Where's my Holodeck and/or Datajack?

[Bohandas]

I think it does if it is cheap enough. Eliminating roads would make cities indescribably better. Half the surface area or more of a city is just asphalt lanes at this point, and the roads keep getting wider relative to the buildings. There is a road near my house that has double wide side walks, bike lanes, two traffic lanes, and a full sized median/turn lane down the middle. The road is almost as big as the neighborhoods on either side of it, which also have roads to service each street. Just reducing the sheer mass of asphalt and condensing cities would be better for the people and the economy of each city, to say nothing of the environment.

It would ironically reduce the amount of traffic, as a huge amount of it is generated by the sheer volume of land used to make it possible to drive anywhere. Think about how far your closest grocery store would be sans roads and highways inbetween; most people wouldn't have to drive anymore. Which means there would be even less call for vehicles, which means you could make the spaces even shorter.

Or, alternately, you could, again, make the roads taller instead

[Tvtyrant]

Or, alternately, you could, again, make the roads taller instead

You really can't. Not only is that expensive, the roads inhibit foot traffic, damage the environment for multiple reasons, and are fragile. It also wouldn't reduce the street roads at all, which make up the majority of wasted space.

Seattle recently removed its famous viaduct for those reasons, but found the replacement tunnel so expensive they gave up and removed all access to the waterfront by sticking a ground level highway on it. Cars are literally the problem.

[Brother Oni]

As for datajacks - some people are investigating technological implants etc., but I think neural-connections that are not anywhere close yet.

Everything I've read had indicated that so far, it's all one way from person to machine, but those signal inputs are getting very sophisticated and cheap, for example commerically available myosensors which can register the electrical activity of a muscle and convert that to a data signal. It's very common in prosthetics (prosthetic arms in particular); one interesting development is that it even works with people who are congenital amputees (ie they were born without a limb), so they can learn how to use a new limb, even if they never had one before.

I know there are brainwave sensors, but I don't know the sensitivity and granularity of that technology and whether that could be harnessed to direct a mouse pointer; once that's possible, then you can run an external HUD device while doing other things. There's been some promising work in the form of an artificial retina (link), but they're still working on sending signals back via the optic nerve.

[wumpus]

I thought Musk's plan was to give the moon a pass and go straight to Mars :P

That was also Van Braum's plan. Funding got in the way. That and you wouldn't believe how many Saturn Vs it would take to make one trip to Mars. If Musk wants a fat contract from NASA (you don't get to be the world's richest man by turning down billion dollar jobs doing mostly things your company was going to do anyway, even if in a different location).

I see them all the time. Hell, every hospital I've seen even has a port specifically built for flying cars. They're commercially available and start at $100,000.

Most people just don't know how to operate them, which is crazy. Mother****er it's just lift vs drag and rotation! video of previous statement not linked for obvious reason.

Ask Kobe Bryant how that worked out. And while you can name plenty of people who died in small planes vs. helicopters, that's largely because people are much more likely to travel in helicopters. Those things are in a constant battle with the air, and sometimes they lose.

We might not have holodecks, but VR technology is finally starting to see some fruit. A few more integrated accessories for Oculus Rift type techs, like a treadmill, and you've almost got a Ready Player One haptic rig.

VR headsets are *amazing*. Not sure if the "sliding treadmill" will be good enough, or we'll need the full "2d treadmill". Might take a bit longer for the price of those to come down.

[asda fasda]

I think it does if it is cheap enough. Eliminating roads would make cities indescribably better. Half the surface area or more of a city is just asphalt lanes at this point, and the roads keep getting wider relative to the buildings. There is a road near my house that has double wide side walks, bike lanes, two traffic lanes, and a full sized median/turn lane down the middle. The road is almost as big as the neighborhoods on either side of it, which also have roads to service each street. Just reducing the sheer mass of asphalt and condensing cities would be better for the people and the economy of each city, to say nothing of the environment.

It would ironically reduce the amount of traffic, as a huge amount of it is generated by the sheer volume of land used to make it possible to drive anywhere. Think about how far your closest grocery store would be sans roads and highways inbetween; most people wouldn't have to drive anymore. Which means there would be even less call for vehicles, which means you could make the spaces even shorter.

