If You Could Bring One Sci Fi Technology to Earth

[Agent Sorchus]

Screw all that jazz. Intelligent Devices from MGLNanoha. A limited AI that includes all sorts of fun things like cross dimensional travel that allows for transportation and other little trickery. Heal injuries easily, travel hypersonic with ease. It counts as much as the green lanterns ring, and we know that it is 'easily' reproducible, which I don't think the green lanterns are supposed to be.

Ok so it gives little girls the ability to through tactical nukes around with only a little effort, but still it is a viable idea.

[Rossum]

The Roboticizer technology from the Sonic the Hedgehog series (archie comics or the SatAM cartoon). The ability to turn a living being into a robot has numerous applications!

1. Allow people to live longer. This was the devices original intent by its inventor (Charles Hedgehog) until Robotnick sabotaged it. Even after the sabotage that let Robotnick control people it was possible for people to break out of the control and retain their own free will. So at worst a roboticized person would need some therapy to get their free will back (and as long as their origional electronic brains are kept in repair then they have plenty of time to get that therapy since they won't die of aging).

2. Brain uploading. In the comics, there was an alternate universe Robotnick who had roboticized himself in a last-ditch attempt to beat his own version of sonic. But sonic destroyed his body. Said alternate Robotnic then had to upload his digital conciousness into an incomplete satalite to avoid deletion. He eventually built a new body and traveled to the prime universe where he took the place of the former Robotnick (now deceased) and became Eggman. In his robotic body he spent quite a few comics getting hunted down and destroyed by the heroes, uploading his consiousness into the net, finding a place to build a new body, and then getting destroyed again. So not only can the digital conciousness survive the destruction of the body but a new body can be constructed as needed.

3. Returning a robot to its former organic state. The roboticizer can also work the other way and return someone to being flesh and blood. This worked on Eggman as well (whos origional body had been destroyed and he had to upload his mind into a variety of different robot bodies). His current "Eggman" body looks significantly different than what his original body looked like. So it could be possible to build a robot version of a body, upload a mind into it, and turn it into flesh and blood.

4. Travel to the stars. If you can turn people into robots and back again then that frees up alot of problems with life support on space ships. Turn the astronauts into robots, have them travel on a ship for years or decades at a time (maybe give them some VR entertainment or let them go into sleep-mode or whatever to pass the time) and then when they reach their destination they can work on building the colony and return to flesh once the life support is set up.

5. Mind control and world domination. Okay, this part is most likely going to go horribly wrong if anyone ever tries it so its best to keep this from happening. Also, its posible that some people will try connecting their brains to the internet and soon you've got viruses and advertisements beaming directly into peoples brains. Thats also bad. I guess if a genius could mind control everyone else and get everyone to preserve the environment, get along with eachother, and work on traveling into space then it would be "good" but its far more likely that attempting to do so would result in alot of messy wars and cyber terrorism and adware corrupting peoples digitized brains and other crap that would just ruin everyones day.

Okay, I'll admit that its not exactly the most scientifically plausible of technologies and opens up all sorts of moral problems... but it would be neat to have and turning people into robots that only require replacement parts and electricity would open up all sorts of things s far as space colonization goes. The ability to turn back to flesh and bone just makes it better. I suppose you could find other sci-fi tech that can do the same thing but I think the Roboticizer has the best chance of passing whatever test determined if the resulting robot is really the origional person being transformed.

[Traveller]

If I was good frame of mind and wanted to 'help humanity', I would grab roomtemp super-conducters. I cant really think of any other single tech that would have such a huge range of useful and positive applications.

Or, If I didnt really give a damn, Id probaby grab fully immersive VR tech-ala The Matrix. That would make the interweb and the movie+TV industry obsolete in one fell swoop. Maybe not such a bad idea after all...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nanogenes from NuWho.

It's either that or room-temp superconductors. Or better yet, a working and replicable quantum computer of some description.

If we want transporters, I would use the ones from SG verse rather than ST. They at least have been shown to be capable of moving whole skyscrapers, seen in a Season 9 episode featuring Baal.

