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Technology you thought would be further along by now

TXHokie

Platinum Member
Where's my flying car? I watched Blade Runner and Back to the Future in the 80's and thought I'd see them all over by now. Nope, still stuck in traffic.

How about supersonic passenger plane? After the Concorde, things seem to have stood still. Sure there's big improvement in lighter plane, better efficient engines but it still takes way too long to travel to other continents.

Laser pistol and force field? That's just asking too much.
 
Scuba/waterlung + the thing that filters oxygen from water.
Energy storage (although a major find was made this year) as a whole.
.. and Sociology. Our understanding of ourselves is primitive; and yes, it's important.
 
Where's my flying car? I watched Blade Runner and Back to the Future in the 80's and thought I'd see them all over by now. Nope, still stuck in traffic.

How about supersonic passenger plane? After the Concorde, things seem to have stood still. Sure there's big improvement in lighter plane, better efficient engines but it still takes way too long to travel to other continents.

They ran into a lot of sound ordinance laws regarding supersonic travel so it was tough to build them at a scale to be a good value for airlines given the limited routes they are allowed to fly

VR and setbox.

Since I just read shorty's post I read that as "VR and sexbot"
 
Autostereoscopic TVs
VR
Symmetrical gigabit (or at the time I thought "really freaking fast") internet everywhere on any device
Healthcare - I thought we'd certainly have some crazy awesome limb regeneration-type stuff going and cures/vaccines for incurable diseases
 
Electrical storage tech. Whether it's batteries, or something new, that can store electricity at the same or higher density as fossil fuel, and then retrieve it back.

But I'm not surprised, as the powers that be probably don't really want that to happen so not much money is being put into R&D for it. At least not as much money as is put into oil projects.

Flying cars technically exist, it's called a small 2-4 passenger plane/helicopter. 😛 The only thing is that you need a pilot license. Having actual flying vehicles that you only need a G license for would be kinda disastrous and impractical.
 
I used to think they would genetically engineer humans to photosynthesize like plants so we wouldn't have to eat anymore.
 
We can't trust people with cars on the road because of incompetence and inattention. There's no way flying cars would work unless they are fully automated (because falling cars = death) and they can't even do full automation on the ground yet. That includes other vehicles and not just yours. Not for another few decades until near-full acceptance, turnover, and ubiquity.
 
Hookers. Hasn't really changed much in 5k+ years. If anything, hookers has kind of dropped in overall quality.

This is wrong. Never before in history could you get a handy while watching VR Hentai. Technology has culminated for this very moment. You sir, are simply wrong.
 
You can't make enough energy via photosynthesize to power a human. There's a reason plants don't do much.

Yep.

Flying cars wont happen so long as displacement of air is the means.

Super sonic is too loud unless you get very small aircraft.

Aqua lung wont work as the volume of water you would have to filter would be insane for a human.

Desalination produces massive amounts of salt water which kills aquatic life.
 
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