Pastwatch: I don't want time travel. It would throw the world into endless chaos because no existence would be settled, everything would always be up in the air. But what I do want is a Pastwatch system as described by Orson Scott Card's science fiction novel. I want to be able to see once and for all what exactly happened in the past. I want to be a neutral onlooker from afar, unable to affect what happened, but able to see exactly what really happened throughout all of history. If anything is up for debate, like whether Kavanaugh attempted to rape a girl in high school, we could just fire up the pastwatch system and learn the truth. Almost every important question in history is disputed, so we need a pastwatch system to resolve these questions before humanity can move any further forward.
As Orwell said, "he who controls the past, controls the future." We need an invention to change that formula. We need the past to be verifiable and set in stone, not subject to distortion by interested parties. Then and only then can we start truly learning from history.
Genetic Engineering: Parents are currently gambling on the worth of their children. They could be stuck with insane kids, retards, terminally ill children or criminals as things stand. We should be able to choose the children we want. Twenty years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars should not be wasted on failures. With genetic engineering, high quality humans could be guaranteed, which would quickly lead to a higher quality world.
Spaceflight: If spaceflight were cheap and safe we could be spreading across the stars. Not only would this give people access to infinitely more resources, but it would allow for political separation from our enemies and the freedom to develop in the ways we dream. Freedom is priceless. There's just no better feeling in life than living under the laws you prefer in the society you wanted. Nor is there anything more painful than serving a regime you fundamentally disagree with. Spaceflight could solve all political and economic problems. It's also necessary to solve all natural problems, like the sun going nova, which we're going to have to deal with sooner or later if we don't want all life in the universe to go extinct.
Nanomachines: Wouldn't it be great if your stuff self-repaired, self-replicated, and continuously transformed to suit your needs? If our stuff were made out of nanomachines, that could happen. Your clothing would perfectly fit you at all times, your chair would be comfy, and your hard drive would never crash. It could even work alongside your cells to fight cancer and infections. If it's nanomachines with chainsaws and lasers, there ain't no way bacteria's gonna evolve a resistance to that. Combined with spaceflight, we'll need nanomachines to terraform planets before we get there, so there will be a proper atmosphere, soil for crops and the like. Is there anything nanomachines can't do?
AI: I want all work currently being done by humans to instead be done by robots with sufficient intelligence to do said tasks. This includes fluent translations of Japanese to English, so I can read all the light novels and visual novels I want. Once robots can do all the work in the world, the hierarchy of income will collapse and people will instead be judged on their virtue once more, the only standard humans should have been judged by in the first place. People can then stop wasting their time on monotonous and painful work and spend it all on hobbies instead.
Second, I want AI robot women to replace regular women as objects of romance, because regular women are absolutely worthless. You can't trust them, they don't take care of their bodies, they won't have kids, etc, etc. No one would ever want to mate with a woman if they could choose a cute robot girl with a good personality and a loving devotion towards their master. With AI, we could spend all our time with robot waifus while never having to work. AI solves everything simultaneously.
Artificial Wombs: If we could just reproduce on the cheap, without needing a woman's approval in the process, men could declare their independence from women once and for all. Together with our robot waifus we could raise all the children we wanted, and since machines are making more than enough money for us, we could have as many kids as we wanted. Artificial wombs are the only way the birth rate is going to bounce back because the current wombs have no interest in giving birth anymore.
Advanced Energy: Robot waifus currently suffer from a variety of problems, like they're too heavy, too expensive, and not durable enough. But one of the basic problems is we don't have a good alternative to atp. Human bodies have amazing energy efficiency, but robots either can't move at all or require to be plugged in to do anything. For a proper live in robot waifu we need a corresponding lightweight power source, like antimatter reactors. Fusion power, antimatter power, black hole generators, vacuum energy, whatever. I just want cheap, strong, mobile and storable power.
With advanced energy we could solve global warming (if it even exists.) Desalinate all the water we'll ever need. Be less reliant on outsiders for economic necessities. It might even be useful for near light speed drives on our spaceships.
Virtual Reality: I'm not talking about stupid goggles that present 360 degree fake graphics into your eyes. I want the ability to send mental signals in my brain and as a result move around in the virtual environment, and I want environmental feedback involving all five senses going straight into my brain. In short, I want the full dive technology present in SAO. Only then can people set up alternative worlds with alternative rules that people are required to abide by because the computer simply does not allow illegal moves. Not only would life become much more exciting if we had virtual reality girlfriends who actually love us, orcs to slay, and judgement bolts raining down on anyone who dared to cross us, but at the snap of your fingers you could switch your life out for someone else's -- be a girl next time, or live in a totally different world and culture, or live in the past, or whatever you wanted. The imagination is the only limit. Also, I insist that virtual reality have no load time. I'm so sick of the blank, 'now loading' screen on every game these days, which takes up half of every physical play session. Computing power needs to be upped until that vile thing never appears again.
