I have a close relative in his 50s that is brilliant. However, he never got much formal schooling, and so a lot of things about the universe are pretty mysterious, and he has learned a lot about how the world works through osmosis and the Discovery Channel. Lately, he has gotten a lot more intellectually curious about the world. While he is increasingly voracious about knowledge, a lot of stuff sounds equally plausible, and so things like New Age Mysticism are just as convincing for him as the Theory of Relativity. Actually, the New Age Mysticism is a lot easier to understand and sounds a lot cooler, so he's having an easier time believing that. I'm trying to steer him in the right direction and provide some legitimate answers to the deep questions of life and the universe - to the extent that we know those answers. He thinks it's cool, for example, that clocks on an airplane move at a slightly different rate than clocks on the ground. Unlike New Age Mysticism and the like, some of the answers are a little disappointing. With respect to the questions of aliens, for example, I showed him the Hubble Deep Field and explained that each little smear of light on there was a galaxy, and that we recently discovered lots of other stars that had planets like ours. We talked about the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. I explained that my best guess was that the universe was teeming with life (relatively speaking), but that the chances of us ever interacting with any intelligent life out there are low - if nothing else just because of the incredible distances involved, and the fact that the speed of light seems to be the universe's ultimate speed limit, for all practical purposes. I then had to explain that no, we do not have aliens stored away at Area 51. Looking at the Deep Field, I got a little disappointed that I could see so many stars, and that so many of them had planets and probably life of some sort, but that I'd never get to know any of it. FOCUS: What thing that will probably not happen in your lifetime are you most disappointed about?
Focus: Seeing a third party win a presidential election (in the USA). Oh wait, that's political, isn't it? Guess y'all are gonna delete this now.
Legalizing of marijuana. Keep pipe dreaming hippies!!!! hahahahaha AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHHHAAAAAA HAHAAAHAHAHAHAHA. On a serious note. It seems that with the current financial mess we are in will push back any really inspiring manned space exploration outside the scope of my life (the men in my family have a tendency to die in their 50's and Im already half way there). Maybe Ill have myself frozen or my conscious downloaded onto a sweet robot and Ill be able to experience everything discussed here.
Same fucking sentiments here. I always have (and still do) hope to walk on the moon some day. I doubt that even if I won the lottery I would get the chance.
FOCUS: Flying cars. I *KNOW* this will not happen in my lifetime - there's enough idiots on the roads, so no company in their right minds is going to give those idiots wings, right? Short of going in an aeroplane or a hot air balloon (or possibly a jetpack or some other form of solo flight, since you'll only fuck yourself up and not too many others), you won't be flying. Goddamn you, Back To The Future.
Focus: Colonization of other planets. We still haven't figured out how to travel faster than the speed of light, so forget about interstellar domination.
If we could add an alt. focus, I'd say I hate to see America fight a war on its own soil, and/or WWIII in my lifetime, but unfortunately I believe it could very well happen. I honestly still think we'll all be driving gasoline-driven cars when I'm old. I know I'll never "drive" a flying car. Back to the Future owes me a hoverboard. I'd love to see space tourism and/or colonization (really, can't we at least live on the moon?), but I doubt we'll be seeing that. Hell, we can't even get cars that talk to you straight. Robots living in harmony with humans. Yeah, aint gonna happen either.
On the other hand, robot fuck dolls are a real possibility. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/10/roxxxy-sex-robot-photo-wo_n_417976.html You would think Japan would have made the breakthrough, but New Jersey?
Sorry champ. For $10,000 US you can put a deposit down in the Terrafugia Transition. The flying. fucking. car. Actually, it's more like an airplane that you can drive on the roads, but it's close. Whoops - forgot the link <a class="postlink" href="http://www.terrafugia.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.terrafugia.com/</a>
Seeing the Buffalo Bills win a Super Bowl, followed closely by an original Guns n' Roses reunion show.
By flying car, I meant like the ones from Back To The Future. I bolded that line because what Sherwood described was the complete opposite of what I'd envisioned with my original post - I'd meant flying cars that could hover like helicopters through some gravity-interruption device and Mr. Fusion and stuff, like in the movie, not ones that would need wings to fly. My apologies for lack of clarity.
Aside from the obligatory hoverboard, Im going to go with just Artificial Intelligence. Forget the sci/fi movie malevolent A.I.(Terminator, Matrix, Blade Runner, 2001, etc, etc), just a true artificial intelligence. Yes, computers will keep getting smarter at a quicker rate, (is it faster than Moores Law now?) but I dont think a *true* AI will ever come to realization. The human mind is so complex, we cant even understand it ourselves let alone program a computer around it. And if it somehow does come true, lets hope they dont develop personalities. Im not worried about an evil sentient computer system ready to launch nukes, Im more worried about overly nervous/emotional robots:
Seeing a human walk on Mars and the ultimate terraformation of that planet. It has always been my firm belief that space exploration is the answer a great many of or problems. Wouldn't fully investing ourselves in a national space program create a lot of jobs?
Lightspeed (and beyond) Travel. Using the current means of interstellar travel that we are capable of, it would take centuries or often many millenia to get anywhere interesting or worth going. Were you to accept that it would take so freaking long to get anywhere, you'd have to figure out how to do that and accept the consequences of it, like Cryostasis. Assuming you could freeze someone and wake them up, a there and back trip would get back many, many hundreds of years later. All the space travel you can dream up is merely childish dabbling until you can accomplish this feat. And as much as it pains me to say it (because I really want to see it), I don't think I'll see lightspeed travel in this lifetime.
A hover board would be sweet. Flying cars are awesome. Colonization of any celestial body would be amazing. But seriously I would trade it all in for a food replicator. On order steak and eggs! Why yes please! Oh, and on the Star Trek theme, give me my god damn holodeck. In a world where moon travel is a reality, why do I have no interactive porn?!?
When I was a young child, I legitimately believed that by the time that I was an adult, we would have invented teleportation by now. It would so much more convenient. I am sincerely disappointed by the lack of development in this area.
We'll probably never see that super-futuristic shit we were all promised back in the 80's by now. Think about it: Back To The Future II happened 5 years from now. Flying cars. Hoverboards. 3D billboards attacking people on busy street intersections. George McFly's weird fly-upside down thingy. Rad clothes. The Cubs winning the World Series. Jesus. That's fucking Fantasyland. I might live long enough to see Halley's Comet again because I missed it as a kid, but I doubt I'll give a shit if I do live that long.
I could see 3D billboards and computer chips integrated into clothes like they had in BTTF 2 in the next five years.
Psshhh I'm going to be cryogenically frozen so I'm going to see it all. Have fun being eaten by worms after a life full of regrets, morons.