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What new invention will launch the next epoch in human history?

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Mineshaft_Gap

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I suppose it's up for debate which inventions throughout history marked the dawning of a new epoch. Certainly complex stone tools (not just choppers). Controlled use of fire. Agriculture. The printing press. The micro processor. The Internet. Etc.

Instances where new tech has launched humanity into a new epoch or age occur throughout history. Do you think we're sitting on one of these great inventions now? So things like graphine have the potential to change our civilization? Nano machines? Tech that's been conceived but currently in its infancy?

Or do you think we've hit a brick wall and all future inventions will merely be a more efficient/better way of doing the same thing we did before.
 
Eh, just check science fiction and take one of the major breakthrough :

- Space Exploration : Would need a ''Warp Drive'' thingy, I know the NASA has some theories about that.

- Immortality : Defeating death, un-aging, changing body, cybernetics...

and any other things like that.


The funny things is that we have many technology going in all those directions.
 
Placing my bet on some level of cybernetic implant. Google Glass to your eye/brain

Smartphones are arguably the current epoch of humanity.

The extension of them seems like the only likely step unless some new crazy power source that changes the way everyday life operates comes about.

Immortality, transfer of consciousness or cloning are the left field biological possibilities
 
I'd say sustainable living solutions for the developing world.

Village Hub

Essentially creating a contained system that works off the natural resources. Helps produce existing exports. Cuts the waste of energy used and recycles both energy and byproducts.
 
Frozen/microwavable pizza that actually tastes as good as pizza parlour pizza.

It may seem unimaginable right now... But when it happens, we really will have entered a new age. Nothing will ever be the same again.
 
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Now that I think of it, cold fusion would change the world. Hopefully it will happen in our lifetime.
 
Technology that can capture one's thoughts and allows you to export them to whatever digital format.

You could go and imagine a logo or whatever and your mind pops out a png file.
 
Warp drive technology will be the next big thing it will propel humans far into space. But first it would most likely be quantum computers which will ignite huge and fast changes in society.
 
Graphine will allow for smaller, faster and cheaper computers to be built as well as better battery technology.
It will basically be like a second information revolution.
 
Riki said:
Graphine will allow for smaller, faster and cheaper computers to be built as well as better battery technology.
It will basically be like a second information revolution.
Click to expand...

I'll have to look into graphine, but I was going to post better battery tech. If we can break the current barriers in battery and solar tech, I think a cheap energy future will bring on a revolution akin to the ones in the OP. Combining our current tech with cheap energy like we had in the industrial revolution would be crazy.
 
Graphene, digitally encoding information in the human brain or nanomachines.

The first being the closest to reality.
 
What will historians of the future call or current age/epoch?

Paleolithic, bronze age, iron age, etc. What are we? It's funny because it seems like we've advanced at such a rapid pace Age of enlightenment, age of steam/industrial age, etc all within the last 300 years.

It's hard to say how we'll be looked on by humans a thousand years in the future. We commonly refer to ourselves as the digital age/information age, but can you conceive of a post digital or information age? I can conceive of all human civilization going forward as being "the digital/information age."

I feel like we've hit a high water mark in terms of discovery and I can't conceive of tech that would so drastically change things that we would consider it post-digital. Except for radically new capabilities for space exploration. Close to speed of light type stuff.
 
It's going to be infrastructure or health based, I'd imagine.

Some kind of cheap, clean energy to finally break the hold of oil would be a big one. Not only would it be an environmental boon, but imagine if oil suddenly stopped mattering politically? That would change a LOT geopolitically.

For health, several diseases could be wiped out, or we could see functional immorality if someone figures out the secrets of aging, and how to stop it.

And of course. Space. A self-sustaining off-world colony that could let humanity live on if the Earth got meteor'd or some other kind of apocalypse happened.

But I'm probably wrong and some new invention is going to blind-side us all as usual.
 
3D printing once it goes fully mainstream.



AI assisted design if your looking further out, bridging the gap between imagination and technical skill.
 
Our society will probably collapse within the next millennium and we'll revert back to 1300's technology.

Nothing. I think we're past the age of revolutionary inventions. I thought the internet might do it, but no.
Click to expand...

In what way is the internet not revolutionary?
 
Genetics, biotech, AI, robotics, a ton of theories around quantum mechanics e.g. FTL travel, instant data communications anywhere. Take your pick.
 
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