I'm not sure that's accurate, yes, modern cities are mostly roads, but with ought them the space they occupy would still need to be empty, as this space provides access to light to the buildings as well as allow you not to look directly to your neighbor windows. Of course it would be better to have grass there instead of road, but that's more of environment issue. Oh and usually under the road you have sewers, electricity, natural gas, internet etc so it's necessary to have an easy access for those in case of emergence.

Having close groceries, schools and work would of course limit the traffic, and bigger roads allow for having much more remote home, but I would say it's more a city planning problem then the one due to roads. It's usually easier to have a business downtown as you can find there more customers, more employees (especially skilled ones) and cooperators etc. So people want to live/work in downtown which make home prices higher and force people to commute and at the same time make the downtown more attractive to businesses so the loop goes only worse.

[Peelee]

Ask Kobe Bryant how that worked out. And while you can name plenty of people who died in small planes vs. helicopters, that's largely because people are much more likely to travel in helicopters. Those things are in a constant battle with the air, and sometimes they lose.

A.) It was a joke. It even included was a direct quote from Me, Myself, and Irene, where it was also a joke.
2.) Yes, almost everything has a <100% success rating. Helicopter crashes are still remarkably rare as a percentage of helicopter flights.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

I'm not sure that's accurate, yes, modern cities are mostly roads, but with ought them the space they occupy would still need to be empty, as this space provides access to light to the buildings as well as allow you not to look directly to your neighbor windows. Of course it would be better to have grass there instead of road, but that's more of environment issue. Oh and usually under the road you have sewers, electricity, natural gas, internet etc so it's necessary to have an easy access for those in case of emergence.

Having close groceries, schools and work would of course limit the traffic, and bigger roads allow for having much more remote home, but I would say it's more a city planning problem then the one due to roads. It's usually easier to have a business downtown as you can find there more customers, more employees (especially skilled ones) and cooperators etc. So people want to live/work in downtown which make home prices higher and force people to commute and at the same time make the downtown more attractive to businesses so the loop goes only worse.

Well, you could potentially have your roads and/or mass transit under the parks/green spaces between your buildings, so long as you can handle accidents, breakdowns and other emergencies. And if you've got a mass transit system, you could have freight deliveries carried on that outside of peak passenger hours.

On the subject of people's workplace locations, I'm wondering how some of the current working patterns due to Covid will affect future behaviours - for instance, my commute this time last year was something like an hour and 45 minutes , mostly on very packed trains. Obviously, there's some jobs that can't be done remotely, and you do lose some aspects of working relations when you're just on instant messaging systems, but I can see quite a few people saying that they don't need to be in an office every day, and maybe a few companies starting to wonder why they're paying high rents for large offices in prime locations when they can potentially reduce the floorspace they need to some meeting rooms and hotdesking facilities, have co-workers getting together in the office maybe once a week at most, and hire a smaller office in a less costly remote location to host any permanent facilties they need (for instance, servers that hold information that they absolutely cannot pass to cloud providers).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Well, you could potentially have your roads and/or mass transit under the parks/green spaces between your buildings, so long as you can handle accidents, breakdowns and other emergencies. And if you've got a mass transit system, you could have freight deliveries carried on that outside of peak passenger hours.

Nothing potential about it. Madrid tunnelled under its river and moved 10 km of their inner loop under it, 4 lanes in each direction. Above it they put a park. How they handle accidents, I don't know, but with four lanes, I'd imagine "cordon off the mess until heavy vehicles come pick up the pieces" is enough, since few accidents will block off the whole thing.

Madrid, as any proper city, also has excellent public transport options (cleanest subway system I've ever used, buses, train, etc). American cities could do worse than copy from Madrid's example.

GW

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Nothing potential about it. Madrid tunnelled under its river and moved 10 km of their inner loop under it, 4 lanes in each direction. Above it they put a park. How they handle accidents, I don't know, but with four lanes, I'd imagine "cordon off the mess until heavy vehicles come pick up the pieces" is enough, since few accidents will block off the whole thing.

Madrid, as any proper city, also has excellent public transport options (cleanest subway system I've ever used, buses, train, etc). American cities could do worse than copy from Madrid's example.

GW

I was thinking more the entire city road network rather than parts of it.