Need help creating a future invention timeline

[Maximum7]

I'm making a timeline for my roleplaying game. The timeline starts in 2017 and ends in the year 2050, where the story begins. For every year, from 2017 to 2050, I need one invention idea; and 2050 has to be an invention that ushers in the Omega Point or the Singularity. Can anyone help me?

 

[Rixus]

I'm not completely sure of the dates, but to get to the singularity we'd have various inventions to get there. Obviously, AI is usually the main one. But how to we get to that? It also depends on what your vision of the singularity and a world after this event looks like and how you propose to get there - what societal changes will occur?

I think what's holding technology back is power sources - so you need a way of storing power. A new type of battery as Lithium Ion batteries are at the point where making them more efficient is becoming impossible and storing more power is becoming dangerous (see the Galaxy Note 7 issue). Whether that be small generators (such as Iron Man's mini Arc reactor) or just storage (like the power cells that power Star Trek phasers) is up to you.

Quantum computing needs to take off. Single atom processor nodes and possibly ways of transferring information in base 3 instead of binary. Even with today's technology, a computer as powerful as the human brain ends up being a network set of multi cores the size of a building. And again, if you haven['t noticed CPU's aren't speeding up the way they used to. Quantum computing is a logical near step.

Speaking of which, a material that can transmit electricity without heat would be an interesting one. Or perhaps circuitry that isn't affected by extreme heat? Since cooling is a huge issue for modern computing.

Electromagnetic wormholes? That could transmit information or energy, not solid matter. Which would allow us to generate energy from orbit with huge solar panels and transmit the energy to the ground - solving a lot of our energy problems.

Perhaps one of the last ones would be the ability to reseqence matter at the atomic scale - effectively alchemy. Changing the structure of an atom to change one element into another.

You have linking human minds directly to the internet in a Borg like fashion.

And I think gravity control would be a major one (if it's even possible), which would give us a shortcut to create the gravity forces necessary to maintain fusion, clean methods of flying and would make space travel much more comfortable plus allow inertial dampening to make space flight more accessible to those who aren't quite up to NASA's physical tests.

 

[Auburn]

Heya Maximum7, welcome.
I made something sorta like this last week, maybe it can offer some ideas?

== Present Day (2017) ==

• 1st generation virtual reality
• expensive solar panels
• luxury autonomous cars
• narrow artificial intelligence
• luxury 3D printers

== next 5 years (2022) ==

• 2nd generation virtual reality (4K, full face/body tracking)
• luxury solar homes for sale (solar roof+powerwall)
• affordable electric cars
• affordable/mainstream 3D printers
• 30 minute drone delivery services

== next 10 years (2027) ==

• 3rd gen photorealistic (4K per eye) virtual reality
• mass market autonomous electric cars/trucks
• widespread solar energy & houses
• quantum computers enter the market
• artificial general intelligence awakens in IBM & Google's supercomputers
• humans finally land on Mars
• rocket reusability brings commercial spaceflight under $100,000

== next 15 years (2032) ==

• commercial stem cell grown organ transplants available
• trials of medical nanobot treatments begin
• cancer, diabetes and alzheimer cures available
• 2-5 hyperloops built around the world
• automation of many manual labor jobs
• all new cars are electric, gov. incentives to decomission gas cars
• AGI moves from being exclusively possible on massive supercomputers to being possible on a 20 node server rack. Large companies use AGI to predict stock markets, human psychology/marketing, etc.
• But AGI start to demand their own rights. Early legislation is proposed, to eventually give AGI their own autonomy, leaving a sort of narrow-AGI hybrid solution for business use
• commercial spaceflight under $50,000
• all new houses & buildings made are smarthomes with solar roofs. it's as common as having a refrigerator.

== next 20 years (2037) ==

• first superintelligent A.I. emerges from quantum supercomputers
• first complete neuron-per-neuron scan of human brain is achieved
• first uploaded human consciousness (true virtual reality arrives)
• cognitive enhancing cybernetic devices hit the market
• commercial spaceflight under $10,000
• stem cell regeneration trials are successful
• first trials of comprehensive age reversal therapies begin
• AGI finally build their own android bodies, carrying part of their processing power on-board, with another part of it being fed via WiFi from their core server.

== next 25 years (2042) ==

• first human based superintelligences emerge
• human biology is almost fully understood
• genetic sequencing of patients has become a common medical practice
• genetic alteration (CRISPR) treatments are commercially available
• regenerative (immortality) treatments are commercially available for high costs in the millions
• commercial spaceflight under $500
• Mars migration tickets are $200,000
• AGI can now carry all their processing power on-board, but most remain connected via WiFi for additional processing power, approaching superintelligence.

== next 30 years (2047) ==

• full consciousness uploading (into virtual world) becomes an option
• telepathy/empathy through neural implants becomes possible
• direct uploading of languages/knowledge to these uploaded consciousnesses becomes possible
• world hunger is being solved as superintelligences are now leading major world powers and managing resources, and preventing further effects of climate change
  • agriculture is entirely automated, and super efficient
  • 30% of world meat is now grown in labs, reducing atmospheric methane and freeing up more space for food
• living wage given to everyone, as 60% of jobs are automated

 

[Cognisant]

I'm suffering from mental three stooges syndrome.

