AHC: futuristic 21st century

Alcsentre Calanice

Alcsentre Calanice

Smartphones and computers are maybe quite helpful, but they aren't 21st century-like. Were are the hoverboards, flying cars, maglevs and the space colonies on Mars? Your task is to make the world of 2016 look like the world in the average science fiction movie of the last millenium.

POD before the 1st of january 2016 CE.
 
shiftygiant

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
The aesthetic many forms predict is unlikely to happen, as are hover-boards and flying cars (the former, we're a few years off something even resembling it, but we will never have what Mcfly had, and the latter, imagine if everyone had a helicopter). We have Maglevs, which can be more widespread with support for R&D (the UK Ultraspeed is a notable example of this WI), and regarding space colonies I direct you to the AH Novel Voyage.
 

martymcfly

shiftygiant said:
The aesthetic many forms predict is unlikely to happen, as are hover-boards and flying cars (the former, we're a few years off something even resembling it, but we will never have what Mcfly had, and the latter, imagine if everyone had a helicopter). We have Maglevs, which can be more widespread with support for R&D (the UK Ultraspeed is a notable example of this WI), and regarding space colonies I direct you to the AH Novel Voyage.
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Don't worry. Your TL is a little slower tech wise, but one day you'll get there.
 
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All Rounder

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
No Black Plague, no Inquisition, and the U.S.S.R surviving would allow technology to develop at an even greater rate to the point where tech could probably be 300 years more advanced as a result. This could result in a world that looks similar to Mcfly's home Earth but with no Black Death and Inquisition anything could happen at this point.
 
ennobee

ennobee

Of course a good deal about the futuristic world of the 21st century comes from the fact that there is something magical about the number 2000, so for a writer in the mid to late 1900's, the year 2000 and beyond would not be just the next century but also the next millennium. My idea is that therefore many of the things envisioned for 'the year 2000' were actually designed to take place somewhere in the 21st century, which could easily be 50, even 75 years from now. Many more of them were actually designed to take place somewhere in the 2000's millennium. Somewhere between 200 and 500 years from now still.
 

Arkenfolm

Smartphones are very 21st century and futuristic. Even cellphones, really. My parents have compared them to tricorders out of Star Trek. Same goes with laptops--pre-1970, those would have just been the realm of science fiction.

Flying cars as any science fiction imagines them are pretty much ASB, since that would mean everyone would need to get a pilot's license to use them. The only way I could see it working is if it's basically a passenger drone, which looking at recent developments in both drones and self-driving cars, could totally work once you get the price down.

Mars colonies are too worthless to ever really consider. Too far, too disconnected (almost 10 minute lag in communications), and not economically viable even if we did have a cheap route to space. Why not just build them on the Moon instead? And with that logic, why not just build them around the Lagrange points, where you can actually have Earth (or close to it) gravity? Gravity issues are a huge problem for any Moon or Mars colony, since any human developing in those conditions would have extreme difficulties on Earth. They'd basically be like Robert Wadlow--very tall, but very fragile. I'd argue that second to solving the issue that launching things into space is ridiculously expensive, the gravity issue is number two issue for a Mars (or Moon) colony to solve. That said, I think it's very likely we could actually go to Mars by 2016. But live there? No. Unless you have your POD back billions of years ago and have an Earth-sized (or near to it) planet form where Mars is.

All Rounder said:
No Black Plague, no Inquisition, and the U.S.S.R surviving would allow technology to develop at an even greater rate to the point where tech could probably be 300 years more advanced as a result. This could result in a world that looks similar to Mcfly's home Earth but with no Black Death and Inquisition anything could happen at this point.
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No Black Death or Inquisition probably means no USSR or a totally different sort of USSR. And actually, the Inquisition didn't really have a lot of effects on technological development. Avoiding the Mongols is probably the best, second is getting better disease science, like early germ theory and vaccination.
 
Alcsentre Calanice

Alcsentre Calanice

All Rounder said:
No Black Plague, no Inquisition, and the U.S.S.R surviving would allow technology to develop at an even greater rate to the point where tech could probably be 300 years more advanced as a result. This could result in a world that looks similar to Mcfly's home Earth but with no Black Death and Inquisition anything could happen at this point.
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What did the inquisition to prevent progress (apart from Galileo Galilei) and what did the USSR achieve in science? Lyssenko? Soviet micro electronics?
 

Cryhavoc101

Donor
Post 1900 POD? No Great War - there was those in 1914 who thought that war between enlightened trading nations was impossible - many ways to butterfly WW1 and instead have an earlier EU 'common market' type organisation - this makes for a richer gradually more socialist Continent and effectively butterflies the rise of communism and other extreme forms of government - particularly in the major nations.

This gives rise to a more stable world where progress can prosper

Pre-1900 POD - I read a superb ALT short story by Peter Hamilton called 'Watching Trees Grow' - the Story starts in the early 19th C with the main character being awoken by a phone call :eek: - not going to ruin it for those who have not read it but it presents a world where the rise in technology has risen much earlier than our own.
 

Divergent54

Self-driving cars would be in the commercial market by the CE 2020s and commonplace by the CE 2030s-2040s out of capitalist economic competition. Flying cars, I think, would come later at around CE2070ish or 2080ish-- somewhere around the latter half of the 21st century. And those flying cars would be self-driving. Manual cars would be near-extinct similar to horse-driven travel when automobiles came.
Drones. Drones everywhere. Also robotics. Which brings me to AI and transhumanist rights by mid-century. AIs are people, too.
In vitro or synthetic meat and plants would slowly replace traditional natural meats and plants for agribusinesses by the CE2030s-2050s. It's cost-effective by that time.
Gene therapy and genetic cosmetic modification would allow people to change race, sex, and body plan by the latter half of the century.
Increased surveillance everywhere. Like CCTV cameras, Internet and email spyware, and all that jazz.
Space would slowly drag itself as the new frontier from CE2030s if China and India offer the US/EU some more competition.
 

GeographyDude

metalinvader665 said:
Avoiding the Mongols is probably the best, second is getting better disease science, like early germ theory and vaccination.
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I've tried to preach that all microbiology is, is grinding lenses for crying out loud! Of course, there has to be the motivation.

And you need a fair amount of luck along the way. For example, happening to think . . . these damn molds which louse up our petri dishes, well, just maybe . . .
 

Arkenfolm

GeographyDude said:
I've tried to preach that all microbiology is, is grinding lenses for crying out loud! Of course, there has to be the motivation.

And you need a fair amount of luck along the way. For example, happening to think . . . these damn molds which louse up our petri dishes, well, just maybe . . .
Click to expand...

It wouldn't take too big of a leap to go from van Leeuwenhoek's "animalcules" to investigating whatever you can find out about those things. There's a quote from Varro regarding swampland being dangerous because of "certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases", so combine Leeuwenhoek's microscopy experiments with some curiosity regarding Varro's thoughts on that matter, and what might you get?
 
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