Most desired Sci-Fi Invention
 

Okay, we've all watched upteen science fiction universes. They all have their own set of devices, technologies, medicines, etc. that don't exist in the world today. That's why it's called sci-fi. :)

So this poll and discussion is for these devices. If you could have one of them in a cost-effective, nonpolluting, bug-free (or at least as bug-free as Trek gets :)) way, which one?

Oh, and before you ask, holodecks aren't on the list because they're just dangerous, and even if they did work, everyone would be like Scott Adams and just lock themselves in and not come out until they died of exhaustion.

OK - these are all Star Trek inventions...this wasn't the thread I was sold.

Anyway, the device I most want from sci-fi is a TARDIS. Duh.

And when was that, exactly?

Speaking as a chemist, I have to go with a tricorder. Those little gizmos can tell you everything about anything in a matter of seconds. The entire field of analytical chemistry can be made obsolete overnight by one handheld device, and thousands of labtechs will be put out of work.

The most time-consuming part of research after multi-hour reactions is figuring out what exactly is in the goo you made. This often involves very complicated, very expensive instrumentation. Being able to wave a tricorder over the flask and know the concentration of everything in it is a huge time-saver, plus I imagine it would be able to image my nanoparticles in situ, so I wouldn't have to haul them halfway across the city and wash all the protecting ligands off in order to be able to look at them with the electron microscope.

Next up: purification techniques. What I wouldn't give for transporter chromatography: dematerialise a sample, and then rematerialise it with all the various compounds in different beakers.

Uh, was that photo link supposed to be relevant? It's just Kirk looking skyward, most likely in the middle of one of his philosophical rants.

There's supposed to be a shot of Kirk in "The Paradise Syndrome" shouting "I AM KIROK!" with a fly perched on his head, but I haven't actually seen it myself. Maybe that's what it was supposed to have been?

Whoa, flies can perch?

Thought that was Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. ;)

Actually, no -- the photo was a joke, sorta -- it came from 'Wink of an Eye'. Kirk is seen on the planet Scalos, waving away what he thinks are insects.

Oh, you were tying into my joke, and I didn't get it. Um, okay...

ijdgaf: Whoa, flies can perch?

Suddenly I thought of a fly perched on a gargoyle in Gotham City wearing the cape and cowl: Batfly!

I'd still want Holodecks over anything else. So the characters get minds of their own and revolt against you. That's what makes it all the more fun!

I want a replicator. The field of model building as I know it would change forever. Also, we could complete the destruction of the US as an industrial powerhouse and kick the legs out from under China. Sounds like fun!

Not to mention more mundane things you could do with a replicator like eliminate hunger, poverty, capitalism, copyright law, and the shortage of Wiis.

Sure, nobody's got a job, but all their needs are met by the box on the wall.

One wonders how they make furniture from such a small box, though. Maybe they do it a piece at a time. Hah! ReplIkeator.

Børk! Børk! Børk!

Uh, I don't think it's that easy. Even replicators can't be a hundred percent effective, even if everything they create gets recycled, which it's not. You'll still need an external power source.

I'd never set foot in a Holodeck capable of malfunction. I'd seriously still wait a few years for everyone else to beta test the thing.

Haven't you ever heard of industrial replicators? They're big, but they quickly become less power efficient as the replicated mass increases. I assume this is because greater distances mean more work for the targeting scanners and related equipment.

Yes, I know, and you need a house to put it in. Quit snarking my snark. :P

Seriously, though, every few episodes we discover something that can't be replicated because the plot needs it, but those types of things rarely come up in real life. Since it converts matter into energy, and then converts than energy back into matter according to a pattern, you can use any source of matter as a feedstock: garbage, lawn clippings, dirt, bodies...

It's an effective way of solving the waste problem, especially if you can convert, say, CFCs (made from light, common elements) into things like platinum and palladium (expensive, rare, heavy elements).

I'm science-geeking out again. Occupational hazard. I'm also carefully ignoring the many egregious ways it probably violates various fundamental laws of the universe.

Snarking is a well-respected custom of fiving. I have a great theory about how all Trek tropes can be categorized as either personal snarks, equipment snarks, or plot snarks.

An actual theory about Fivers? Sounds neat! I wouldn't mind hearing some more detail on this.

Personal snarks: This encompasses all "cliches" and their associated "anti-cliches" that involve the characters themselves. Data's contractions (and people bringing them up), Janeway's coffee addiction, Chekov's accent, McCoy's Spock bashing, Kirk's pronounciation and skirt-chasing issues, etc. Hence a fivist can amplify and/or explain these traits for humorous effect.

For example, in my fivers I've turned Dax into a "slang-obsessed techno-freak," as I call her. That doesn't mean that I don't like Dax, 'cause I do, it's just that she presents the most easy conduit for jokes that involve slang and Treknology.

