No aging, robot cars - and radical business plans

CNN ^ | 5/25/2006 | Chris Taylor

[grey_whiskers]

The present is actually far more exciting and advanced than futurists predicted just twenty years ago. For one, the rise of the World Wide Web and the whole online cyber-world was almost totally unforeseen.

You're right. To quote Dave Barry:

"Picture this scenario: It's 8 P.M. on a weekday night, and your 12-year-old child suddenly remembers that he has a major school report on the Spanish-American War due tomorrow. He needs to do some research, but the library is closed. No problem! Your cyber-savvy youngster simply turns on your computer, activates your modem, logs on to the Internet -- the revolutionary 'Information Superhighway' -- and, in a matter of minutes, is exchanging pictures of naked women with other youngsters all over North America."

Cheers!

[doc30]

What incentive does a scientist or engineer have to create anything if it becomes so easy to steal it that they can't make any money off it?

Ahhh, I see your point. There are conditions to it, however. There will always be the need for competent technical know-how. Even in the situation where just about anything you can imagine can be built doesn't mean there won't be further frontiers that can be explored and/or exploited. Someone has to know how the technology that will make new things works. That's where one frontier will be - pushing whatever future tech has to offer. Future technology will have limitations, just like any other technology adn the engineers and scientists will be there, pushing that envelop back farther.

And if it reaches the point you describe, would it not be more of a stagnation than a decline? Lack of incentive to innovate will limit growth, but why would it cause a retraction of knowledge or technology?

[underbyte]

I want a label to stick.

My sister, Brother in law, Sister in law are your typical next door democrats, they Talk Socialist policy But do not understand what it is and if you called them "socialist" they would be horrified, after all they are just "liberal democrats"

Communist would be an overstatement for them (Not for Hilliary Clinton but she would be proud of the label)