195
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 231 points 2 weeks ago
[-] [email protected] 106 points 2 weeks ago

RELIABLE public transport. I guess that's too sci-fi

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago

Slow down there. Keep it reasonable

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 148 points 2 weeks ago

UBI. Not only is it viable but it works in improving everyone's lives, not just the people receiving it.

[-] [email protected] 70 points 2 weeks ago

Sure, but have you considered that this would loosen the hold capitalism has on the wage slaves? Won't someone think of the shareholders‽

[-] [email protected] 41 points 2 weeks ago

At best it would prop up capitalism until we can replace it with something better.

It's literally just giving people more money to shove into the capitalist system. You don't change a system by feeding it.

I won't say it's a bad thing... but it's not a solution. It's a stop gap.

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Why not just distribute the resources themselves, rather than tokens to exchange for resources? If we have post scarcity, we won't need money

[-] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago

Because distributing resources equally is a bad idea since people are individuals. You're giving 1 chicken to the guy that loves chicken and the same amount to the vegetarian. If instead you give h both the money for 1 chicken they can decide whether they want the chicken or something else.

load more comments (27 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 120 points 2 weeks ago

Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.

A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] [email protected] 79 points 2 weeks ago
[-] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago

As long as shareholder value is the number one thing it just cant happen.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago

OP says, "with our current current level of technology."

We have the technology to overcome any logistics issue pertaining to eliminating scarcity (and by extension, poverty). What we lack is the societal structure.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

so kill the shareholders, then they won't care about their value.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 75 points 2 weeks ago

the end of scarcity. that's a totally bogus concept that capitalism uses to keep the rich in power. we produce far more than the whole of humanity would need to feed and cloth themselves, and we have more houses empty than there are families. we could end poverty right now, we just choose not to.

load more comments (6 replies)
[-] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago

We could be solarpunk. Like, right now. With everything using clean energy and plants everywhere.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 47 points 2 weeks ago

Arcologies.

Dense housing with good soundproofing, atop commercial space, in a walkable neighborhood.

Wouldn't need rent control if there was more houses.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 39 points 2 weeks ago

Telemetry free consumer products would be nice

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I'm on board with ethical and opt-in telemetry. Knowing how your users interact with your app is very useful, but not many companies can show restraint when money is involved.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago

Roof-top gardens everywhere! Like the launch arcologies in SimCity 2000. They looked cool as fuck.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Mech suits.

We have them IRL... Kinda. They're just hydraulic powered limb-augmentation things but there's absolutely no reason they couldn't be like an Alice from Aliens. Shit; we could probably do MechWarrior mechs just not the same scale right now, or even an Iron Man like suit if time was spent trying.

The most fictional thing about a lot of these is mostly the power source. How do you power it? But a tank with legs could just be powered by a normal engine.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I'm an engineer in R&D and have briefly worked on an exoskeleton project. The reason we don't have mech suits is that the capitalist market doesn't demand them much, at least with our current technology.

There are two primary markets for them: medical, and manufacturing. I worked on the medical side--the big challenge there is making devices that are light enough that the mech helps more than it hinders. The biggest challenge is power: batteries are heavy. As we continue to figure out more efficient power storage and efficiency techniques, you could see more of these devices out in the wild.

The manufacturing market is growing, though most applications there are less "mech suit" and more "assistive arm" type of things.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago

I'm confident that we could set up permanent human habitation on the Moon or on Mars with our current level of technology, and that's featured pretty prominently in sci-fi.

I don't know if it would actually provide a cost-effective return, but I do think that it'd be interesting to see happen in my lifetime.

load more comments (10 replies)
[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago
load more comments (8 replies)
[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

Fusion energy. Man, we are so close!

[-] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, you know what they say: only thirty more years.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago

With adequate funding. That's the part that always gets omitted. We haven't been funding the research to make it happen.

[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

Abolishing the concept of money. Probably won't happen but it would be pretty cool.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hemp as a replacement for plastics and synthetic materials. Food packaging shouldn't have a longer shelf life than it's contents.

Sunchips was using PLA, which is a step in the right direction.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago
[-] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

How about a machine that can fold your laundry after it's washed and dried?

load more comments (7 replies)
[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

Alarm clock that reads my brain activity and only wakes me up at the point in my REM cycle, where i'll feel refreshed waking up.

load more comments (7 replies)
[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Terraforming.

