HDuffRules

Well the whole eradicating bad things by not letting certain people mate has been tried before, the Eugenics movement never really worked out, it just put tons of people into governement-maintained facilities, which basically just ended up costing a lot of money. The thing with evolution and evolutionary forces is that the forces that shaped our evolution in the past don't have as strong a sway anymore. Genes basically sit around. The point when man realized he could manipulate the environment in his favor, evolution in the old sense started losing its influence. But just because physical evolution has stagnated doesn't mean mental evolution can't. Basically now we are what we are and we have what we have, but its up to us to innovate, to think of new ways to utilize these resources. The concept of a "meme" as coined by Richard Dawkins points to that. A "meme" is kind of like a gene, but it represents an idea. Memes can be accepted or rejected collectively by societies. Whether or not a society accepts a meme and aplies it to its everyday function comes to define that society. Memes can also be transmitted between societies, either through immigration, emigration, or education, etc. Essentially, the day of competition between individuals is over, and now its down to competition between groups of individuals. Eventually, given enough time (if we're still around, asumming no particularly aggressive society decided it would be a good idea to start a nuclear war) all societies should consolidate, ie. have accepted the same combination of memes. At this point evolution may have reached its highest point; when everyone agrees on a large set of memes, then they by extension agree on all related memes, and any new memes to arise (kind of like mutation) would violate a meme already well-established, and would be rejected quickly. Only at that point has evolution reached the end of evolution.. unless you believe in ascension, but idk if ascension is something that is actually possible. But going back to the actual question, its definitely possible the society we're living in may be degenerating, this would be the result of adopting too many memes that have turned out to be detrimental to our standing in relation to other societies...

Already with a combination of different apps, you can listen to music on your computer from your iPhone, streaming over the internet. This stuff is just going to go further. But new advances with capability aside, there's actually a fair amount of cell phone technology that we haven't even seen yet in the US. In Korea, they already have cell phones with 3-D displays, so real holographic displays aren't that far behind. These phones also have two lenses to take 3-D pictures as well. And they've had TV on those phones for several years already, not to mention lots of other capability, like using your cell phone to buy stuff from vending machines. Unfortunately they don't work on US networks so you can't even crack them and use them here... we'll just have to wait. But by the time we have this technology in the States, the newest phones on the other side of the world will probably be able to translate languages for you or something...

There's some theory somewhere that I'm not too familiar with, but it involves falling into a black hole and there being some possibility of you traveling backwards in time. Although with what we know about black holes, people are unlikely to want to test this theory... I think going backwards in time is theoretically possible, since time is basically just another dimension, and if its possible to travel in the three physical dimensions we're familiar with, it should be equally possible to travel through time. Unfortunately, the dynamics of going back in time and the consequences of what might happen would basically cause it to be outlawed as soon as the technology for it exists. Governments certainly wouldn't want people to have the ability to randomly go around into the past, simply because we're not sure if its possible to alter the past. Two views exist on that: 1. If you're going to go back in time and change something, then in the past you've already done it, so when you return to the future, nothing will have changed. 2. If you go back in time, you are physically doing something and changing stuff, so the future will be different. I prefer not to think about this theoretically, but more thinking about particles. Everyone is made up of atoms, etc. whatever. So when you go back in time, the atoms that make up your body appear in a different time. But those atoms already existed at that time ie. in the past. Some law of physics says the same particle can't occupy two different positions at once, so you didn't really visit the past, you basically created an alternate universe that's exactly the same except for the molecules are comprise you. This would explain why "time travel" would cost enormous amounts of energy, since you're basically causing a ton of quantum calculations to happnen in order to create this new universe you travel "back" to. Now as to whether or not you'd actually be able to return to the "present".. that's something I actually can't decide...

Could you explain that a little bit? 'cause cloning would create a completely new person, unless you're talking about transferring awareness between different bodies, there's no way to just magically live in the future. ps. And what do you mean when you refer to "collecting data and storing it"? Lol sorry, just a little bit confused here...

I was just about to say that I was surprised nobody had mentioned Wi-Fi on the touch yet. For me, that's been the most useful feature of the Touch, whether I just want to check my e-mail but don't have my laptop or am not near a kiosk or if I want to see how long it will take for the shuttle to arrive. But then again my music library isn't that big so the Classic isn't really that attractive. I can see space becoming a bit of a problem later on, but the Touch does come in a 32 GB flavor...

Although public perception of hackers might be changing, there really still exists a rather large portion of the population that knows very little about hacker (and by association) geek culture. In lots of movies, hackers are still bad people who do bad things. Ex. Sydney White (2007), Die Hard 4 (2007) and others. Interesting point about the term "cracker" though. Up until this point I was under the impression that 'cracker' referred exclusively to the kind folks that make free software..