Hypothetical technology you couldn't adjust to.

deadish

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Tilted_Logic said:
Anyway, long story short, it got me thinking; is there some sort of technological advancement or a great change the next generation is simply born into, that you don't think you could come to terms with or accept?
Be it something as widely detailed as cybernetics; humans being implanted with technology used to enhance or correct the body (yay for Deus Ex!) - to virtual reality hubs that allow us to explore the world safely, removing the inclination to actually go outside and see things for ourselves.
It has already happen to me.

Facebook and all the other social media stuff.

While I have a Facebook account, I never really use it. Maybe I'm an anti-social loner or a privacy paranoia nut, but I never really got it.

However this shit is all the rage now.

/shrug
 

craftomega

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Tilted_Logic said:

OK I have acually gave this quite a bit of thought.

I think that your viewing this backwards.

Because we were born in the technological age, I think we will be able to adept to most new technology, but will be able to adapt to a lack of technology. What happens if we have another giant shift in culture that makes technology no longer used for entertanment. What would we do then?
 

Cpu46

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Shoggoth2588 said:
One more! Teleportation. Star-Trek style wherein all of your cells are broken down and reassembled elsewhere in the space between one second and the next. For this one I wouldn't do it mainly because it would mean I'd be disintegrated in one spot and a perfect copy of me would reappear in another. That copy would go about his business while the original me would be fucking dead. There would be no way of knowing if my current, original consciousness can survive that type of transportation because the only person who can say so is you, yourself. Of course your perfect copy will say "Well gosh, that was easy." but the you who stepped on pod A down the road will have been reduced to less than a memory.
Curses Shoggoth! I just got over my most recent "what happens when we die/consciousness shutdown" fit. Now you have to bring this up and make me think about it again.

However as far as teleportation goes. I really wouldn't care. Either A: I step out of the teleporter at the destination going "Well gosh, that was easy" or B: I am literally not able to care.


OT: I am fine with any technology. Cyborgs, nanobots, teleporters, virtual reality. I can deal with all of them.
 

Philol

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generals3 said:
You won't ever get me to use e-books so you don't even need hypothetical technology for something i won't ever adjust to. I like my reading material in paper, thankyouverymuch.
If it's a book I'm reading because I enjoy it then I want a paper copy, but If it's for my history course then I prefer e-books.
 

Zipa

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Dec 19, 2010
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Cybernetics/augmentation, do not want well unless its like a replacement organ for medical reasons.
 

kasperbbs

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Having no privacy would suck, everyone would act like they are on 'reality' TV show 24/7 and would get pissed if nobody is stalking them. As for cybernetic augmentations, i think thats a good thing if used for medical purposes and not making rich people immortal, i doubt that average Joe could afford them. But honestly if we do get all that good stuff, cures for all diseases, unlimited supply of elecricity and whatnot, the world would get so damn crowded without people dying and that can't be good.
 

DoomyMcDoom

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Well with the watchy stuff you mentioned... I got nothing to hide, I'm proud of who I am... Someone wants to watch me naked go a fuckin head, whatever floats your boat, I guess, glad I'm makin u happy.

Well there is one thing that I see that bothers me, that is the disconnect happening in all our lives due to being connected all the time, people have a harder time relaxing, like truly relaxing, I've found that people are less personable in person... I don't like it, I like being able to talk to people, texting hurts my thumbs, and when it comes down to it, there's no real personality being expressed, I tend to be the kinda person that you hafta see how I'm standing or my facial expression to understand half my humour, or at least my vocal inflection...

Maybe that's just me but I would far rather take a step backwards in out communication technology than keep going on the route we are taking, so many socially awkward people who can't carry out a conversation face to face... saddening and maddening.
 

Justanewguy

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Tree man said:
F4LL3N said:
Tree man said:
Virtual reality.

I'm paranoid right now, the horror of realizing that my entire life could be nothing but a fabricated program inserted into my mind at my own request no less as a form of escapism would break me into millions of pieces.