[Luke Skywalker]

Some techs like Culture effectors would be very impacting yet too dangerous if used by the wrong people. Hypermatter would solve our energy problems, allow us to travel the stars and give the oil companies a heart attack.

[lordofchange13]

Dose the philosophical aspect still apply? about how the transporter kills you and makes a copy at the destination,but the water,food, and manufacturing are really good uses.

That's all meaningless bullshit.

I like to ask: is there a test you can perform on the before and after that proves they are different, beyond some kind of circular reasoning? For example, if you asked the person after transport if he feels like a different person, could he concretely say yes? Can a brain scan or something show any physical difference?

A question that's not acceptable is "well he was there but now he's here" because obviously that happened - if not, you wouldn't have a transporter at all!

But, if there's no objective, non-circular test that can show a difference, I say that difference either a) doesn't exist or b) has no relevance to the world.


In Star Trek, an episode a lot of people bring up to support this is Second Chances, where Riker is split in two. But, to the outside world, there's no difference between them - as far as any scan they could do, even with Treknology, could say they were both the original.

If you asked either Tom or Will Riker if they feel different, both would say no. To the outside and inside worlds, both of them are the original.



You might say, well, that's impossible. They both can't be the original. But, that doesn't matter. It doesn't detract from either's life. As far as they are concerned, as far as their friends are concerned, they both are the same person up to that split. Then, their personalities and identities diverged, not because one or both is a "copy" but because their circumstances changed. Tom Riker was exactly what Wil Riker would have become if he was trapped on that planet for years. Wil Riker was exactly what Tom Riker would have become if he was able to get back to the ship.


Tom Riker's existence or lack thereof detracts from Wil Riker's life no more than the existence of Captain Riker in "Parallels". They'll all equally and fully legitimate and complete people.


"but the riker who beamed down is dead". What kind of meaning does that have? Riker is clearly alive - we see him every week on the Enterprise. Again, there's no test anyone can do to prove he's different, so what difference does it make?

Alternatively, maybe he is dead. Who cares? People are constantly changed by their experiences and circumstances.

Consider "Tapestry". We learn there that young Picard is a very different man than the Picard we know on the show. When his character grew from that experience, we could say young Picard is dead, replaced by similar, yet changed, more mature mang.

We can actually do objective tests to show their differences: one is bald!


Do we attack character growth for killing the old guy? Of course not, you say, that's growth, not replacement.... which is exactly what happened to the Rikers in "Second Chances".

Objectively, there's no difference. The Riker we knew was never replaced aside from the growth you expect from people as they experience new things.


And finally, even if it does "kill" you... what difference does it make? You'll never know! You're dead! The world will never know, since the "duplicate" is identical in every conceivable way. It's no more meaningful to say you die from a transporter than to say you die every quantum of time as the snapshot that was "you" then ceases to exist and is replaced by a snapshot that is "you" now. Past you will never know. Present you and the rest of the world can't tell the difference. It's meaningless.





Regardless though, if people believe it does matter, it's really no problem - they're still free to just have stuff brought to them. Surely nobody would object to beaming inanimate objects around, even if they aren't willing to do it themselves. This is still enough to revolutionize a lot of things about our society. Add on the economic incentives to transporting - spend that commute time with your family instead of on the road, the competition pressure, etc - and I suspect cash will speak louder than meaningless thought experiments anyway.

I personally would not care if it did just copy me. but in the REAL world there are religions that might not take to kindly by having there first selves killed,many believe in a 'soul', so they would ask if the soul just fly's in to the new body, or if a new soul is made. There are many people in the world that would think like this so they would not use it. But this is mostly only for star trek transporters,if you were to get say:commonwealth wormhole engines they that would be a different story. secondly that is what i was trying to say in my last post. i do not know massively about star trek M/AM cores, but don't transporters take a shit ton of power to just move half dozen people around?

[Starglider]

but in the REAL world there are religions that might not take to kindly by having there first selves killed,many believe in a 'soul', so they would ask if the soul just fly's in to the new body, or if a new soul is made. There are many people in the world that would think like this so they would not use it.

