulation. You can actually or the party trick of train yourself as a Jedi to turn on for a newly effect, you can levitate a ball thing, it’s now actually being converted into controlling robotic exoskeletons. And unfortunately I didn’t mean to catch the opening of the World Cup in Brazil this year but supposedly there was going to be one of the 12 Brazilian paraplegics who at the end of the opening ceremonies would actually walk out on to the field in a leg only exoskeleton, having been trained, and having some surgery to allow for contact between the base of the spinal column undamaged and the exoskeleton the former paraplegic was supposed get up from the wheel chair and walk out on the field and deliver the first kick of the opening game. But I didn’t actually see it if that happened.

Male Speaker2: It did.

Male Speaker1: Excellent. So, we’re making great strides – pun intended – in that direction as well.

Male Speaker3: They haven’t done the battle suits or the thing from the Aliens.

FeMale Speaker1: No.

Male Speaker1: They are working on it.

Male Speaker3: Well, the one thing I want to say... they’ve done it but it still had to be somewhat suspended, it wasn’t totally autonomous yet.

Male Speaker1: Not autonomous but the group in Boston that’s doing BigDog, they’ve got, what’s their Atlas, thank you.

Male Speaker2: Boston Dynamics.

Male Speaker1: Boston Dynamics. I need my notes, obviously. This is wearing down over time, where is my onboard storage?

Male Speaker 3: You should have it on your phone.

Male Speaker 2: You need to plug in behind your ear like

Male Speaker 3: ______

Male Speaker 1: We will get to things that didn’t pan out in a minute. But the Boston Dynamics, so besides having BigDog, which is the autonomous weight-bearing robot that the marines are actually currently field testing and it can carry something like 500 pounds of cargo never mind the fact that they can hear you for five miles away because the turbine engine is so loud, but that’s the one you can see videos online, you shove it and it will tip over and reorient itself and it’s running over obstacle courses. That group is actually working on autonomous exoskeleton suit as well, so.

Female Speaker 1: So, I like the Wayback machine, so we are going to jump back into Wayback bearing machine and Jules Verne, space wizard like crazy, visionary guy, submarine, moon landing. They were saying that pretty much in from here to the moon, he had a Florida launch site. They launched to the moon – in an aluminum capsule and had accurate calculations of the amount of force that would be needed to do a lunar landing. So, that’s a lunar launch. So, that was – that’s pretty good, I think. Good predictions there.

Male Speaker 2: And I also talk about the tricorders and somebody did create one a while back, it’s about 10,000 oh mI mean it was a tricorder app, but it kind of got attacked by PVS going no you you are copying our stuff, with doing that. But how many things can do it these right now? You can use a flash light app, there is a thing in bunch of these, I think either use it for a scale for small weighted items, you actually can use it as a level there is a wonderful suite of apps, just to use it for building applications.

Male Speaker 1: Yep. So, most of your smartphones already have potentiometers and accelerometers. So, they can do inertial tracking. The newest generation of smartphones actually is going to include barometric measurements. So, you can actually tell the atmospheric pressure where you are, so it’s a pocket weather station on top of everything else. Yes, it’s a camera, it brushes your teeth, it cuts – wait, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Female Speaker 1: It slices, it dices. It can translate.

Male Speaker 1: Translate? That’s in progress. I actually have, if you haven’t seen it the word lens, is you use your camera, you take a photo or a live of another language, a written document and it will do its best to translate it for you. Google Translate is trying a live, actual translating, getting there that you can actually plug in audio feed and somebody will actively run through the translation as it goes.

Female Speaker 1: Oh, that’s nice. And I also like the – they’ve got that – well just like recognition of things, music, I don’t know what the app is, but like you record a little bit of the whatever music is playing

Male Speaker 1: You should be using Shazam.

Female Speaker 1: Yes.

Male Speaker 2: Yeah and it will

Female Speaker 1: Shazam and it will tell you what the song is. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Male Speaker 2: But they also have the barcode reader. You’re sitting in the store, and you say is this a good price and you look at the barcode and it will give you information and there is various apps like, okay this store charges this much, but same item in this store is a different price.

Male Speaker 1: All right. Now, for a real fun, what did the office get wrong? Okay. My favorite again, coming back to this device. With something like 70% of the world that accesses the internet these days, goes through a smartphone and the remainder use a desktop or laptop interface. Thankfully, Gibson got it wrong. People are not actually directly jacking into their brains to access online yet. I don’t think we are actually going to go that way given what Gibson wrote about as well as numerous role-playing games and various from the media that sure, you bring the net into your head, including all the 4chan. No, let’s don’t go there.

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