Think total recall but with more gore and less bad facial morphing effects.
Virtual reality is basically the ultimate gaming platform. Once we have that, there's nothing else to improve on. You'd be able to play Pokemon in real life, have a zombie apocalypse, and that's only the beginning. I probably wouldn't even care if I spent 23 1/2 hours a day lying on a chair with absolutely no sunlight or human contact.
But that's the thing, how do you know if what your playing isn't real and the supposedly 'real' life isn't some delusion brought up by your zombie addled mind.

*Shudder*
If this is my fantasy, I have a seriously messed up mind.
 

Nalgas D. Lemur

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Tilted_Logic said:
HardkorSB said:
Tilted_Logic said:
You can view anything from the past.

Anytime, anywhere. You know what this means? It means if your neighbour is a pervert, he can watch when you undressed last night. Rabid fans could watch their favorite stars make love. Every single embarrassing and personal moment of your life is available to anyone with the inclination.
Haven't read that but I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't let just anyone use that thing and even if they did, I imagine that it would be rather expensive (if not the equipment itself then the energy used to open that window) so unless your perverted neighbor has some shares in Apple, I don't think he could watch you.
But if everyone had access to it all the time, there would surely be some laws and regulations for it. Plus, it would be nice if no one could ever lie about something and get away with it. Imagine how politics would look :) I think that in the long run, it would be a change for the better.
Also, I don't care about someone watching me take a shower, or even fuck. Call me crazy but I just don't.

As for the topic, I think that I am intelligent enough to learn how to use even the most sophisticated of human inventions and I can adapt to pretty much any living conditions and lifestyle.
Well, regardless of how they intended the technology to be used in the book, the means by which you'd actually view the past was widely available and extremely small (to the point where people got eye implants so they could watch the past whenever they desired). There was no regulation, because as far as I recall anyone could get their hands on the device. I read the book a while ago, so I'm a little rusty on specifics, but I do know that pretty much everyone and their brother had the time viewer in some form or another to the point where no one really controlled it anymore.
I read it a very, very, very long time ago, but that's about how I remember it too. It was so ubiquitous at the point the story took place that even if anyone had wanted to control it it would've been unenforceable. If I'm not mixing it up with another similar story, I think that's the one where they were originally trying to see into the distant past, but it turned out that it didn't work very well for that (more degraded/lossy signal the farther back you go) but it worked great for more recent stuff...like ten minutes ago. That's the kind of thing that causes a lot of chaos at first and people don't know how to cope with it, but eventually they'd just kind of have to accept it.
 

Ironman126

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Apr 7, 2010
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Binnsyboy said:
Those guidance system bullets that came up recently.

Fuck. That. Shit.

War casualties will skyrocket.
That is pretty much why we have the Geneva and Hague Conventions. We don't like expanding bullets creating huge entry/exit wounds? Outlawed them. We don't like napalm and flamethrowers torching humans? Outlawed as well. Why not just outlaw guided bullets?
 

AdmiralMemo

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I like my physical stuff. Yes, I like my virtual stuff, too, because it's easier to use in most cases, but the physical-to-virtual (and vice versa) conversion methods should always be available. You don't need to recharge a book. You don't need the Internet to play Dungeon Siege. As long as a physical option exists, I'm happy.
 

No social life

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My own personal nightmare scenario is when after having developed the technology to basically provide a server for a human consciousness, which I'm fine with, The technology to create a hive mind emerges and no one has the option of retaining their individuality.
 

Johnson McGee

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I don't think I could bring myself to use a teleporter, even if it's possible. I could never be sure of whether it's really myself being transported or if I'm just being killed and a clone appears at the destination.
 

Zorg Machine

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ash-brewster said:
Cybernetics/augmentation, do not want well unless its like a replacement organ for medical reasons.
Really? I would think that most people would want to get a new pair of legs that are identical to their previous ones only they don't break down with age...and they have rockets in them.

Seriously, give me my rocket feet.

OT: I think I could adapt to almost any technology that isn't just stupid (like the replicator) but I could never bring myself to use a teleporter.
 

Something Amyss

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Mortai Gravesend said:
This disturbs me somewhat as well. What if Valve goes out of business? Then what happens to all my games on Steam? Looking ahead at the more distant future that is, in the near future that's not likely to happen. And having a physical copy makes it really feel like you own the game to me...
What I love is that so many people take Newell at his word that they will unlock the games.

