Posted on 01/26/2014 1:32:04 PM PST by Dallas59
Right now, hordes of fevered scientists around the globe are pulling all-nighter after desperate all-nighter. They haven't changed their clothes for weeks. The walls of their laboratories are speckled with fist-sized craters, each marking a different failure. Their marriages are in ruin, their children strangers to them. And it's all because Back to the Future: Part II was set less than two years from now.
"Damn it, Bob," one jaundiced, coffee-stained boffin is yelling at his semi-comatose colleague. "These people were promised hoverboards. If we don't have a working hoverboard in production by Christmas, there will be riots. These animals will have our heads." Bob shrugs. He's too exhausted to care. He has been at this since 1989. He can't remember what the sky looks like any more. He's going to be torn limb from limb by a mob of strangers furious that science hasn't met the fanciful advances hinted at by popular culture 25 years ago, and he's OK with that.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Good read and good warning. SkyNet will be created by consumer electronics, not the military.
Dang, we don’t even have the Flux Capacitor, yet.
Let alone driving the whole thing with steam power.
And the flying cars? Or the split-second weather prediction? or the anti-gravity skateboards (but they may never solve the capability to using them over water), and the Mr. Fusion power generators?
Not to be totally cynical, but I can see some hacker in Iran turning every one of these to “off” during a cold weather outbreak (like tomorrow).
This is known as a "good payday".
Thanks. Seems like huge dollars for a relatively mundane device. Of course there may be things in their product pipeline that we don’t know about.
Most people are too stupid to drive a car safely,much less operate a plane/flying anything.If flying cars become a reality,we will all need to live in bunkers.
Bookmarked.
Deloreans went back into (limited) production in 2008. I've seen one in PA and one in MA. Can't really miss 'em.
Nest Labs has an extensive patent portfolio. They've been granted 40 and have filed for 200 more.
That's probably part of the reason for the acquisition. Google has been relatively weak on patents, and that needs to change as they get into more hardware-based areas.
They closed that linked interview by asking the CEO what he thought would be the Next Big Thing. His answer was vehicle automation, meaning assisted driving, not the Google fully self-driving car, which he implied is still in the indefinite future. But he thinks assisted driving is going to come in big in the next three to five years.
Very interesting.
Yes you can see the vehicle features popping up already with radar assisted speed control, automatic braking, lane departure warning, etc.
Suddenly realized that maybe uber-convenience in electronics is not the droid I'm looking for.
In the year 5555 Your arms hangin' limp at your sides Your legs got nothin' to do Some machine's doin' that for you
Do they make the wifi devices used to connect the ubiquitous wifi cameras used everywhere by business nd industry and stalk the interstates?
Not sure. But I’ll bet there are smart FReepers who will tell us.
Exactly. As it is, whenever I drive, there’s a moron in front of me going too slowly, an idiot behind me following too close, bozos to the right, clowns to the left. The last thing I want is to have to worry about any of them overhead.
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