I try to keep an eye on developments in science. It triggers ideas in my mind. In fact, last night I re-read an article I saved about crystals being used to detect viruses, and being sensitive enough they could hear a single virus. This is science, not fantasy.

It would be interesting to have a round-table of real world science that holds the seed of interesting story ideas. Who knows what stories would be triggered?

For instance:
1) Face transplant surgery (we've talked about that in another thread)
2) Groundwater is poised to become the next crisis. Water tables are dropping across the US, and pretty soon lack of water will make the oil crisis look like a fiesta.
3) Global warming will heat up the equator and due to changes in ocean currents, will concurrently make the northern countries go into a deep freeze. It will trigger a mass migration of people as they relocate, and they will bring strains of local viruses and diseases into new regions.
4) Warp technology and transporter technology are, in fact, possible -- although they may never be economically feasible or useful for humans.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinquishable from Magic."

Then devolve the "magic" into a technology driven device. Don't limit yourself to what is concievably possible.

There are still millions of stories to be told that exploit the technologies we almost have mastered, and billions more about the technologies we haven't even thought of yet.

Nanotech, cloning, wormholes, alternative energy. Just the effects on society of "free, renewable" energy...Imagine harnessing ambient heat to both repair global warming and provide free electricity.

Quantum tech, dimensional exploration and para-science and quasi-religion.

Sorry, I disagree that nothing new is out there. Learn to avoid comparing what you are trying to do to what has already been done. Don't try to invent the next submarine or transporter, just identify something that could be better, imagine the perfect solution, then create a flaw for it. (Technology can never be perfect, especially in science fiction.)

Here some ideas gleaned from scanning Scientific American:
What if science learned to regenerate body parts? What if that science went bad?
From Scientific American: "Among invertebrates the capacity to regenerate parts like legs or entire sections of the body is fairly common. The planarians (flat worms) can be cut into 50 pieces and you will end up with 50 smaller worms. If an arm of a starfish is cut off, you will have two starfish after regeneration."

What could you use a quantum computer for? What would happen if its isolated state was broken and inadvertantly influenced by outside forces?
From Scientific American: "In a quantum computer, the information is represented by physical states that are sufficiently microscopic and isolated so that they obey the laws of quantum mechanics...for the sake of this discussion imagine a computer in which the information is stored in the form of coins placed on a tabletop, with heads ("1") and tails ("0") being the two possible states of each bit. Then convert the tabletop into a quantum computer by substituting quantum coins for which heads and tails are quantum mechanical states. A normal coin can be placed on a table to show either heads or tails, reflecting the fact that the bit it represents must be valued at either 1 or 0. In contrast, the laws of quantum mechanics allow our quantum coins to show both heads and tails at once...For instance, it is possible to prepare a coin in a state that is 75 percent heads and 25 percent tails. The coin would remain in this state until someone measures it, which makes the coin randomly choose between heads and tails, with heads being three times likelier than tails. This randomness is not caused by a lack of knowledge of the coin. The coin really chooses a definite state only when looked at, and, until that happens, its state is completely described by a single number: the degree to which it is showing heads, or 75 percent. It may seem very strange that the mere act of looking at a coin would change its state. The phenomenon arises from the extreme fragility of quantum states. Any and all interactions with their environment have a profound effect, and measurement inevitably requires interaction. A quantum coin is in fact liable to collapse onto a pure heads or tails state if any information at all about it is, even in principle, available to the outside world. A quantum computer must therefore maintain a very strict isolation of its constituent qubits in order to function."

What would happen if ants (or an alien equivelency) decided to get rid of humans?
From Scientific American: "A species of ants in the Amazon rainforest controls its environment by selectively killing off plants it doesn't like, a new study reveals. Findings published today in the journal Nature, indicate that a formic acid herbicide produced and used by ants is responsible for single-species swatches of trees."

How can spies use audio recordings to decode messages you type into your computer?
From Scientific American: "The clickety-clack of your keyboard might be enough to spill your secrets. A team of researchers in California has successfully decoded what was typed into a computer from an audio recording."

