On Jan 12, 4:08 pm, Wildepad <noreplies> wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:05:33 GMT, bealoid <sig...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>
> >What devices used in "today's" science fiction will the future people
look
> >back on and laugh at?
>
> On a near term basis (before information is exchanged/accessed solely
> through brain implants), the very concept of ****table information
> storage might become an anachronism -- with improvements in
> transmission speeds and compression, it could usually be faster to
> download what you want than to find and insert any type of storage
> media.
>
There is certainly some validity to that, but a lot of science fiction
focuses on military characters, so they will be using mil-spec
equipment. Imagine, the great spy has snuck out of the Omega Citadel
undetected using his invisibility cloak and mind control ray on the
guards he suck past. The Omegans have no idea that he has stolen the
designs to the Killamazoo-9000. He makes it back to his hidden rocket
****p disguised as an ordinary ore hauler, ready to flee the planet.
Ans soon as he walks into the rocket ****p, his ****ps computer
automatically wirelessly downloads the plans over Bluetooth from his
PDA, and he is off. Unfortunately, Omegan SIGINT detected the
wireless data transfer, realize it includes classified data and shoot
him out of the sky, knowing he is a spy.
If, instead, the spy's PDA requires some physical contact to transfer
data, it may improve he long term career path.
Likewise, the wireless PDA is subject to Omegan hacking while he is in
the doom citadel. And, there could be an Omegan infiltrator on the
flag****p of the Great Fleet, just running his radio reciever,
listening to any interesting data transfer going on inside the ****p.
At very least, I'd expect some sort of well defined interface ****t /
contact point that would be used to touch two devices together long
enough to have a user confirm a trust relation****p and to be used as a
side channel to exchange session-specific encryption keys before the
data is then securely transmitted wirelessly. I dunno why this isn't
common in the real world yet.
As for best SF floppy disk, I always considered Star Trek Thje Next
Generation's isolinear doohickys to be a pretty reasonable size.
> Sideways: one thing that has stood the test of time, imo, is the white
> chips that Spock plugged into his tricorder (sorry, I wasn't a
> trekkie, so I don't know their proper name). If you consider them a
> flash drive, they are still far better than what's currently available
> -- they are sized right for a proper label and don't have a delicate
> connector.
> --
|
