500 yrs in the future....and we still use needles ?

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 16:57
VIEWED: 7544
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FARSCAPEPKWARS

Monday, October 18, 2004 4:02 PM

I love the way firefly is a mix between future and past

AURAPTOR

Monday, October 18, 2004 4:17 PM

bikisdad wrote:
Monday, October 18, 2004 03:13

Quote:
RANT WARNING!

We'll be going back to those as soon as we run out of oil - it's not like there's any more being made. We're just using up what little is left - notice the sky-high oil prices lately. They're only going higher over the long-term as we use it all up with our fabulous modern inventions. Makes Joss's vision of Firefly look even more realistic, although at the rate we're going we'll have to leave earth much sooner than 500 years from now.

RANT OVER

The high price of oil has nothing to do w/ the amount that we have left. There is quite a great deal of oil left. I can detect from the tone of your post that while we live on the same planet, we're coming from different worlds. How you equate inanimate objects to 'slaves' is a bit of a stretch from my point of view.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

BIKISDAD

Monday, October 18, 2004 4:35 PM

I in no way meant to "equate" inanimate objects with slaves. I was just saying that they performed the same tasks. It's not like those tasks weren't done before these great new inventions.

As to the availability of oil. Yes, there's still plenty left in the ground to last another 30 years, or so. If you think that's a really long time, then I guess you must think we're all pretty well off. Unfortunately, the easily extractable oil has already been removed. Now we're working on the difficult to remove (and more expensive) stuff.

However, the supply of oil is just part of the problem. The real problem is that, while the supply is declining (go ahead and tell me that isn't true), the demand for the stuff is soaring because of the development of previously undeveloped countries like China and India. What do you think is going to continue to happen to the price of oil as these two conflicting trends continue into the future?

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

DRALIONSOLEIL

Monday, October 18, 2004 4:52 PM

this reminds me of a magazine article i read a few years ago about things that last and etc...

the article is more elaborate, but i'm not going to type it out. i'll see if its on line tho.
from discover magazine, oct 2000:

20 things that won't change in the next 20 years.

1) Houses (refering to current popular home architecture)
2) Pencils (developed since 1565. pencil sales remained steady thru the word processing revolution.)
3) Books
4) Cash
5) Eating utensils (forks knives spoons aaand chopsticks)
6) Passenger jets --thru 2020, sure. but what about 50/60 years from now?
7) Driving (talking about fully automated cars vs. human reaction driving)
8) Traffic congestion
9) Noise (talking about the development of noise insolation, insulation and cancelation technologies)
10) Religion
11) Baseball --i don't get this one, but then i never liked baseball
12) Sex (versus cloning technology for reproduction)
13) Zippers (since 1851 boys and girls)
14) Poverty
15) Shopping (versus e-commerce, real shops will still be more popular)
16) Paper clips
17) Zealotry and terrorism
18) Men's suits. (the classic "sack suit" has remained aggressively static for nearly a century, suffering only lapel width oscillations)
19) Death -- no one's going to figure out how to live forever.
20) (they actually printed this) Dick Clark. At age 90, he'll no doubt look younger than ever.

the article is on line but you have to be a subscriber... :(

AURAPTOR

Monday, October 18, 2004 5:07 PM

bikisdad wrote:
Monday, October 18, 2004 06:35

Quote:
As to the availability of oil. Yes, there's still plenty left in the ground to last another 30 years, or so. If you think that's a really long time, then I guess you must think we're all pretty well off. Unfortunately, the easily extractable oil has already been removed. Now we're working on the difficult to remove (and more expensive) stuff.

I recall having a similiar discussion about oil with a classmate back when I was in High School. I had been told that our supply of easily extractable oil would last about 20-30 yrs. The year ? Around 1981. 23 Yrs later, and the forecast is .....about another 30 yrs. See a pattern?

We do have a finite supply of oil. No question there. China and India will also use more oil in the future. There are still untapped reserves out there just waiting for used. Long before the oil has 'run out', we'll see alternative energy sources being incorporated into our daily life. Fact is, that trend has already begun.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

BIKISDAD

Monday, October 18, 2004 5:24 PM

Alternative energy is also in the same miniscule stage of advancement that it was in 30 years ago. Our entire economy (indeed, our whole way of life), even after the warnings from the 70's and 80's oil shocks is still based almost entirely on fossil fuels. Note the key word there - "fossil", as in plankton that died and decayed hundreds of millions of years ago. What took 100's of millions of years to develop, we're about to use up in a few short decades. Don't think 30 years from now. Think 100 years from now, when the oil supply is GONE. Do you think our descendant's lives will more resemble ours or our frontiersman ancestors?

EDIT: The answer is in Firefly, by the way. This show was very forward thinking in so many ways.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

AURAPTOR

Monday, October 18, 2004 6:37 PM

Well, we'll agree to disagree. You say 30,100 yrs. I say 1000's of yrs. Doesn't matter. We'll be long gone either way.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

CYBERSNARK

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 2:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DralionSoleil:
20) (they actually printed this) Dick Clark. At age 90, he'll no doubt look younger than ever.

Heh. I so want to see him (or Michael J. Fox) making an appearance on Firefly "as himself." ;)

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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

MINGHUSCHUTNEY

Tuesday, October 19, 2004 4:57 PM

I do understand where you are coming from on this one. I am still amazed that we use sutures to close wounds today, when medical science has been advancing at an exponential rate. Its only in the last 10 years or so that we stopped using animal derived sutures such as catgut, and that was mainly related to the risk of PRION transmission. It does seem a bit archaic to use what is in effect sterile string to hold biological tissues together until they heal. However, if I think about advances in medical technology most of them are outside of the surgical field. These include things like diagnostic imaging and pharmaceutical therapies. Firefly certainly gets the imaging right with the very impressive body scanner used in Ariel. Surgical advances have basically been in techniques which make things faster or less traumatic to the patient and tissues such as keyhole surgery or in finding new ways to cut tissues without causing bleeding (like diathermy or harmonic scalples). Infact I am told by anaesthetists that the real reason surgery is so much better today is because anaesthetics have become a lot safer. In reality the drive to advance surgery is waning because it is becoming an increasingly redundant form of therapy. Many illnesses once treated with the knife are now treated with a pill (like gastric ulcers). Molecular biology will almost certainly make cancer surgery a thing of the past in the not so distant future. I would not be too surprised to see sutures still being used in 500 years time in the rare instances when old fashioned surgery was still needed; for instance following trauma, especially outside of a hospital setting (as is usually the case on Serenity).
As far as non-needle injectors are concerned I could only see these delivering accurate doses into the subcutaneous tissues. Most drugs are still given intravenously due to the rapidity of action and accurate dose administration acheivable via this route. Its not so hard to imagine that needles will remain the cheapest and safest way to do this for many years to come.

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