For me it’s quantum computing - especially considering its impact on most current encryption methods
You must log in or register to comment.
In theory, we could make computers consume orders of magnitude less power, enabling extreme miniaturization of systems.
I still don’t quite get what this is. From what I’ve just read it’s transistors with zero heat dissipation caused by zero-ing out the RAM.
So okay, we have perfect RAM which never needs to be zero’d out, and 1 can be easily be reversed to a 0 if we know the operation that yielded it… but what is the actual computational benefit here?
For a computer to have reversible RAM, doesn’t that mean we would need to store more computation in order to roll back operations (and again, why would we want to?)
Realistic Batteries. It’s holding back a LOT of things. A lot of technologies are solved, but just require power.
Semi-Realistic Room Temperature Super-Conductor.
If that can be solved, the power density and efficiencies would just be astronomical… It would absolutely destroy multi-billion industries overnight.
Way-Out-There-Stuff If they ever prove out an actual functional EmDrive-like thruster, that would absolutely open up space travel to our species.
Batteries are the big one. Can you imagine how many people (homeowners/renters) will go out and buy a tiny 100W panel knowing that even though it will fill a battery with energy very slowly, they can still bank on it for a week?
Right now we have batteries that can survive about a day, using a modern solar panel system with inverter (~1000€). Imagine when we have batteries that can store weeks of power.
Not only on the large scale of things,
But even robots would be in wide spread use if it had a useable runtime.
Something like this, you’re good for 20min before it needs to charge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ECwExc-_M
But if you could pull that off where it runs for 8 to 12 hours before needing to charge? They would be used everywhere.
Regrowing / regenerating certain body parts.
This could theoretically be done with stemcell stuff, but it’s not there yet. However, when we finally reach the point where we can infinitely regenerate our body cells, we’ll become effectively “ammortal”; unable to die due to natural causes (such as illness), but we will still die from other people (for example, a bullet to the head)
Besides that, I think nuclear fusion would be an incredible development if we can finally harness it to power our homes.
Reusable rocketry, specifically SpaceX Starship. If it pans out it’s going to completely change our access to space and make many of those old dreams from the 1970s plausible.
RNA vaccines for basically everything, including customized vaccines for cancer. There’s also actual progress happening in general cures for autoimmune diseases.
Is robotics too close to AI? There are multiple companies working on general-purpose humanoid robots intended for mass production with price targets in the ten to twenty thousand dollar range, we may be getting within sight of actual robot butlers.
I’m really not looking forward to the commercialization of low earth orbit, and SpaceX seems to be an accelerator of this.
Low Earth orbit has been heavily commercialized for decades already. If you mean Starlink specifically, what’s wrong with it?
Looking up at the night sky and seeing a visible stream of dots
Ah, that only happens right after launch when they’re still bunched together. Once the satellites get into their final orbit they spread out. The newer models also have anti-reflection systems that make them much harder to spot, SpaceX has been working with astronomers on that.
I just hope we use Starships capabilities to put less single use hardware in Orbit. The way it is build already releases less space junk for delivering payloads, but these payloads need to be build with servicing in mind. Even building them to burn up should not be the solution
Computing at the edge.
Reduces the need to send everything to the cloud and maintains privacy.
How does it maintain privacy?
Instead of sending the data to the cloud for calculation/analytics, it does it right there on the device.
For example, an Alexa or Google Home device sends everything you say after a wake-word back to Amazon or Google. A device with sufficient edge storage and compute would be able to do the same without sending your voice outside your home.
We’re not quite there yet, but it’s getting closer.
I’m pretty sure that’s not what edge computing is. You’ve just described client-side computing.
The “edge” is similar to a CDN. Usually some kind of application layer code that’s running in an ISP data center rather than in a cloud provider’s data center.
I explained in a different comment… Talking about edge devices not the cloud: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/edge-computing/edge-devices.html
Isn’t edge computing just a distributed cloud? With servers physically closer to end-user?