This is a marketing problem. Either
(a) Pay some popular TV preachers a big wad of cash to proclaim that this is a blessed invention, that god told them it safely transfers souls etc etc
(b) Add appropriate light effects and tell everyone that it actually creates a small wormhole and sends you through it 'in one piece'. By the time people realise otherwise it will be in popular use.

I vote for the transformation guns from El Goonish Shive. Then I can amuse myself by shooting furry haters, turning them into anthro beavers or whatever and then watch them descend into a manic bout of self-loathing.

[lordofchange13]

This is a marketing problem. Either
(a) Pay some popular TV preachers a big wad of cash to proclaim that this is a blessed invention, that god told them it safely transfers souls etc etc
(b) Add appropriate light effects and tell everyone that it actually creates a small wormhole and sends you through it 'in one piece'. By the time people realize otherwise it will be in popular use.

a)I wasn't explicitly talking about Christianity,but a good idea. There are other soul obsessed religious out there.
b)Since we are given one piece off tech of our choosing, isn't it just easier to actually git wormholes,they have farther range(in the dozens of light years),there not blocked by nearly every form of rock or ore in the universe,and they make supper bad ass relativistic guns.

[Starglider]

b)Since we are given one piece off tech of our choosing, isn't it just easier to actually git wormholes,they have farther range(in the dozens of light years),there not blocked by nearly every form of rock or ore in the universe,and they make supper bad ass relativistic guns.

Sure, I mean for any of these technologies you'd get the most powerful version available, and there's generally an utterly silly version of anything in some obscure sci-fi. The best sci-fi teleport device I'm aware are the Schlock Mercenary teraports, for which a hand-held device the size of a baseball can teleport a group of people to the other side of the galaxy, instantly, with near-perfect reliably (no apparent issues dropping people precisely inside buildings etc, even at 50,000 LY range), and with relatively low power usage. I'm sure there are sci-fi stories out there with even better teleports though.

[Mercenario]

Yeah, transporters is a nice try.
But as a matter of fact, they are systems consisting of several "technology".
Ultra advanced computers, the "Heisenberg compensator", ultra advanced sensors etc.

Their medical applications alone are the hell. Beaming a tumor out of the patient. (Thats the obvious stuff)

They give an unlimited livespan since you can just reset your age.

But even if you limit them on non living matter, the means of planetar transportation would be amazing. (Well, it would depend on the energy needed to do so)
Not to mention the "manipulation of stuff on the molecular level".

@Starglider
You are right that the best teleporting performance.
Star Trek teleporters are not that good. (Expet the new fingertip big things anyway).
But thats not really helpful.
Why do you need to teleport over several light years? To die on a planet without oxygen?
Whats the problem if you need a hole room to store this thing in?
It is much more important what else it can do. Like Destructionator XIII said, scaning and cleaning water alone is worth a lot!
Thats why the Star Trek transporter was such an easy call, it is one of the "can do every shit you want" techs.

[Batman]

Yeah, transporters is a nice try.
But as a matter of fact, they are systems consisting of several "technology".

It's technologies, plural, and every technology is. There's power generation, manufacturing, metallurgy, electronics (or its equivalents), biology etc for pretty much ANY bit of technology you bring in.

They give an unlimited livespan since you can just reset your age.

Which is why that's done all over the place in Trek. Oh wait. The transporter rejuvenating Picard, Ro, Guinan and Keiko was the result of a malfunction caused by outside influences. I eagerly await your evidence that this can be done on purpose and in a controlled manner (I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be all that thrilled about being a biological 12 again any more than the victims in the episode were).

@Starglider
You are right that the best teleporting performance.
Star Trek teleporters are not that good. (Expet the new fingertip big things anyway).
But thats not really helpful.
Why do you need to teleport over several light years? To die on a planet without oxygen?

I dunno-instantaneous teleportation over 50,000 lightyears sounds like a pretty nifty idea. And they tend to land where they aimed, so I'm not sure what your 'to die on a planet with no oxygen' really refers to.

Whats the problem if you need a hole room to store this thing in?

Hrm-let me see-teleportation over 40,000km that is disrupted or at the very least made harder by pretty much anything vs handheld teleportation device that can get you halfway across the galaxy. Yeah, I totally see how Trek transporters would be preferable.