I think something we do see in the technology market is a tendency to want to be able to sell what we've got before the next wave of stuff comes along. And nothing makes a technology upgrade proof like implanting it in the human body. The willingness of people to have entertainment hardware implanted in their flesh is kind of creepy to me. I do think it constitutes something new. But then, I guess breast implants themselves are a kind of entertainment hardware. I think it does raise interesting questions. What is happening psychologically to someone who sees their body as an entertainment platform? I personally think it's at least as disturbing as someone who breastfeeds an 11 year old.

Your first paragraph definitly seemed to be seeking inspiration. The second was just a jibe at a stupid direction that pop tech is going. Just for you, I offer you this link to give you hope in light of the depressing direction some idiots have taken science.

http://www.io2technology.com/

Or they steal my invention and make desktop 2liter bottle cooler/pop dispensers. (if you steal this idea, send me one.)

My husband didn't seem to think the mp3 breast implants were such a bad idea when I mentioned it to him. He amused himself with figuring out where they'd put the on/off switch and volume controls.

I can extrapolate forward on this by running things back and sideways: During World War II, the guys decoding the German and Japanese radio intercepts could tell which particular operator was sending by how they handled their Morse keys.

I also understand that current day espionage sometimes includes tapping into a keyboard and recording the strokes made.

Therefore it's a simple jump to being able to tell who's typing on the keyboard.

But seeing as how the sciences are getting less and less funding, and "intellectualism" is getting really unpopular (at least in the US), I wouldn't hold my breath.

Its just a matter of combining two existing devices.

First a desktop refrigerator.
Second, a Dr.Pepper toy soda dispenser (The one from the 1970's where you put a 2liter bottle in then tap it to release the pop through the power of gravity)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7190342252&ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:US:1

Cellphones, laptops, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, computers, gaming equipment, the internet...They're all just being refined.

I suppose there have been some steps forward in 3-D viewing for movies, but the technology is several years old and is only now moving back into the mainstream, except that so far this is only being used for kids movies and such. Could it be a link towards holographic projections? Possibly. Everyone needing to were special contacts at all times so they can experience holograms...Who knows?

Virtual Reallity was a popular theme in Sci-fi about a decade ago ("Johnny Nemonic", "Demolition Man" and a few others), but that seems to have gone the way of the flying/self driving cars of the 1950s. Every once in a while these things enjoy a resurgence, but nothing that gets people excited enough to start buying into it even though the technology could easily be developed (self-driving cars exist, but so far they have been unmarketable to the mass population; same with VR, certain levels exist but don't seem to fit with the current market climate so we don't see it moving forward -- at least I don't).

Some of these things take time. The internet was around for nearly thirty years before becoming a part of mainstream culture. Perhaps what we, as spec. fic. writers, need to do is find the existing technology that is overlooked and find new applictions for it. I liked "Minority Report" for doing that -- finding a new way of showing VR in a way that almost makes it accessible. OSC did it in "Ender's Game" with the internet.

Is it really true?

Isn't it more often the other way around? That real scientific breakthroughs come as the product of tinkering with existing technology. Or that "Scientific' breakthroughs are often the result of the observations of people working is such field as engineering etc.

Isn't the pattern more like this:

A technologist observes something unexpected occuring in their area of expertise. The effects are usually soon forgotten, even if it might have unrecognised benefits or dangers.

But occasionally, one of these effects is noticed and the potential is seen, the scientist is called in to observe and study it and its possible applications.

Like the 'avian flu' it jumps species, from technologists to scientists, and unlike the avian flu (hopefully) the ones that make the big impact are the ones that can be adapted to everyone.

It is a common mistake to confuse 'Science' and 'Technology' or think there is some sort of battle for supremacy going on, but it is the combination and overlap of disciplines that most often results in breakthrough.

