Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Croesus" data-source="post: 5595259" data-attributes="member: 35019">Caveat: Star Trek is "science fantasy", as it's not really based on real world physics (as we know it today). That said, let's look at some of the implications if Star Trek tech were real and available.Replicators: Pros: *No shortage of commodities. Rare earths, carbon nanotubes, whatever, you got it.*Healthy food. I believe it was a first season STNG episode that had Troi saying the replicators could make any food you wanted, but it was really made up of some healthy mix of proteins, etc. You can eat pizza every day, but not get all the fat and such.Cons:*You need energy, lots of it. If you don't have an infinite power source, replicators won't do much.*We'd destroy the world. Unless you have unbreakable safeguards (and there's no such thing as unbreakable safeguards), a handful of terrorists could have infinite amounts of plutonium, smallpox, or any other nightmare material you can think of.*Would completely trash any economy. Virtually all economic theory assumes scarcity. Things that could not be replicated would still be limited, but anything the replicator can do (assuming we have the energy) becomes essentially free. Slowly phased in over time, the impact would be less, but still huge. (James Hogan wrote a sci-fi book on this decades ago, postulating a society with no scarcity. His optimistic conclusion was that most people would still work in some fashion, due to the human need to be useful. "Currency" would not be dollars and such, but respect.)Transporters:Pros:*Signifcantly less time wasted on travel.*Assuming Star Trek-like quality, far fewer deaths and injuries due to travel, especially by automobile.*Far less pollution in the air.*Significant amount of real estate currently used for roads and highways (primarily within cities) could be put to more productive use.*If I understand correctly, Star Trek transporters convert matter into energy, then back again. It's a small step to then have any matter converted to energy, then transfer the energy to where it's needed. So long as more energy is created than is required to run the transporter, you have infinite energy from trash.Cons:*As with replicators, you need energy. Even if the total energy used for transporters was the same as what we use currently for real world transportation, we'd have to build a huge number of additional power plants, power lines, and so on. *Still have need for some alternative transportation. Unless you assume there is a transporter on literally every street corner, in every building, on every farm in the world, some things will have to be carried by person or vehicle.*Ultimate weapon. Just begin the transporter process on someone, then never reintegrate them. Dead person with no body as evidence.Infinite Clean Power Sources:Pros:*Pretty much everything.Cons:*Depending on how the energy can be stored and moved around, potential for doomsday devices.</blockquote>

Verification