It is much more important what else it can do.

Because-you say so.

Like Destructionator XIII said, scaning and cleaning water alone is worth a lot!

Not given the mass/volume limits Trek transporters seem to be restricted to, no.

Thats why the Star Trek transporter was such an easy call, it is one of the "can do every shit you want" techs.

Um no it can't.

[Batman]

No,the solution to that is go for Asgard transporters instead, which we know can teleport entire skyscrapers.

[Batman]

As those filters are moderately useless, yes?

[Ahriman238]

I stand by getting a good FTL starship or advanced medical tech if you're aiming for benefit to humanity. One concern I'd have is any tech I got being advanced enough to destabilize civilization.

But if I really just wanted to drop a rock a pond and see what happens? Clarkent seeds, from Orion's Arm. Baseball-sized device that creates special nanites to infect anyone who touchs it. Once the nanites make contact with an organic host, they multiply and consume, replacing a person's muscles with "Ultimate Muscles" made of carbon nanotubes and approx. 50,000x stronger than the original organic tissue. The end result (called a Super Sophont in setting) is basically Cyborg!Hulk, effectively immortal, insanely strong, highly resistant to injury and capable of regenerating anyway due to the continuing prescence of the nanites. In-setting they can only be killed by disintegrators, nuclear weapons or orbital strikes.

The downsides are being a butt-ugly hulking mass of muscle, various "world of cardboard" related issues as well as a few from weighing more than a small car, the fear and distrust of your fellow man (Cyborgicism? what do you call that?), and a limitless thirst for power. I mean that last literally, with such over-powered artificial muscles, simply metabolizing dead plants and animals is not going to cut it you at least need a wall outlet. Super Sophonts do have 30 kilo batteries in their gut, so they don't have to be hooked up to a power source all their lives, but it's not exactly clear how much capacity the batteries have.

So yeah, it might be interesting to see what people will do with that kind of power.

[Ahriman238]

Actually, I don't suppose I could ask for Dahak? That would fill almost every requirement I could think of: advanced medicine, metallurgy, industry, computing, AI, clean energy, FTL, casual sublight travel around the system, gravity warping, and probably a million other advances or revolutions I can't think of right this second.

[Darth Tedious]

Woudn't ST transporters get you around the 'No replicators' stipulation in the OP, seeing as replicators were pretty much just another application of transporter technology?

[Broken]

Fully intact and complete 40K STC system. In addition to all the FTL and power generations technologies we want it'll also tell you how the build the inevitible exotic materials you need which could screw you over if you went for them idividually, depending on the small print.

Hell, if we were going that route we could just ask for a Library from David Brin's Startide universe from one of the Elder races that is totally willing to aid humanity. Multiple forms of FTL, genetic engineering on species-wide lines, superweapons, Dyson Spheres, psi-powers, and the ability/instructions to tell you how to build something even if you don't quite understand the science behind it.

Aside from one of the ask anything computers, teleportation does sound like the most immediately useful and flexible choice. It would massively improve the quality of life for huge numbers of people and the science behind it would hopefully give helpful clues to replicator technology and improved power sources.

[Eternal_Freedom]

SG transporters can do that too, as per "Unending." Admittedly that was during the time that never happenned, but it did not seem to be a difficult thing for Sam to make happen.

This gives you replicators as well as all the benefits SG transporters give you over ST ones. Not least being no philosophical arguments.

[lordofchange13]

Wouldn't ST transporters get you around the 'No replicators' stipulation in the OP, seeing as replicators were pretty much just another application of transporter technology?

Yes they would, but their still 2 different pieces of technology. A transporter it's self can not fabricate stuff, you would first got to figure out how it works then you get replicators. is th OP saying we get the knowledge how to make, or are given working examples?

[lordofchange13]

Aside from one of the ask anything computers, teleportation does sound like the most immediately useful and flexible choice. It would massively improve the quality of life for huge numbers of people and the science behind it would hopefully give helpful clues to replicator technology and improved power sources.

How does a teleporter machine enhance our power sources?