Hail to the skillful cunning hand!
Hail to the cultured mind!
Contending for the world's command,
Here let them be combined.
(Barlow, 1967, p. 36)

I've spoken with two separate people, at two separate times, regarding the invention of car engines that run without any oil or gas byproducts whatsoever. My understanding is that the technology is there, and has been for a long time. Both people reported to me that once word got out that this technology was functional, death threats were received. The technology was put away and never reached the marketplace.

if you are talking about new gadgets, these things tend to go in surges. Take a look at the 100-year chart for the Dow. You have intervals of tremendous growth interspersed with similarly long periods of relative stagnation (averaging out the bears and mini-bulls). Those growth spurts correspond fairly well with new innovations. Right now we are about a third of the way through one of the flat periods. In another ten years, something new will come about and new gadgets will be developed like crazy.

Working in semiconductors, I can tell you that a lot of innovation is being applied to miniaturization, combining components, and efficiency.

To whoever said the computer is the only thing getting better as it gets smaller, I say, the number of transistors inside the microprocessor has increased by orders of magnitude. The transistors are getting smaller, but the microprocessors are getting huge in terms of number of transistors. Using today's state of the art manufacturing process, a computer of the 60's could probably fit on the width of ten or twenty human hairs, and be far too small to apply bond wires without wasting a huge amount of area. Believe me, computers are only getting bigger and bigger. It's just the physical size of the package that's getting smaller.

That's what I'm getting at here. Yeah, there are tweaks and certainly a lot of recombining of old technologies (cellular phones are a great example of one technology trying to let you do everything), but what changes my life? What does a gig of files in my pocket do for me, the average person?

When computers first came out, no one knew what to do with them. A few geeks thought they were cool, but it wasn't until someone came up with the spreadsheet application that the average person understood what it was that might affect their lives.

Quick, what is the response time of your computer's memory? Don't know? Don't really care? It just fits conveniently under the label of "faster" and therefore you don't have to think of it as a "real" innovation? How about cultivating naturally occuring anerobic microbes to clean up toxic waste, simply by piping methane into the ground? Or developing dedicated physics chips for games that will eventually allow robots to resolve real world problems by "virtual" trial and error, or actual working mechas and power armour?

Or do you mean ideas for new things that aren't going to be technologically possible for the next few decades. Well, you're a writer, isn't that kind of thing your job?

The truth is, you haven't felt like nothing new has been happening for years. You felt it for about a week when you were pregnant and your brain chemistry insisted thatit had been "a really long time"

How about some examples?

I spent last summer at Los Alamos National Labs, and just talking to some scientists in my division got my gears turning.

One guy just got a grant to study how to make machines perceive objects. SO much work is being put into this nowadays because NONE of our current technology could begin to replace a pair of eyes. Distinguishing objects is complicated. Determining what a real edge is gets very convoluted in three dimensions. This guy's grant is to study how motion can be used to distinguish objects. Really, it makes sense. Our brains put a gradient on the visual images we see. Those beginning towards the bottom of our site are closer. How can we tell if, say, the multi-colored mug on my desk is one object? Its edges say it isn't, but when I move, and the pieces of the mug move together at a velocity indicating one location on the gradient.

A lot of scifi assumes machines can see like we do, but if you consider HOW they do this (and really, the way we do too), you can come up with some interesting (and never-before used) situations for a story.

Speaking of vision, another example is artificial "eyes." A photodiode receives light from its surroundings and information from certain locations sends a pulse through certain channels. these are connected to neurons in our occipital lobe the same way (well, functionally the same way) they are connected to the eye. Blind people have already been equipped with this device. It has VERY poor resolution at present, but they've been able to distinguish letters! Imagine the possiblilities!
-Complete vision repair for the blind
-Why stop at a photodiode? Transmittion of any visual signal to the brain, which we then see as though through our eyes.
--computer/internet/tv
--cameras at other locations
-Seeing spectrums outside the visual range

What would society be like with that kind of technology? How do you protect privacy? How do you deal with being connected so completely to others?

Lately I feel like I've been buried in potential technologies. My difficulty is trying to keep the focus on the characters and not the sparkle of my settings.

