The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True in 2012
From io9....
Yesterday we told you about the biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2012. But now we turn our attention to those developments that make us realize just how futuristic things are quickly becoming.
And the past year provided no shortage of futureshock. We watched a cyborg compete at the Olympic Games, and marveled at the news that NASA was actually working on a faster-than-light warp drive. It was also a year that featured the planet's first superstorm, the development of an artificial retina — and primates who had their intelligence enhanced with a chip.
Here are 16 predictions that came true in 2012.
http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012
= new reply since forum marked as read
I would put it way above No. 1, in a category of its own. This is the most astonishing news that I've had in my lifetime--that actual scientists (not s-f writers) at NASA, for godssakes, are seriously saying that warp drive may be possible and are proceeding with tests!
Good God, Scuba! This is like the discovery of fire (or rather humans learning to control fire)! It could utterly transform human life for the next hundred thousand years, or more likely, forever. Granted, it's still just math, but so was the atom bomb for a time--and not for very long.
I would say that the other 14 items are awesome or fascinating--but this one is truly mind-blowing. I never ever ever expected to hear this from NASA. I figured that maybe our great-grandchildren might be alive when this math was figured out and testing begun--or when some other means of very fast space travel was devised or stumbled upon. But not soon and certainly not in my lifetime. And not without a leap beyond Einstein.
Wow! I mean really and truly...
But I really, REALLY did not expect to hear of a serious effort at warp drive in my lifetime. My mouth fell open when I read that. All of the other things are logical, step by step extrapolations of things that went before. Not this. This is a potential leap into the 23rd century--into making Star Trek REAL, possibly in my lifetime. Totally unexpected.
I am, of course, FOR all advances for the paralyzed, the blind and other disabled people, including the elderly with Alzheimer's/dementia and failing bodily systems I serve severely disabled people in my job, and every day--a hundred times a day--I hope for "a miracle" of modern medicine to restore their minds or bodies. I am also outraged at the unfriggingbelievable COST of U.S. medical care, especially the most advanced care. The rich can buy decades of life; the poor cannot--and as medicine advances, that horrible discrepancy shows every sign of getting worse. Some day soon the rich will be buying what may be eternal life, or at least life extension to hundreds of years--and the poor will simply be "kicked off the island." The cost of medical care in the U.S. is the scandal of the world!
I am well aware of these issues--and also of the advances in medicine and medical technology that have benefited many people--and have equalized many disabled people. Sometimes the advances "trickle down." Society has also advanced--for instance, with wheelchair accessibility. But still, what I see going on is tremendous unfairness--with a few getting very, very rich off of that unfairness.
We really need to raise the level of consciousness in the U.S.--the level of political and other discourse, the level of education, the level of awareness--and I think that projects like NASA help do that--help raise the tone of our society--and they are almost alone in doing so, presently. They are thinking about the universe--and what are the rest of us forced to think about?--cuts of Medicare, cuts of Social Security, fascist attacks on all of our best institutions.
That's one reason I love NASA--it raises our eyes out of the muck of U.S. political and social confusion. And for announcements like this: that warp drive--a science fiction fantasy a short time ago--may actually be FEASIBLE.
is a reminder of either:
1) Canadians should have looser gun laws so they can protect themselves (
I hope obvious)
2) liberal use of Google can end up in assault
3) don't eat at McDonalds
3a) don't eat at McDonalds if you're part robot