The formerly-water deserts can be terraformed by just digging holes at specific angles so the shadow protects plants from drying up.

It's sci-fi not like a "future robot" thing but more of a "hey we know the math we can do this reliably well" type of thing.

Also those expensive EEG headbands that track your brain during sleep and give you stats can be modified to change TV channel at specific brainwave values.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago

I've got good news for you! We've been terraforming the planet to be more like Arrakis for a couple decades already!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

The viewscreen from Star Trek. It's actually real but nobody really wants to use it.

Phones, tablets, and laptops have had video chat for years. Apple brought it to actual TV a couple years ago. The idea is you use the Apple TV set-top box, and you get a squared-S-shaped clip that mounts an iPhone to the top of a TV so the rear camera array can point out into the room. You pair the two, and your whole TV turns into a viewscreen, just like on the starship Enterprise.

I've explained this to a few people and the reaction is usually "okay why TF would I wanna do that?" So imagine a Thanksgiving or Christmas, or other "big family holiday" thing where you have that one person who won't participate because it's their partner's family's turn to see the kids or whatever... so, the Apple TV is like $100. And somebody is gonna have an iPhone. And these days, everyone has a TV, at least in the west, and they're 55" or bigger. So you get the TV in the corner of the room and you set it up so you're broadcasting the whole living room and maybe part of the kitchen or dining room, and you connect it to another family/part of the family who is doing the same. And your TV is now a window into that other living room, and people can go up to the screen and interact, or wave from across the room. Now if it's like Thanksgiving and it's based around eating, you could even run the end of the table up to the TV (so the TV is basically sat at one end of the table with no one in between) on both sides so when you look down the table, you're looking into that other room.

load more comments (11 replies)
[-] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

A moonbase.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

Nuclear rocket engines. A bit less ambitious than most of the responses, but most things here seem to either refer to technologies we don't have yet but seem within a century or so of developing, which doesn't fit the question, or vague consequences that one wants that tech to have without it being clear how our current technology gets there. But nuclear rockets definitely fit the question, because we have built and ground tested them before, decades ago even, we just haven't bothered to actually use the things. And they should theoretically make developing things like space industry or manned space exploration beyond the moon more viable, by being more efficient than chemical rockets while giving better thrust than ion engines do. They don't work well for launching from the ground, but since our launch abilities have increased a fair bit in the past decade or so, actually getting the things to space in order to use them should be easier than ever.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Last time I checked on that one, the opposition to the idea was focused on the risks of nuclear fallout from a failed launch.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

Terraform a planet.

Not like those dead rocks out there such as Mars or the Moon though, I mean like terraform Earth.

If we can't even manage the pollution and climate change right here on Earth, how the fuck they think they're gonna bring dead space rocks to life?

At the current rate, wherever humans go, we'll just bring our trashy ways with us...

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

Terraforming Earth. Making Earth Earthlike.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I would just like complete control of my various web things. be able to restrict banking activity by source (so like lock my savings to only move between my checking and no where else), be able to make temporary credit card numbers that I can not only limit the amount of a single charge but max total that can be charged and daily charge and monthly charge and also be able to limit it to one payer. So like I make it and use it to pay for something than can go back and click on the the vendor payed and say lock it to only that vendor. Have an investment account where I can setup a variety of investments by percentage and have it keep those percentages as markets move. oh and have a local location for all my things where you can get any help including for their website although thats not exactly technology.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

Augmented reality overlaying historical photos and 3d models so you can literally see history as your walking.

Imagine being able to visit The White City that was built for the World's Fair in Chicago. Or seeing New York before sky scrapers dominated the landscape.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Here is something we don't have that I think we could: Automated vegetable farming.

I've seen these watering gantries that are fixed at the center of a circular field and then rotate radially around that point to water the field. Could you use that as a rail with an effector arm on it that can plant, weed, tend, fertilize and harvest the field, such that in goes seeds and out comes vegetables? Without the liability of free roaming robotic tractors and combine harvesters. Surely the issue here would be software.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
195 points (98.0% liked)

Ask Lemmy

34684 readers
1350 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS