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As the saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention." What technologies should we expect to see progress in? Well, probably the ones need to solve pressing problems. Energy being the obvious one, as you've pointed out. Beyond that... I'd say atmospheric engineering, but we as a species haven't figured out that it's an enormous problem yet (and probably won't until it's too late). As we seen, there's been tremendous progress in unmanned aerial vehicles in warfare, because we want to project power in ways that don't involve putting soldiers in direct danger (as that is politically untenable these days). Better ways of delivering medical therapeutics (good thing mRNA vaccine technology came along when it did). But a lot of things we're working on - such as flying cars - strike me as solutions in search of problems.

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Aug 11, 2022·edited Aug 11, 2022

>The best way to learn to write computer code is to have a problem that you need a computer program to solve.

Well, that is definitely not true. The way to learn to write code is by *playing*. Telling the computer to do weird, crazy stuff, figuring out why it doesn't work, realizing you're an idiot (always by far the most fun part) etc. but crucially never afraid of what might happen if you fail.

When you have a problem that you need solved, you don't have time to play. At that point, you either use what you already learned *by playing*, or just go copy/pasting random code and hoping it works. Programmer here, by the way, if it wasn't obvious.

And I think this ties into your broader point. It's not that we don't need better transportation (or construction), rather that we're already close to what's possible at our current level of energy generation, chemistry and engineering.

However, the fundamental advances that define that level weren't made by someone trying to build a faster train, but by some dudes in a garage wondering whether this flying thing could be made to work, or by a patent clerk wondering about the speed of light in his spare time. Einstein didn't "have a problem that can't be solved without relativity", did he?

>“A space elevator [...] “What project did you have in mind that needs a billion tons of nickel?””

Well, turning all Earth's strip mines into nature reserves sounds nice. Also, the elevator's owner gets to stop worrying about being friends with some African country (or Russia) who controls the only deposits of something or other. And of course, with negligible launch costs, orbital solar platforms start looking good. And this is just some of the obvious stuff. Zero-g factories, hospitals and bio-engineering? Low-gravity retreats for disabled/elderly? Effective ballistic missile defense?

Honestly, I think space elevators are the best example of a really useful thing we'd *obviously* like to do but can't.

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