Anyway, veering back onto the original question, I have trouble picturing technology to which I cannot adapt. I still won't necessarily want to adapt to a given item, but that doesn't mean I can't.

I mean, the example in the first post, while a little creepy, doesn't really make me think I couldn't adapt. I mean, we already live in an era where much of our privacy is an illusion, anyway. Plus, anyone sick enough to want to see me naked just needs to ask. And wear the proper protective eyewear.

But then, we get to this post:

HardkorSB said:
But if everyone had access to it all the time, there would surely be some laws and regulations for it. Plus, it would be nice if no one could ever lie about something and get away with it. Imagine how politics would look :) I think that in the long run, it would be a change for the better.
i agree with the other points: Yeah, it would be expensive, yeah, people probably wouldn't have free reign with it. But laws? We're still stuck in the seventies (and sometimes earlier) on intellectual property laws, we haven't touched a lot of the aspects of privacy regarding the internet. We have drugs that have been around for decades that we don't know how to regulate.

Not sure how your country operates, but we have a problem in the US that goes to the topic at hand: We have lawmakers who are really old and really out of touch with how things work. It's worse, because they freaking flaunt it, too. 60, 70, 80-somethings legislating the internet while saying "I'm not a nerd (and therefore don't know what you're talking about), but...." But even if they weren't bragging about being too stupid to make these decisions, they are too under-educated and too far removed from the subjects to understand the process or concept they are attempting to legislate.

It's kind of like asking a caveman to legislate firearms or the Amish to decide policies on aerospace.
 

Zipa

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Dec 19, 2010
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Zorg Machine said:
ash-brewster said:
Cybernetics/augmentation, do not want well unless its like a replacement organ for medical reasons.
Really? I would think that most people would want to get a new pair of legs that are identical to their previous ones only they don't break down with age...and they have rockets in them.

Seriously, give me my rocket feet.

OT: I think I could adapt to almost any technology that isn't just stupid (like the replicator) but I could never bring myself to use a teleporter.
Id prefer just to be healed, chances are medical tech would be able to do that by the time cybernetics are up to that kind of point to be able to ''improve'' humans.

replacing a broken leg or arm with another identical one (cloned or w/e) I could live with but no robotic arms a la deus ex.
 
Aug 1, 2010
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The only piece of tech I wouldn't wholeheartedly embrace would be robots.

Call me paranoid, but if Microsoft can't even get Vista to work, I don't even want to think of what will happen when they make an OS for millions of super-strong metal people.
 

Whateveralot

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Right. You basically answered a part of this yourself:

Tilted_Logic said:
Every single embarrassing and personal moment of your life is available to anyone with the inclination.
Nobody gives a fuck about me. I have nothing to hide and I don't think anyone would ever want to see anything you mentioned of me.

If they would, they're simply wierd. Or my ex girlfriend, which is basically the same thing.


I'm sorry but, I don't care if anyone does this. It propably would be amazing.

There's nothing else I can contribute. I don't think I couldn't get used to any kind of technology. It's all very hypothethical and of course, there will be an age where technology will baffle me and simply be unavailable to me because I have no need for it, like some old people have nowadays with technology.
 

Zorg Machine

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ash-brewster said:
Zorg Machine said:
ash-brewster said:
Cybernetics/augmentation, do not want well unless its like a replacement organ for medical reasons.
Really? I would think that most people would want to get a new pair of legs that are identical to their previous ones only they don't break down with age...and they have rockets in them.

Seriously, give me my rocket feet.

OT: I think I could adapt to almost any technology that isn't just stupid (like the replicator) but I could never bring myself to use a teleporter.
Id prefer just to be healed, chances are medical tech would be able to do that by the time cybernetics are up to that kind of point to be able to ''improve'' humans.

replacing a broken leg or arm with another identical one (cloned or w/e) I could live with but no robotic arms a la deus ex.
Is there any special reason for this? I just don't understand why anyone would pass on converting their arms into grappling hooks.