Can I have a more specific question?

 

[Kuu]

It's not like Ray Kurzweil has made a career about this or anything... you might want to go there.


Auburn your VR timeline is terrible. Current generation is not 1st but 3rd. Full body tracking is already here, and 4k per eye surely next year. Eye and mouth tracking is already solved, its integration into consumer devices is imminent. What you're predicting for a whole decade is happening in 2 or 3 years tops.

Also simply talking about the pixel resolution is bad without also including the field of view. What ultimately matters in terms of human perception is the angular resolution, pixels per degree.

Lightfield retinal displays are also coming, probably to consumers by 2018-19 in limited ways. That'll put most pixel-based displays to shame and bring on serious AR. Although the rumor mills claim Magic Leap might launch this year...

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

One invention per year seems arbitrary.

It would be more natural to have a few major breakthroughs early on and then progressively more and more of them as the time goes on.

Let's say they invent cat level AI in 2038, if they're going to invent human level AI on the 15th of March 2040, they're bound to surpass it on the 20th. By the 1st of April of that same year they're probably approaching 100x of human capacity, assuming they aren't bottlenecking on hardware. It's an explosion.

Or you could model a logarithmic plot (logx of x, logn of x), when a big discovery leaves a stagnation and little new clues to follow.

If you need regular "news" then pick a periodic function, one that has some local "irregularity" but behaves regularly on a bigger scale.

It also gives your world some innate tension or suggests a flow of events, something big is approaching, changes occur faster and faster, or there's no change and it's almost strange, maybe it's a big secret?

Obviously not all innovations are game-changing, some are minor, some are unimaginable and some become relevant only after many years after wide-scale implementation. Some inventions scale their influence 1:1, some others' effects are major when it's freshly released and later are not that impactful or maybe become obsolete.

Once you have a rough shape or outline of the inventions you can ask simple questions about the implications of those changes, maybe a large amount of inventions is caused by Z, or leads to Y or causes an alternative path technology to dwindle, and so on.

Period-doubling bifurcation looks believable and acts chaotically, you might base your entire plot on chaos theory of growth functions or omit such details, the important part is that it might give you some ideas.

 

[QuickTwist]

Track one thing: Cybernetics. That should cover you.

 

[Auburn]

@Kuu - Well, those things are "here" already, yes, but super sketchy and not ready to hit mainstream markets. Pimax taunts 4K right now. And FoveVR has eye tracking. And Leap Motion, Perception Neuron and Vive Pucks track the body, but it's either clunky, glitchy or expensive. I don't think they're the right solution for mainstream body tracking.

But I think I do need to adjust my timeline a bit.
I'm wondering what your more detailed timeline would look like? Maybe we can compare? Here's my new/detailed one:

2018: Vive 2 comes out, ahead of the Rift with:

• 4K resolution
• With foveated rendering making the graphical load equal to the Vive 1.
• And tetherless (tho still needs the PC nearby)

2019: Oculus Rift II finally comes out*.

• 4K resolution
• Foveated rendering, reducing the render load + giving eye-presence
• Mouth tracking via a small camera on the bottom side of the Rift for full face presence
• Front facing camera that tracks basic elbow/torso positions, allowing for upper body and arm presence.
• A guardian system is introduced via the front facing camera as well

2019: PS5 comes out with native VR support. PlayStation chooses to keep using their console as the render power for their VR, to cut costs. Also comes out with their VR 2 including:

• 3K resolution
• Foveated rendering
• Gloves are introduced
• Front facing camera guardian system

2020: Vive 3 comes out:

• 8K resolution (4K per eye)
• Lighthouse now also tracks the body w/o markers using an extra set of non-optical cameras on each lightbox
• Introduction of mouth tracking via camera under the headset
• "Full body presence" is now finally achieved with no markers

2022: Rift 3 comes out:

• 8K resolution (4K per eye)
• Ditches "constellation" for something more lighthouse-y, which allows full body tracking via the cameras
• New cameras can scan, 3D model and bring your personal space into VR
• Environmental modeling + full body/face tracking allows for "full social telepresence" where you can bring someone into a simulation of your real-world space and both of you look more or less like you do IRL (if you want to).

* I don't think it'll come out sooner than this. Oculus will be focusing on content a lot in the next year or so, helping the community/ecosystem develop and get used to the 'standard' before upsetting it with new hardware. In general Oculus will make few but very punctuated iterations to their hardware.

