Like the title says, what would you like to see invented? The only rule is that it has to be realistic and doable considering the technology that we now have available or technology that we will at least soon have available to us.

One invention I would like to see is this:

A home solar panel system that is affordable and simple to install, that would make a serious dent in the electric bill or even eliminate the need to buy electricity. It would be relatively simple and easy to use. The instructions for its installation would be comprehensive and not require an expert. Preferably it would cost somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. When electricity isn't being used by the house, it can be sold back to the local energy grid. These systems could be mass produced and even integrated with inexpensive prefab houses.

I'll get back when I can think of more.

You probably could get a solar panel system just now that would do that for $5-10k. I want the same, but for $1000 :D

I'd like to see some kind of fibre-optic or other lighting strip that you could recess into the wall. It would have to be solid, in the sense that the light was even across this thing and individual bulbs couldn't be seen. It would need to be able to be bent at 90 degree angles and cut to fit different room sizes without a problem. With a dimmer, of course. :)

Inexpensive, road legal, quad bikes. Ones that aren't some kind of chinese clone with a strange name. Ideally, they'd be about £1500-2000 and have a 250cc or bigger engine.

Being realisitic is boring....I'm not trying to live in the past...so I'll say the inventions that should be made should replace all physical labor and make it so that almost no more work has to be done...then with no more work we'll be free at last...free to enjoy life...and the other inventions should be made to make resources and energy basically unlimited in supply...this way you can't run out of anything...and the final inventions should be made to for health, healing, to ensure that human beings remain in near perfect health......after these inventions things will be great (around 7,000 CE)...

You probably could get a solar panel system just now that would do that for $5-10k. I want the same, but for $1000 :D
I honestly haven't looked too much into it. From what I've heard, it's pretty expensive, complicated and you really need to know what you're doing to make it all work well. Kind of makes sense. After all, if it really were easy, cheap and simple to do, wouldn't everyone use a solar panel system for their houses?

If a simple and easy to implement system could be made, which I'm sure is possible, and then it could be made cost-effective through means of using cheaper solar panels and mass production, I could see many people using these. It will eventually get to the point where it doesn't make sense to not have one of these systems. It really seems like an inevitability, particuarly in light of the amazing strides companies in the past few years have been making. Not only is there a lot of promise that they will get cheaper, due to improvements in nanotechnology, but they are also a lot more efficient. I was just reading the other day about how Spectrolab has developed photovoltaics which are 40% efficient, which is a HUGE improvement over existing photovoltaic technology and they're confident that further improvements will be made in the future.
http://www.physorg.com/news99904887.html


I'd like to see some kind of fibre-optic or other lighting strip that you could recess into the wall. It would have to be solid, in the sense that the light was even across this thing and individual bulbs couldn't be seen. It would need to be able to be bent at 90 degree angles and cut to fit different room sizes without a problem. With a dimmer, of course. :)
That would be awesome. What you're talking about reminds me of the movie Pitch Black with Vin Diesel. At the end of the movie when Riddick and the others are dragging the fuel cells to the space craft, it's night time and they're using these flares, lamps and these cool, futuristic-looking tube lights to deter the aliens. Those tube lights kind of remind me of what you're talking about. [/quote]


Inexpensive, road legal, quad bikes. Ones that aren't some kind of chinese clone with a strange name. Ideally, they'd be about £1500-2000 and have a 250cc or bigger engine.

Eeek, sounds dangerous. That's probably why they're illegal for road use to begin with. It would still be badass though.:D


Being realisitic is boring....I'm not trying to live in the past...so I'll say the inventions that should be made should replace all physical labor and make it so that almost no more work has to be done...then with no more work we'll be free at last...free to enjoy life...and the other inventions should be made to make resources and energy basically unlimited in supply...this way you can't run out of anything...and the final inventions should be made to for health, healing, to ensure that human beings remain in near perfect health......after these inventions things will be great (around 7,000 CE)...

That sounds nice and all, but really what I want out of this thread are ideas for inventions in specific. What specifically would you like to see invented?

In Europe, it costs around 15000 pounds (30000 USdollars) to fit an average house with enough panels to power it. Obviously, the sunnier the climate, the slightly less panels required.

Francois, I don't know of anywhere that it is illegal to ride a quad bike or trike on the road as long as it has all the equipment that it's supposed to have.

Bionic limbs that work, (even bypassing damaged nerves) as good as natural
ones.

I honestly haven't looked too much into it. From what I've heard, it's pretty expensive, complicated and you really need to know what you're doing to make it all work well. Kind of makes sense. After all, if it really were easy, cheap and simple to do, wouldn't everyone use a solar panel system for their houses?

I think you're right. I haven't looked into it either, but I imagine my $5-10k guess for an ok system was a little low. As Tab pointed out.


