this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 49 points 6 days ago (2 children)

external gestation...a womb with a view

severe genetic manipulation... designer babies

digit/limb/organ regeneration

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Seems entirely reasonable that a Gattaca future is achievable. Whether desirable is the other question. Somewhere CJ Cherryh is being worshipped as a prophet.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 16 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Artificial wombs are something that's often presented as dystopian, but I would imagine would actually be a very good thing. Beyond the obvious help it would be to infertile couples that desired children, they would if commonly adopted eliminate the danger of birth and pregnancy complications, and discomfort associated with the process. Probably not everyone would want to use it, but I'd bet even having the option would mean a lot to a lot of people.

[–] Flagstaff@programming.dev 4 points 6 days ago

And then all of this gave birth to the terrorists known as the Naturalists™...

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[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Artificial stem cells seem like the next thing to really revolutionize medicine.

Quantum computers for brute force hacks seems doable in 100.

Eye tracking pointer devices will likely be more convenient than mice within a dozen or two years. This will probably be widely available for people who are paralyzed first.

Diamond processors are always 10 years away, but I think we can do it in 100. This would revolutionize the amount of power we can put through a chip without worrying about cooling.

Quick charge capacitor replacements for standard rechargble batteries

Low yield fusion plants. I'd like to think of them as capable of high yield, but it's much harder than initially thought. Some ideas are quite promising for low yield.

[–] Lizardking13@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The eye tracking stuff exists already. There are medical device companies that build and sell these things.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I feel like the bottleneck will be with smooth continuous motions. It's very easy to move a cursor in that way with a mouse but you can't do that motion with your eyes unless you are looking at something else that's moving.

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[–] londos@lemmy.world 26 points 5 days ago

Vaccines. Maybe in 100 years we'll even be able to eliminate measles...again.

[–] Justdaveisfine@midwest.social 20 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I suspect we will see a human brain to digital interface. I don't think it will be "downloading minds" or anything, but I could see someone finding a way to plug a specialized camera or mic in to have a full functioning robotic replacement part.

I'm pretty sure they already have the beginning pieces to this, but its too specialized and expensive to do anything commercial with it yet.

[–] pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is so terrifying to me. I feel like it'll end up like the Black Mirror episode with the subscription model, getting more and more expensive with fewer features.

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[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Tricorders, cellphones are already partway there they just need more durable, small sensors like a handheld light spectrometer to tell what things are made of and a handheld interferometer to detect gravity

[–] invertedspear@lemmy.zip 13 points 5 days ago

Check out the app Phyphox, it uses all your existing sensors and probably surpasses tricorders in several ways while, of course, lacking in a few others.

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[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Fast-refresh ePaper. I just want a laptop I can use outside, man!

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Look up Daylight DC-1 might be what you are looking for

[–] Distractor@lemm.ee 3 points 4 days ago

Oooohhh, thank you

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago

Computer circuits based on light instead of electricity.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 9 points 5 days ago

We currently carry tricorders in our pockets. I can see a medical tricorder being ubiquitous for field medics, ships, and the like within 100 years.

[–] match@pawb.social 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

living in a self-sustaining ecological-aware community that values freedom and diversity and everyone having their needs met

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[–] Strider@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

A lot of black mirror stuff.

Apologies for the blanket pessimism but the last decades darkened my view.

[–] Toes@ani.social 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Railguns, there already exist prototypes that destroy themselves. So close!

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I thought we already had rail guns on ships?

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[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Nuclear fusion seems increasingly achievable.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

They are down to 2 main problems now. The main one is (the cost of) scaling up. Fusion reactors will be more effective then bigger they are. The tiny test ones are already past break even.

The other is wall material. Apparently the radiation has an annoying ability to transmute the elements making up the wall of the reactor. They are working out a material that can maintain its bulk mechanical properties, even with random elements appearing in its internal structure.

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[–] TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Cancer curing nanotechnology

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 7 points 6 days ago

Is it cheating to say AI and humanoid robots?

Anti-aging tech, if so.

[–] dil@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Ai and eeg can read brain waves generate images already kinda decent, maybe meet the robinsons memory viewer machine.

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[–] the_q@lemmy.zip 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think we can make an oven with a tiny fire breathing dinosaur in it.

[–] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So the Flintstones was actually about the future?!

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[–] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Portable communicators. It would be slick to have a USB c tricorder though.

[–] qantravon@startrek.website 12 points 6 days ago

...you mean phones?

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

Hold up. I'm pretty sure things that already exist don't count.

[–] invertedspear@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Download the Phyphox app to access your phones raw sensor data. Very much like a tricorder.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not FTL though. Slower than light, causality preserving version? Sure.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Exceeding FTL (and breaking causality) is basically a sci fi trope at this point with about as much credibility as psychics. To have at least some credibility you need one of: a testable hypothesis, or an unexplained phenomenon. Right now we have neither. At best, we have some equations, that work below light speed, where we can extrapolate past light speed and see how the math works. The problem is: none of these equations are testable as they all contain infinities or other asymptotic features that prevent passing light speed itself. So, if there's no viable math to get from sublight to FTL, and there's no unexplained phenomena, then what we're left with is nothing.

Even quantum entanglement, which is a darling of sci fi whenever they need a plot device (hello Le Guin and the ansible), has categorically been shown to obey causality and the light speed limit in every lab test.

At some point it's like asking for negative mass, antigravity, or other things that the math would allow. Except our universe doesn't.

I've got a wormhole to sell you ;)

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago

Obviously if we were to exceed light speed we would turn into lizards and mate with each other and have lizard babies. I thought this was common knowledge.

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[–] qantravon@startrek.website 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Basically, physics says that nothing, not even information can actually travel faster than the speed of light. It's a universal limit that shows up when you do the math on relativity. This concept is called "causality".

Because of this, FTL communication is probably impossible. Quantum entanglement seems like it could provide a loophole, but it doesn't actually work that way. To actually use quantum entanglement for communication, it actually needs a confirmation message, which would have to be delivered by a different means (every quantum message needs a non-quantum confirmation). That confirmation would be bound by the speed of light, thus preserving causality.

This is a very very rough description based on my memory, so some details may be a little off, but it should cover the gist. This article goes into more detail:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-entanglement-faster-than-light/

Edit: After reading, the answer is more that attempting to impart information onto the entangled particles to send a message necessarily breaks the entanglement and thus does not transmit the information to the other side. Entangling the particles makes their states related to each other, but only at the time of entanglement, and anything that changes either particle (including measuring it) will break the entanglement going forward.

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[–] Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (8 children)

Suicide Machines on Street Corners.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Direct brain interfaces for, like, VR. So instead of a screen strapped to your face, your visual cortex is just stimulated so you see the game using your own "hardware." A literal Matrix type environment for your mind.

This is either gonna be cool and fun, or scary and evil. But it will exist.

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[–] GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Exoskeletons like Ripley's in Alien. We've got smaller ones, but I want to pilot a walking fork lift.

Pipe dream - battlemechs aka mechwarrior (not pacific rim). Very impractical but I want one anyway. Yes, I saw the robot fighting league by Megabots. I have their poster.

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[–] lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] naught101@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

This will be useful for all the people over at !leopardsatemyface@lemmy.world

[–] rauls5@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 days ago

Fully autonomous humanoid robots. Unfortunately with out-of-control AGI they will probably kill me.

It would have been cool to have a benign C3-PO or R2D2.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Asteroid mining. We've had the tech to get people to the asterodi for decades, just lack the will to do it.

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I would guess that we'll most-likely have AGI in 100 years. That's pretty futuristic and impactful.

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