Your example of mp3 player breasts is a tragic case of marketing gone bad. Fortunately, a free market is good at beating down this kind of outrageousness. Provided the number of music-loving bimbos is low. (We may be in trouble.) But just because people are trying to make as much as they can off current technology doesn't mean there isn't some amazing stuff in the works. Somebody mentioned that we're in an innovation slump. Well, its the very beginnings of projects like the two I've described that are going to bring us out of it. You just need to look harder to find them.

Good luck, and don't get too discouraged!!

Personally, I'm hoping they perfect retina transplants, but I've been hoping this for ten years with no luck yet...last I heard they were doing them on monkeys but apparently they haven't progressed past the monkeys yet.

At least we are getting into some of the life changing possibilities. As to how fast my computer is...I couldn't care less. As long as I can type and surf I'm good. I cared more in college but I haven't used my computer science degree in four years now. My husband likes to keep me up to date, which is good because it's good knowledge, but he's frustrated with the number of things being passed off as new ideas that are nothing more than the marketing department's attempt to get more money out of the same old things.

Still, I think there are more products available than ever hit the big time. Like laser potato peelers.

Inside the Tornado. The subtitle is something about hypergrowth markets. Sometimes a wonderful technology is not well supported (think of the Tuckermobile it its day). The people who bring technology to market want assurance of profitability.

NASA is an entitlement agency nearly as corrupt as our social welfare system and except for the folks working in the Mojave desert with Burt Rutan there is little in the way of commercial ventures.

To illustrate, Robert Zubrin makes an observation inThe Case for Mars that the life support equipment for a successful Mars colony could be built using 19th century chemical engineering technology and off the shelf rocketry comoponents from the 1960's were it not for the fact that the US stopped making heavy lift rocket boosters then lost the design plans to make them.

Perhaps the next wave of Sci Fi will be something on the order of Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle? The creativity would be in speculation about how some extraordinary event could occur to get our society off its collective arse and use 1950's and 1960's technology to achieve a return to space.

Christine: You have hit the nail square for American companies. Japanese companies, on the other hand, take a much longer view of things. Have you seen Honda's robot Asimo?

http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/

I can always remember the name because it's clearly named after Isaac Asimov. Honda is making great strides in robotics. (Pun intended.)

For me, I noticed exactly what you did. I plotted new scientific paradigms, and major new inventions, over the past 2 centuries. I found big clusters around 1880 (age of invention), a steady stream with major changes (evolution, relativity, QM), and the last big cluster in the 1950's (cloning, DNA, nuclear power, some other things), and after that . . . no new scientific paradigms, and no major new inventions. We're way better at spreading the new tech to the masses, and developing what we've already got, but the invention of the CD-ROM just doesn't compare to the automobile.

Why did it stop?

That brings up the issue of fuzzy definitions of what counts as being "invented". Sometimes we're tempted to blow off a newly developed piece of working technology simply because the concept has been around for years or even decades. Then we look around for the new inventions, and discount anything that's only been conceptualized rather than prototyped.

To an extent, each of these definitions of when something counts as having been invented is perfectly fair. For an invention that eventually proved workable, you can credit the first person to see how it would eventually be implemented. For the ideas that have not yet been tested, you have no way of knowing which are real inventions and which are pie in the sky fantasy, so it is legitimate to demand proof of concept at least.

But when you use both definitions of "invention" at the same time, it will always appear that nothing really significant was invented in the last several years. Because the ones that have prototypes or proof of concepts were first conceptualized years before, and the ones being thought up now can't be counted as "invented" because they haven't been proved.

Take the automobile. When was it invented? Well, which part? The automobile as a whole is still being invented, after all. Airplanes, helicopters, sustained fusion reactors, cloning, GE foods, automatic weapons, guided missiles, semiconductors, there are breakthroughs in all these fields happening all the time. But most people don't distinguish them. And every invention that has been "proved" was thought up years before.

Nanotechnology is supposedly on the way, which could vitally alter a whole lot of things about our present world; we've got people theorizing on digitizing their consciousness and putting themselves within machines so they can exist much longer, perhaps forever. NASA is going to unveil a new space ship in fifteen years or so.

Putting ceramics in the engine of a car so it can burn hotter is a tweak. Nanobots cleaning it would be a major advance.

quote:

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last big cluster in the 1950's (cloning, DNA, nuclear power, some other things), and after that . . . no new scientific paradigms, and no major new inventions.

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We haven't had a paradigm shift in science since QM

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The silicon chip is a significant invention; however, showing that there's 1 major invention over a 45-year period (!) doesn't blow a hole in the claim that invention has slowed down; it confirms it.

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The claim that QM was not a paradigm shift is interesting.

I mentioned the transistor only because the integrated circuit isn't worth much without it.

Now, if you said "all the paradigm shifts since QM have been influenced by or directly resulted from QM", I wouldn't argue with it, even though that statement is arguable.

The real problem, as I see it, is that many people living in this day and age have become jaded. We see nothing amazing about the advances that make everything faster/smaller/cheaper/etc.

In fact, many people are tired of technological advance. They want it to stop. They want to buy a fast computer and have it stay fast. They want to get a perscription and still be taking a "wonder drug" in a year. They want the newest, best thing to be the last, best thing.

Most people don't consciously admit that they feel this way in so many words, but a lot of people feel it and more are feeling it all the time as the pace of technological innovation increases.

Lumping all advances in computers and communications as being "refinements" of one invention, the transistor, is a symptom of this feeling. Looking at it logically, it's much like lumping all advances in mechanical technology together as refinements on the wheel. What is a cog but a specialized wheel? What is a lever but a cog with only two sprockets? What is a screw but a wheel with the rim joined at a constant angle to the axis? What is a piston but a sideways wheel?

People aren't looking at the pace of technological developement any more because humans can't handle having ongoing change with no end in sight. Eventually, the point will be reached where there aren't enough humans able to handle the pace of change in technology, and we can't accurately predict what will happen.

Some sort of "dark ages", at least with respect to some areas of advancement, are almost inevitable. More and more people want to arrest the advancement of technology.

The fast we go, the less distinct we see things...they just seem to go by in a blur -- and that makes it hard to get excited. When you can't really see the distinction between an innovation and leap.

Comparing cellphones from the '80s to the cellphones of today, there is a visible leap forward. But even in the last few years, batteries have changed from things that slide on and off the back of the phone to small little packs only about 2.5 cm square and less than .5 cm thick. But on the surface a cellphone is still cellphone is still a cellphone. The basic function is still the same, even if the form is that much more advanced.

I would sort of like things to slow down a bit, it would be nice to buy a computer and know that it won't be obselete before I finish paying for it. Do I really need something two or three times for powerful than what was available three years ago?

While it is nice to have a cellphone capable of storing and playing hundreds of different ringtones that don't sound digitized while providing gaming opportunties that rival my computer and can send, receive and store text messages, take pictures etc., etc., do I really need all of it on a phone?!

In the eyes of the average consumer, are those things refinements (bells and whistles) or are they leaps forward? The technology may have leapt, but the increase in funtions comes down to "bells and whistles".

There is a lot of talk lately about Voip...its revolutionary! But what is it exactly and how much does it really change the functionality of how I use my phone?

So while I think you're totally right about people being jaded, I think it's a side issue. Cell phones are much better than they were twenty years ago...much, much better...but they're still portable phones. They may play music, take pictures, and surf the net, but this is all just packaging.

While we're on the subject of jaded, though...I don't know that I'd like to see technology slow down but I'd like to see the United States culture slow down and really think about things for a bit. What has all this technology gained us? Now we're on call 24-7 and work 60 hour weeks. I'm not sure what we're working for. The technology theoretically gives us the ability to be more efficient but rather than working less we use that efficiency to work faster, thus failing to improve anyone's actual life. (Except maybe those at the top making billions.) I'd say the biggest real changes have occurred in medicine, thinking in terms of life-changing events. I'm quite glad that I'm not afraid I'm going to die when I go into labor. And I can count this baby as a person before his second birthday. Still, this his pace of society doesn't make it any easier for me to go to work and raise a child.