If a simple and easy to implement system could be made, which I'm sure is possible, and then it could be made cost-effective through means of using cheaper solar panels and mass production, I could see many people using these. It will eventually get to the point where it doesn't make sense to not have one of these systems. It really seems like an inevitability, particuarly in light of the amazing strides companies in the past few years have been making. Not only is there a lot of promise that they will get cheaper, due to improvements in nanotechnology, but they are also a lot more efficient. I was just reading the other day about how Spectrolab has developed photovoltaics which are 40% efficient, which is a HUGE improvement over existing photovoltaic technology and they're confident that further improvements will be made in the future.
http://www.physorg.com/news99904887.html

Sounds good. Hopefully it will translate well to mass production. I'm a bit worried that we might not hear any more of it. It seems that we hear about some things and they never come to fruition, or if they do it's years down the line. Patience is what I need. :)



That would be awesome. What you're talking about reminds me of the movie Pitch Black with Vin Diesel. At the end of the movie when Riddick and the others are dragging the fuel cells to the space craft, it's night time and they're using these flares, lamps and these cool, futuristic-looking tube lights to deter the aliens. Those tube lights kind of remind me of what you're talking about.

Cool. Don't remember that bit of the film particularly, but hey. I'd like them as mood lighting. I reckon if there was full-on light all around it could be a little intense, but quite low and maybe with some colour filters I reckon it would be quite nice.


Eeek, sounds dangerous. That's probably why they're illegal for road use to begin with. It would still be badass though.:D Well, you can get road legal quads, but they're expensive. All the right equipment for road use drives the price up, I guess, but quads in general are still expensive. The ones I've ridden don't seem to be that sophisticated. The back axle was solid and, going round sharp corners, the outside wheel is sliding. Or something like that. Pretty sure most quads don't have diffs. They're very robust and can take some big hits, so that must drive costs up.

As for the danger, I don't know. Off roading is dangerous, but I think roads would be alright. These things grip like there's no tomorrow, or slide in whatever direction you chuck it. If you have enough grip you go on two wheels, but you're still safely pinned to the ground.

I want two things. First the sci fi. I want technology that can take the music in my head and turn it into sound. I'm able to write musical notation (although not very fast) but that only takes care of the pitch and duration of the notes. I can't transcribe the textures, the dynamics, the overall production. Yes I know symphonic composers do that but it's not a very common skill. Sounds don't stay in my head long enough to do all the work of describing them. I write half a page of music and the rest of it has vanished.

Second, something that is more important, in fact I think it's vital if humanity is to continue moving forward. RELIABLE SOFTWARE. Windows is a piece of crap that barely works, by the quality and performance standards of real engineers in the other engineering disciplines. Yet its slick marketing campaign coupled with good luck and a lot of inertia have made it the infrastructure of the post-industrial era. Hardly a day goes by that I don't read of some absolutely frightening software "glitch," as reporters love to call them to avoid alarming us. Just a week or so ago, a bunch of angry Russian bureaucrats practically shut down Estonia's internet access because they were pissed off at them. The whole country's entire financial network was offline for the better part of a day. This software breaks too easily and is too easy for outsiders to damage.

As a software project management consultant and trainer, I know this is basically a people problem, not a technical one. Software construction projects are not run with the same degree of professionalism as bridges and airplanes. Their managers use techniques that might have worked on the Pyramids.

As a result we have identity theft and a host of lesser but still dire problems running rampant on the world's software netrwork. Software is rushed to market without adequate testing. Developers and the sleazy marketeers who run their companies are too busy dreaming up fancy new applications to bother slowing down and making the less exciting ones already in development work better. User requirements are not adequately analyzed and checked for validity and realism. Quality standards are rarely established and almost never enforced. Risk analysis is rarely performed and tremendous resources are either wasted on projects with no hope of success or diverted to repairing widespread defects in software that should never have been approved. Very few IT shops (at least in America) even measure their software, and as Lord Kelvin said, if you haven't measured something then your knowledge of it is meager.

We're inexorably moving toward a world where everything is under the control of computers. Does anybody seriously believe that we can move up to that level, with the kind of software we're capable of building?

Would you buy a toilet that worked as poorly as your software? A car? How many files have you lost? How much time have you wasted over the years trying to work around commands that don't work the way they are supposed to? How much of your day do you spend being a software mechanic, instead of a software user? How much money have you been cheated out of by billing programs because it was just too much trouble to keep yelling at the company when they obviously really didn't know how to fix it?

Ultimately the cause is largely the fact that people are given management positions as a reward for having been good technicians, not because they have any aptitude for managing. My invention does not require any new science but just an attitude improvement by software developers, the people who run software shops, and the people who inexplicably pay them good money for this junk.

So this isn't science fiction, it can be done. :)

Inspired from the other thread that just popped up in here, a wireless power stick. :P

I don't even want a wireless power stick. There is no telling what an electromagnetic field like that would do to my hardware, let along my wetware. Plugging it into the wall works as long as people take care of it, which they would have to do if they had wireless anyway, and your fillings wouldn't heat up. Also, it's amazingly cheap to do it the old-fashioned way.

I don't even want a wireless power stick. There is no telling what an electromagnetic field like that would do to my hardware, let along my wetware.I think that in the spirit of this thread, we can take it as given for any invention that pesky little problems like that will be conveniently solved. :) Although admittedly my own invention is not in that class because it's all about solving the problems.