Along similar lines, I've pushed O'Brien's work overload (brought to my attention by Phil Farrand) into an out and out burden that the others deliberately put upon him. This also provides convenient opportunities for "easy" punchlines by having him win office pools on the station to give him time off, since as the "oldest" (I think Odo is technically older, but he's still relatively emotionally immature) crewmember he needs vacations and a full night's sleep more than the others, at least in my fivers. He'd also win these pools because after six years on the Enterprise and upteen years on other vessels during the Cardassian War, he's the one that's the most mature in many respects, both professionally and personally.

Equipment snarks: First off, as Derek says, the computer as a character is always funny. Along these lines, the transporter and the holodeck are rife with their own problems and provide ample fodder for jokes, especially in fivers. Similarly, I enjoy the sound effects joke first found in Bob and George, hence the use of Kablazmo and other such sounds. The Trek creators even provide for this kind of material, what with their inconsistent protrayal of the capabilities of the computers, shields, weapons, tricorders, etc.

Plot snarks: The fourth wall (or lack thereof) jokes. As much as we love Trek, there are ample examples of "idiot plots" and people forgetting the technology they have and what it can do. As Bashir says in one of my fivers: "Sounds rather convoluted-oh yeah, this is DS9. Never mind."

I have to go with replicators, too. Post-scarcity economy for the win!

Gatac

Uh, and where are you going to get the energy to run all of those replicators? I suppose simple antimatter technology should've been on the list.

I am highly disappointed in all this, as I'd much prefer a Stargate. Yes, with all the inherent risks and technological foibles and...

Screw it. I want Atlantis. It's basically a big piece of technology (with other bits in it). And the ATA gene if I don't have it.

Um, I don't think the city itself counts. If you wanted transporter "elevator" booths, that'd be fine. ZPM, Puddle Jumpers (wonder if McKay's still stewing that Gateship was shot down), Life Signs Detectors (why can't they just use the word tricorder?), yadda yadda are all okay wishes.

Then again, (SPOILER ALERT!) the entire city is an intergalactal starship, so maybe it does count. Nah, still wouldn't count.

Time for a little grumble. "Ancient" was okay in the first season, but that Asgard guy should've used the word Alteran in "The Fifth Race" and be done with it. Seriously, these guys aren't gone, they aren't purely mythical, they exist today and some of them are still actively meddling in mortal affairs. If I was an Alteran, I'd be insulted that people who knew my race name and knew that my race still lived were still using the word Ancient.

Oh, and where are the Furlings, and are they furry? And what's with the ninth chevron? After ten years, we want answers!

Atlantis is a city-ship. Originally it was connected to the Antartic outpost. It counts. (And if not, I just want a Puddle Jumper. Those things are awesome.)

Actually, their race name is NOT Alteran. Alteran is Latin for 'the others', or close to it, which they use to distinguish themselves from the Ori. Nor is it 'Lantian', which is merely 'resident of Atlantis'. The true race name of the Ancients/Ori is still unknown. Hence calling them Ancients in the first place.

/Stargate geek mode

Okay, Mr. Smartie-Pants, YOU explain why they never identified themselves. If you're going to be persnickety, then their name really IS Ancient, like that Asgard guy said. In that case Othar wouldn't have said "I am what you would call an Ancient," she'd have said "I am an Ancient." Explain that, too.

Since when did we have to worry about power? You said, and I quote,

The cost-effective part implies that power consumption will not be unreasonable.

Besides, M/AM power isn't even on the list...

Gatac

Simple. They don't want humans to know too much about them. If they had the name of their race, they could find out more, and the Ancients want them to find their own path to Ascension. That they've learned this much at all is a mistake, but they are still extremely tight-fisted with information. It's very possible also that they never properly identified themselves to the other three races, as they were already so far in advance they felt the same applied.
Personally, I believe the Ancients called themselves humans. That's why the Milky Way humans are second-generation, and they make seperate distinctions (Kelownans, Tauri, etc.) among them. It's not so much a stretch.

Power stations in close orbit around the sun, which will convert the huge flux of energy coming off it into microwaves and then beam it to Earth (as described by Asimov in "Reason"). It'll be collected by receivers at the tops of the space elevators and fed into the electrical grid from there.

