American Cell Phones

Can you hear me now?

I have a friend in Chicago that can only use his iPhone in a four square foot area at the edge of his dining room that I call his “iZone”. Just today, my Verizon service repeatedly dropped calls and failed to send text messages in a major urban area. On the other hand, I’ve been in the middle of the bush in Kenya and had crystal clear, uninterrupted conversations with Europe. What is it that makes cell phone service in the states such a joke? Apparently it’s the plethora of protocols that are supposed to encourage competition, which is supposed to benefit the consumer. Which, as an occasional victim of the binding and punitive agreements providers feel compelled to enact because even they know their services suck, is definitely not what ends up happening. In fact, texting is four times more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble space telescope, which apparently amounts to a 4900% markup. Does anybody have the number for NASA’s sales department? I think I’m switching providers.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality hardware c. 2008

If you’d believed the hype about virtual reality that was whipped up by cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer or movies like Lawnmower Man over the past couple of decades, by now you’d be expecting to be able don a pair of VR gloves and punch out cybervillains in Chiba while shopping online by sampling the feel of various fine silks in some virtual shopping mall in India, all while having fully tactile cybersex with a lover in Bangkok. But no. So far all we have are Second Life, which – as we’ve said before – would be all fine and well if its users had a first one, and the The Sims, the pixelated imaginary world where one of the most amusing pastimes may be simply bending the rules to torture the residents. And those virtual shopping malls that were supposed to allow us to do everything we do in a real one without leaving the house? Forget it.

Video Phones

Though commonplace in the 50′s and 60′s, they seem to have waned in popularity

Back in the 1950′s, there were amazingly functional video phones everywhere. Everywhere on the cartoon the Jetsons, that is. Unfortunately, real video phones have only been a promise perpetually “just five years away”, ever since AT&T demonstrated the concept at the 1965 World’s fair. The reality of video phones seems much farther than five years off. If you’ve used tools like Skype Video, for instance, you may be familiar with the freeze-frames, feeble audio, and jittery, artifact-laden images that make you feel like you’re talking to flipbook versions of your friends through a string can phone, rather than a 21st century technology, On a positive note, it’s much easier to call in sick or scream at hapless tech support people if you can’t see the person on the other end.

Voice Recognition

I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that Dave. Did you say “I’d like to order new service”?

With hindsight, I think the classic scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the astronaut repeatedly and futilely says to the ship’s computer “Open the pod bay door please, Hal” was really quite prescient. HAL simply had the same voice recognition software that the utility companies use to turn your simple calls into hour-long screaming fits and mind-boggling mazes of sub menus. And although the software is rather pervasive, my experience with using tools like Dragon NaturallySpeaking has left me feeling that talking into the mouse like Scotty in Star Trek IV might be just as effective.

The Combustion Engine

A series of managed catastrophes

From the moment you start your car, a series of catastrophes are set in motion, some that preceded your turning the ignition key, some little ones that occur as part of the engine’s operation, and some that will follow. What a weird idea, to dig filthy black waste from the depths of the earth, decimate the environment refining it into a combustible liquid so that you can power a motor with a series of small explosions that further damage the environment while you drive around by yourself in a vehicle that was probably designed for 4 or more people. Too bad there’s not a better way. Oh, wait. What’s this?

This, for some reason, remains my single greatest disappointment regarding technology. Usually, when scientists develop detailed mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena, they’re able to – in at least some small way – demonstrate the truth of them. Although I once had to explain to an otherwise intelligent friend that the Vomit Comet was not in fact an example of anti-gravity, most of us know that anti-gravity remains a technological chimera. The closest science comes to demonstrating an understanding of anti gravity is to describe its opposite, by saying things like “See that thing that’s falling? I have some amazing math that will tell you how fast it will do so”.

Freestanding Holograms

There’s probably a better use for holograms than this

Oh c’mon. How hard can this be? We’ve been watching these darn two-dimensional projections since 1878 , and putting on some paper sunglasses to watch a movie isn’t going to hold us over any longer. Even that’s been around since 1950-something. To tell you the truth, I’m pretty sure we’ll all be bored with the results by the time anything close to this is achieved. We’ll be like “Oh yeah *yawn*. They did that on Star Trek TNG, didn’t they?” To torture us, there are routinely ignorant tech blog articles announcing things like holographic cell phones by 2010.

Teleportation

For now you’ll have to settle for action dolls

This would solve so many problems that I’m really surprised that the Segway guy didn’t focus on it first. I mean really, if he was so smart, you’d think he would have come up with a dorky mode of transit that no-one uses that didn’t cost so damn much, take the profits, and get to work on something useful. Unfortunately all we’ve got so far in this area is the ability to teleport one atom over one meter. Forgive me, but I’m pretty sure I can move large objects comprised of millions of atoms that distance with my bare hands. Granted, the problems here are mind-boggling, but so were the problems of building a combustion engine at one point, right?

Faster Than Light Travel

Hey Smartypants, You’re Obsolete

This has so many obvious benefits that I’m not going to bother listing all of them. But for some perverse reason I don’t understand, the main reason that I long for faster than light travel is because I’m irrationally fond of the idea of yet another Einsteinian notion falling by the wayside. This whole relativity business has worn out its usefulness in my opinion; if Einstein were really so smart he’d have realized that his ideas were just another paradigm awaiting obsolescence, and gotten to work on something more useful, like, um… maybe, faster than light travel? By the way, did you know that if the speed of light were 55 mph, you’d never see your headlights on the freeway, and your flights would always return before they took off?

Time Travel

Arnie ponders if he can go back and kill himself, if he already went back and killed himself.

My life would be SO much better if time travel were possible. Scratch that. Now that I think about it, I’d have a whole NEW slew of problems, mostly related to trying to decide whether to go back and change things in the past, or go forward and get tomorrow’s lotto numbers or find out if the amazing chick I just fell in love with turns out to be a raging loon later. Yeah, I guess we should all be content with the idea of time travel, so entire movie franchises that contradict their own paradoxes can be made to keep us amused for twenty years. Imagine how little sense George Lucas movies would make if he could REALLY re-do his movies instead of just digitizing old effects? And how could South Park ever out do this piece of work?