What do you think the next big technological advance will be?

IrishEyes said:
Bidet's do it without TP, my son swears by them. Get a wash and dry before you flush.
He has not bought TP for nearly 3 years now.
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The bidet…

U.S. football has been played and followed by many Americans who have never seen Rugby, from which it evolved. Rugby developed in Britain, the land of its origin. Tennis originated and evolved in France, as did the bidet. Tennis has spread widely in the world.

DW and I travelled a couple times in various parts of Europe, on a somewhat tight budget. We stayed in clean, comfortable but low-cost older hotels. Ironic, but where we stayed in France, none of the bathrooms had bidets, but one place we stayed in Italy did have.
 
JBR said:
The bidet…

U.S. football has been played and followed by many Americans who have never seen Rugby, from which it evolved. Rugby developed in Britain, the land of its origin. Tennis originated and evolved in France, as did the bidet. Tennis has spread widely in the world.

DW and I travelled a couple times in various parts of Europe, on a somewhat tight budget. We stayed in clean, comfortable but low-cost older hotels. Ironic, but where we stayed in France, none of the bathrooms had bidets, but one place we stayed in Italy did have.
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I hear of more and more of them being installed in the US and used in some hotel chains here and there. Not motels mind you.
I guess that covid TP fiasco got the ball rolling.
 
Regardless of any other technologies expected to arise in the near future, for the sake of not destroying life on planet Earth including our own human civilizations, sustainable, power technologies like fusion, nuclear, or whatever need to be soon developed and deployed to replace atmospheric damaging, limited abundance fossil fuels.
 
MACKTEXAS said:
Will they ever develop airless tires? Yes, I already know they have them for golf carts, lawnmowers, and such - I'm writing about airless tires for standard automobiles and trucks.This Bridgestone site wrote about it over 3 years ago, but haven't heard anything more.
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That would be great. When I needed air in my tires, my stepdaughter said fiercely that I told her I was a feminist when she was kid. Yet I didn't know how to put air in my tires. Well, Chickadee, that has nothing to do with being a feminist, and I had men around who were ready, willing, and able to do it for me!

It was fun to see her so fierce! She was mad as a wet hen. So to calm her down, I told her I could change a tire. I did that once when husband #1 had a flat. He walked off to get something to fix the flat. I read the owner's manual, changed the tire, and sat in the living room waiting for his return. He couldn't figure out how the tire had inflated when I assured him that we'd had no visitors.

He made such a fuss that I told him that it was highly possible that he had hallucinated the flat.
 
In 1929 Nikola Tesla demonstrated an electric car that ran on electricity harvested from the earth's magnetic field. Apparently he took the engine out of an existing car, and fitted an electric motor to the gearbox. Then he added a 6ft long aerial to the motor, and with just that he was able to drive the car around at speeds up to 65mph.

So we know that if the oil ran out it would be possible to replicate his invention. However, I guess the oil companies didn't want to see their profits disappear and people just drive around for free, so they persuaded the US gov't to confiscate all of Tesla's patents and notes, etc. As such I think the history of the world would be very different today if Tesla's electric car had been allowed to go into mass production.

Just think, no lead pollution, no greenhouse gasses, no noise, no vibration, just clean, silent, free power. So the 20th century hell that we all lived through could have been avoided very easily, but for the greed of the oil companies. Grrrrr!!
 
The other thing that I wish we could have access to is anti-gravity, but again, the gov't doesn't want us plebs all zooming around the skies like the Jetsons. If we could have anti-grav then we wouldn't need airliners, or airports, or runways, thieving baggage handlers, or any of the other paraphernalia associated with air travel. Furthermore, there'd be no air pollution from anti-grav systems either, and they'd be quiet. So we could live in a free to travel, clean atmosphere world, with no noise, vibration, pollution, or paranoid security systems trying to hem us in at every turn.

Still, I suppose I can always dream. :ROFLMAO: 👍
 
Hopefully, there will be some great advances in food production. Scientists are experimenting with lab grown meat, which sounds kind of gross, but that's the kind of thing will need for humans to survive.
 
Every time I express a need for some unheard of technological breakthrough, someone will tell me, they already have an app for that. These guys are coming up with stuff faster than I can even imagine the thing they come up with. So the question is beyond my ability to imagine. Just bring it on.
 
The toilet cam. Big Brother will require a camera in every toilet for monitoring your stool consistency and color in order to determine if you have a communicable disease. All in the interest of public safety:ROFLMAO:

Since people have voluntarily given up their privacy, it shouldn't be an issue;)
 
outlander said:
The toilet cam. Big Brother will require a camera in every toilet for monitoring your stool consistency and color in order to determine if you have a communicable disease. All in the interest of public safety:ROFLMAO:

Since people have voluntarily given up their privacy, it shouldn't be an issue;)
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My mother used to say "what won't they think of next!" If only she knew.
 
JustDave said:
Every time I express a need for some unheard of technological breakthrough, someone will tell me, they already have an app for that. These guys are coming up with stuff faster than I can even imagine the thing they come up with. So the question is beyond my ability to imagine. Just bring it on.
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I agree that all sorts of "breakthroughs" are occurring. Given development time, some may prove quite practical and very beneficial, some will not. Also, the significance of breakthroughs occurs in many realms of application, so it isn't really possible to decide which will be "the next big technological advance". It's always a matter of contexts.

I believe one important direction is the development of electrical-energy storage methods that can increase the practicality of renewable electricity sources for large-scale application. The lithium battery (at various scales) will still have its place, but it won't always be the only or best option.
 
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What I hope is coming is a better way to test one’s vision.
I think great strides have been made in improving the physical health of the eye. We have all kinds of scans, surgeries, medications, etc now.
But to test vision we’re still reading letters on a chart on the wall. For me, this does not reflect my vision in my real life, daily settings. Or the way the quality of my vision fluctuates during the day.
 
MountainRa said:
What I hope is coming is a better way to test one’s vision.
I think great strides have been made in improving the physical health of the eye. We have all kinds of scans, surgeries, medications, etc now.
But to test vision we’re still reading letters on a chart on the wall. For me, this does not reflect my vision in my real life, daily settings. Or the way the quality of my vision fluctuates during the day.
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My optometrist uses what's called an autorefractor to determine the prescription and then she just verifies it with eye charts. It just takes a few minutes is is very accurate.
 
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