If you can have Atlantis, then why not the Enterprise - E. Then you get everything. Warp, tricoders, comm badges, phasers, transporters....
I think that is the reason why you can't pick whole ships.
To be honest, if I could take one thing from ST...anything...it would be the advanced nature of the people, the humans. I know there are still some gits, but most, as troi said, are united. Just think what we have done in the last hundred years as a race. Split the atom. Taken to the sky. Taken to space. Look at our technolgy. Ok it isn't quite Trek level, but we do have some amazing things (The internet!) But that was while we've been doing all this fighting and crap. It makes you wonder, if we could pour all our energy into 'improving ourselves', without the in-fighting part, just think just what we could do. Not having to spend all our money on defence budgets. Or worrying about north korea making bombs. I'm certain if things were pushed and the world was more united we could have a real chance at doing amazing things.
It just makes me think.

That'd be your first wish, then.

Oh, and how would ignorance of their true name stop Daniel? He knows what makes Ancient look different than Latin, right? He can take a look at the writing and say "that's Ancient!" :)

Uh, even Daniel, given a full set of Ascention 101 books, couldn't do it on his own, and we're led to believe that if DANIEL can't do it, no one can. He needed Oma Desala's meddling, BOTH times. And she's a little tied up at the moment, so she ain't gonna be helping anyone else.

Uh, even if they called themselves "humans," they wouldn't. They'd use the word for "human" in Latin or whatever. That would give them an identity all their own, right?

If he's the only one who can translate the language, what's to stop the memory block Oma put on him to keep blocking key details? Like their name, which would be why he doesn't know it.

They barely knew what Ascension was before that point. If he had a guide, which he hasn't, then he could probably do it.

I think you're forgetting what language a lot of our words come from. But who said anything about Latin? And why would they use that and not the translation? Besides, it's the same thing anyway. No matter whether I say 'fire', 'pyro', 'incendie', or 'kaji', it all means the same thing, that stuff that burns you when you touch it, right? So even though they use another language, it means the same thing. Languages = semantics.

Why can't we pick ships? A ship is a technology, technically. Go ahead and pick the Enterprise.

Again, if I can't have Atlantis, I'll take the Atlantis Stargate.

If he's the only one who can translate the language, what's to stop the memory block Oma put on him to keep blocking key details? Like their name, which would be why he doesn't know it.

They barely knew what Ascension was before that point. If he had a guide, which he hasn't, then he could probably do it.

I think you're forgetting what language a lot of our words come from. But who said anything about Latin? And why would they use that and not the translation? Besides, it's the same thing anyway. No matter whether I say 'fire', 'pyro', 'incendie', or 'kaji', it all means the same thing, that stuff that burns you when you touch it, right? So even though they use another language, it means the same thing. Languages = semantics.

Why can't we pick ships? A ship is a technology, technically. Go ahead and pick the Enterprise. With replicators you could build them anyway...except that you're forgetting, it needs a database to work from.

Again, if I can't have Atlantis, I'll take the Atlantis Stargate.

Hey, we use the foreign equivalents of words every single day. Ciao, hola, hombre, dinero, yada yada. If a word like "grumtie" means "human" in Ancient, we can say that they're Grumties. It's that simple.

Uh, whoever said that we're advanced? As a whole, I mean. There are some ubersmart and uberinnovative people out there, granted, but the average joes and other induhviduals among us outnumber the geniuses.

Oh, and choosing ships, I think, violates the spirit of the question. It actually borders on greedy, if you ask me.

Yes, but you're missing the point. In modern vernacular, it means the same thing. The word itself is irrelevant if you have the meaning, and the meaning is that since humans are the second evolution of the Ancients, since they are their descendants, they're a less-evolved version of the same race. Similar meaning, who gives a flip about the name?

I didn't say everyone could. I said Daniel could. Big difference.

Then I call the Atlantis Stargate, eight crystals and all. Whoever gets the single working ZPM (that's <i>Zed</i>PM, in case you were confused about the pronunciation) left in existence, ring me up and we'll do some galaxy-hopping. Obtaining new technologies and heading to Atlantis to pick stuff up. Through the Stargate, which is practically a cheat in itself.

I give a "flip" about the name. "Human" does not equal "Ancient." Ancient > human. They can do stuff we can't. They know stuff that we don't. Their entire culture is completely different from ours.

ZedPM is the Canadian pronounciation. It is no more or less proper than ZeePM.

If the name the Ancients use for themselves turns out to mean human, or to be translated as such, or even to be that word specifically, go on and refer to them as the Ancients. It might even be more accurate now than any name they would've had for themselves. Fact is humans are descended from them, and while they don't have those powers yet it is accepted they will eventually develop them.

Zed is the proper, British pronunciation of the letter. Y'know, the people who invented the language? ;p

*snaps photos of thread participants, files them under "cantankerous"*

You're all ignoring the most important Stargate question: why does Teal'c have those freakishly large lips?

Gatac

Frick the stargate. You can only go where they lead you.

Give me warp-ludicrous anyday. (And that means I get the whole warp bundle, too.... he-he! Warp core, the intertial dampeners, etc, etc...*)