Ask Lemmy

• Big uptick in the amount of human activity in space — tech there already, economy starting to manifest it. Like 10,000 humans in space at any given time, then 100,000, then 1,000,000, and so on
• If we can get a slightly lighter solar sail material, that’s the last missing tech piece needed to send probes to Alpha Centauri. We’d need massive laser arrays so tech alone would precede economic manifestation by a while. Human laser-accelerated probes can reach 0.3 c, and arrive at the star in about 15 years. The probe’s design is the size of a thumb drive
• AI is obviously making big strides
• honestly my thumbs are cramping up, but there’s lots more. drone-v-drone warfare, all semi-autonomous
• Growing perfect genetic match organs to implant
• mRNA delivered by microplasmids is incredible. There are easily a million life-enhancing distinct uses of it that involve temporarily building any protein we want in a patient’s cells, endogenously, with controlled expression. That is crazy powerful technology
• Fusion power’s like almost there. I think we’re at the “now scale it” phase
• Bombarding Earth by hurling containers full of rocks out of railgun launch tubes on the moon
• Sex robots
• Translating to and from animal languages
• Cloning, which has existed for decades now, is somehow totally invisible to media attention. Like, in the time since Dolly the sheep was in the headlines, someone could have theoretically produced an actual army of human clones and have them hidden somewhere
• Telepathy via neural implants

That’s some of the sci fi stuff we either have now and just are too harried and exhausted to contemplate, or that we’re just on the verge of creating.