That’s a cloud-centric interpretation. Like using CDNs. That’e been around for a while.
What I think will be interesting is intelligent processing and storage on end-node devices, like a home gateway, smart appliances, or wearable devices.
That would be cool
Efficient apps, everywhere. For example the COSMIC desktop is modern AND fast.
Not going to happen I don’t think not while hardware is cheaper than development costs
I disagree. But these improvements are often low level, so that Meta can save costs doing the shit they do
All well and good but at the higher end they’re writing applications in JavaScript and electron and using many times more system resources than C or rust, and it will always be cheaper for them to develop in higher level languages (especially when the performance problem can be offloaded on the user’s machine instead of their own servers)
This. I think laziness is a huge problem.
It’s not laziness it’s economics.
It’s cheaper for companies to have their developers spend less time developing in higher level languages and just throw more hardware at the problem than spend more money developing in a more difficult language
They aren’t concerned with energy or material efficiency, only financial
Only their own specifically. Our economy wants people to only care about themselves. Even though this doesnt make sense as polluting the earth will directly impact you.
COSMIC desktop environment.
Maybe not as spectacular as quantum computing or things like that, but personally I can’t wait for it.
Hey, Desktop environments can make or break. I remember when GNOME 4 first came out, before any improvements, and there was a lot of unhappiness.
Will be cool to see a Linux Desktop environment designed by a company like System76
Just remember that when it first comes out, it’ll probably by a buggy mess and need time to develop
I always find stories about carbon emissions exciting. The reason why a Malthusian view of things hasn’t panned out in recent centuries is because of technology. I am always interested in if humans can find a breakthrough technology that basically does something with carbon emissions that could eventually be done on a scale to reduce climate change. Unlikely, but fun to imagine.
Here’s an example: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240111113214.htm.
I believe I have also seen efforts to convert carbon emissions to hydrogen.
Stuff around making clean water from bad water sources is also pretty cool.
Just saying, you included the last dot in the url so it doesn’t work.
I tried the Meta Quest 2 and felt it was pretty awesome but I felt sick within minutes of using it.
So something like that without the sick would be revolutionary.
I feel that, my barf bro!
Unlocking any energy conversion techniques for gravitons (not virtual gravitons, but those associated with gravitational waves). If we could produce them artificially, it would be a whole new ball game.
That one day they will harvest my brain and let it live a vat of dopamine
Just a happy brain in a happy jar
Fusion? That would be big. The continual role out of green energy which can push the price down. The McRib coming back. Normal things.
The steady improvement in computer speed and efficiency (unfortunately brought down by bloated software, but in some areas you feel it in absolute terms), storage and memory size, and EV technology. I hope in 2040 there will be cheap powerful e-scooters and e-motorcycles.
I really hope that storage increases faster than our recording tech, to the point that everyone can easily store the sum total of the internet (videos and all) on a single portable drive.
You underestimate the amount of crap (which is mostly porn, whether you like it or not) on the Internet. And resolutions will increase as cameras get better.
But in some metrics, we have already gotten there. You can download the entirety of Wikipedia and it fits in a few gigs. You could download everything (including the 800+ videos which would span multiple weeks long end to end) I made and have it be less than 1TB.
I hope so too. Nice, affordable transport for many
Also e-scooters are just plain fun. 20mph on an e-scooter feels like 40mph on a motorcycle that feels like 80mph in a car.
Differentiable programming. Differentiable ray tracers for example can be used to reconstruct the geometry of something you took a picture off.
Excited and scared for quantum computing
Yeah, my understanding is the NSA stores all encrypted texts they intercept so when they can get a good quantum computer they can break them.
Glad groups like signal have started updating their encryptions to help handle that
Mulvad too are rolling out “quantum-resistant encryption” (read: they add another random key after the first key handshake is established)
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/stable-quantum-resistant-tunnels-in-the-app
Good to know.
deleted by creator