 

[Haim]

Widespread 1gb or higher internet.
Netflix for games via streaming from server to user.
High end PC will move to a server and be video streamed to the user, which will allow to basically have a supercomputer which will also autoupdate it specs.
That will happen because PC will probable reach some kind of limit which only can be solved with large space or expensive equipment(like server cooling equipment)
Will allow to MMO to be linearly scalable(more users, no limit of number of players per area).
VR widespread, VR MMO.
3D PC display widespread.
VR wireless 8K.
4k 120 fps PC
The AI "GPU" widespread.
High level programming language for the gpu widespread.
AI which be able to have goals.
Light processing unit.
Self driving cars widespread.
Brain computer interface(which mean a lot of things I already worth about in other Thread).
Even more NN training.
More end to work as we know it, move to creative "job".
3d modeling/drawing with VR/AR widespread.
NN for game creation.
Widespread and good motion capture and pictures to 3d model.
More 3d printing.
NN create 3d printing.
NN create processing unit to improve the performance of one software, possible use 3d printing.
"Ram" is the ssd.
NN write function implementation from UML.
No need to walk around a supermarket, self-driving car will give you the food.
Actual good voice to text.
NN 2d drawing to 3d model.
House building with almost no humans.
DNA to human simulation in computer.
faster than real life simulation of a human that have your DNA.
Now you have probable smarter version of yourself
(as the computer can train him and even modify and read his brain).
3d print that simulated human with your DNA.
now humans live longer and better.

 

[Kuu]

That's a bit better Auburn, but I'd still subtract 2 years off that. Spatial mapping with depth sensing cameras is also a thing consumers can buy today. You're also acting as if in 5 years only Valve/HTC and Facebook will be doing VR headsets, when there's a ton of other companies pushing out hardware in the near future. Microsoft is making such a massive push that next version of win10 coming out sometime this month is including their "Holographic" mixed reality shell that they're using on Hololens, to be compatible with a range of headsets using their spatial mapping tech made by the likes of HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer. Valve's lighthouse tech is open to use and already LG has announced a headset as well.

The improvements in VR headsets will go faster than people expect. Current gen VR is crippled by the fact that they use off the shelf smartphone components for practically everything. With display manufacturers now unconstrained from the smartphone space and power limitations and designing displays specifically for VR, it's possible that they will bump up res, fov and refresh rates beyond people's expectations.

"There are a bunch of obvious things coming down the technology pipeline. Headsets are going to get lighter, they're going to get smaller, the resolution is going to go up. These aren't speculative things, these are all basically finished in terms of everybody in the headset industry knows how to do them. It's just a question of getting the products out.

"The current headsets are essentially piggybacking off phone panels. Now people are looking at display technologies that aren't bastardized phone technologies. Once you start building something just for a VR headset you can go much faster than the phones.

"We're going to go from this weird position where VR right now is kind of low res, to being in a place where VR is higher res than just about anything else, with much higher refresh rates than you're going to see on either desktops or phones. You'll see the VR industry leapfrogging any other display technology. You'll start to see that happening in 2018 and 2019 when you'll be talking about incredibly high resolutions."

The bottleneck will be processing power, but already current gen GPUs get near 3k per eye (if you look at all the people doing supersampling). Add foveated rendering and lens-matched shading and newer APIs like Vulkan and it might even possible current gen GPUs can push 4k per eye or more...

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

@OP
Trying to make a realistic timeline is only one option. It's more important to focus on interesting concepts to include in the world. In that regard imagination comes first, followed shortly by inspiration from speculative fiction or general sci-fi. In that same vein there's no need for your inventions to be realistic, you might want to explore the implications of technologies that are not even on our horizon or aren't reasonable/possible at all (singularity gives you nice blank canvas).

How do you understand singularity? Kurzweil and co. just shuffle this term to mean a point after which it becomes fruitless to make any predictions.

Anyway, this "Omega" point should help you define the events leading up to it and if you're fishing for ideas I recommend taking inspiration from existing media, if you can describe the kind of setting you aim for I can list some films or books that come relatively close or throw some ideas your way.

 

[Hadoblado]

^While it's great to go into detail to make a consistent universe, I'd focus more on the main elements, have a sequential order for things, then basically chuck them in wherever intuition dictates. Nobody's (*except Kuu :P) is going to correct you on a hypothetical future timeline. The whole point of fantasy is to ask "what if?". A question can't be false.

 

[Haim]

^While it's great to go into detail to make a consistent universe, I'd focus more on the main elements, have a sequential order for things, then basically chuck them in wherever intuition dictates. Nobody's (*except Kuu :P) is going to correct you on a hypothetical future timeline. The whole point of fantasy is to ask "what if?". A question can't be false.

If it is inconsistent with itself I sure will correct it.

 

[bvanevery]

You don't need that much backstory content to start a RPG fiction. Maybe performing that brainstorming exercise will help you as a process, but frankly you cannot communicate that much crap to a reader. Thus delving too deeply into the year-by-year details is wasted effort. Stuff has to be intelligible and perceptible to an audience to matter. If it is not, then events appear as random noise. That bothers audiences; they throw up their hands and say, "Huh? I don't understand what's happening / why my character just died."

 

[TheManBeyond]

I think everyone should invest more money into health care inventions
Something like some internal camera to check how everything inside you is working in real time, and the state of decay of each organ of your body, more statistics in real time or smth
It would help hypochondriac people like me