Eternal Youth: Immortality is probably a curse, not a blessing. Even life with virtual reality on your side would eventually grow stale over the eons. But people should live as long as they wish, and they should have healthy, young, fit, pain-free, beautiful bodies during that entire time. Like the Abh from Crest of the Stars. Aging and disease is just disgusting on so many levels. Why is it permitted?
Perfect Memory: Alongside eternal youth, everyone needs to have perfect memories. This is obviously doable considering some humans already have this trait. But there's no point having a long life if we can't remember any of it. We need to be able to take full advantage of our own experiences. If you have sex with your first love, you should be able to, 1,000 years later, re-experience it just as vividly as when it was really happening. That should be a property that belongs to you, a right you earned, a wealth you can store up and take out and experience again whenever you want. As things stand our memories fade so quickly that it's impossible to store up any treasure on Earth, everything you have is so washed out that only what you're experiencing *right now* makes you feel alive. Which means all our memories are worthless compared to what we've experienced in the last thirty minutes.
Brain Uploading: Wouldn't it be nice if we could have the same intelligence connected to a different body, one that didn't need continuous grooming, cleaning, feeding, going to the bathroom, etc, etc? Let's put this sentience on a substrate that isn't quite so annoying and gross. It would also mean that you could turn back to a point before you suffered a traumatic event and just start anew. Also that there would be infinite backup copies of your brain so you could never die. So on and so forth. You could even live with yourself as your own partner, because who gets along better with you than you?
Diet Pills: Humans should not have hunger pangs when they've already eaten sufficiently for the day. It's absurd that everyone suffers from either obesity or hunger pangs every day.
Telepathy: We should have the right to know what is truly in the hearts of the people we're talking to and making deals with. If we could see into each other's hearts, for the first time, foreign policy, business, law enforcement, marriage, romance, etc, would be real and mean something.
Teleportation: There's too much down time in people's lives. Just getting somewhere is a huge chore. Commuting to and from work takes up much of people's days. In addition, it's impossible to go on trips to see interesting places and things because it just takes too long and costs too much. Teleportation could solve everything and keep people's lives focused on the things that matter.
Lab-grown meat: We shouldn't have to kill living things that experience pain and fear in order to survive. There needs to be a nutritious and tasty substitute that's exactly like the real thing but without any brain or nervous system.
Sensory Filters: If we don't want to, we shouldn't have to hear, see, smell or touch anything unwanted. Those sensations should be filtered out before our brain even recognizes them. No more baby crying and no more diaper smells. The entire concept of pain should be replaced with something else, that isn't painful, but auto-corrects postures or behaviors that are contributing to self-harm, unless we opt to override the auto-correct system. I'm fine with being aware that I'm hurting my back with my current posture and need to shift things a bit, but I'm not fine with back pain.
Self-Driving Cars: When is this going to happen? Jesus Christ. It may not be teleportation, but getting wherever you need to drive while playing on a portable tablet sounds a hell of a lot more fun and safer than driving. You could even sleep the whole time.
Cold Sleep: If you're really looking forward to something that's going to happen in twenty years, but have no real interest in the intervening time, you should be able to shut down and just restart your brain when the actually interesting time arrives. Cold Sleep could get rid of so much boredom and keep your awareness around only for the times you want to be aware of something. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go to sleep, wake up, and One Piece's manga would be finished already?
Hunter Killer Drones: Whether biological or mechanical, I don't mind, but I want the ability to kill everyone I select on a chart safely and nigh-instantly without leaving any environmental damage behind. Also it needs to be untraceable back to me so there isn't any reprisal either. Hunter killer drones are the military we deserve.
Entropy Reversal: Somehow or other, we need to prevent the heat death of the universe. Maybe make a new, younger universe with a deterministic evolution towards the same life that we have today. Change the laws of physics. Whatever. The point is life shouldn't ever end.
Scientists have done a great job inventing computers and the internet. But those are the only improvements in my lifetime. So many bad political developments have occurred, that I can't even say the world is improving over time. Geeks need to step it up. At this rate we aren't getting anywhere. Let's check off at least one big, world-changing, reality-altering invention a decade, until everything on this list is covered. Only then can people genuinely be happy.
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