Evaluating future technology

[ciphergoth]

How do you tell a reasonable guess about what future technology might bring (eg a manned mission to Mars) from unreasonable guesses (eg teleportation)?

I'm inclined to think that you have to get down to the technical nitty-gritty. If you don't know the field, it might be reasonable to think that in the future we'll prove that our ciphers are unbreakable. Actually, for everyday useful ciphers, a proof that they are secure with no unproven assumptions is much harder than you might think if you've not studied CS. There's no reason I'd expect you to know that if you're not a computer scientist, but if your vision of the near future included provably unbreakable ciphers, I'd want to explain why that doesn't look very likely at the moment.

What do you think?

Comments

Ok, straight up

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Well, not having any scientific knowledge or ability, when I hear a prediction about the future I usually ask myself who is funding whatever is going on, or who might fund it in the future. Then I read the bumf to see how far they have actually got with it - I mean,for example, I understand that a quark can appear to be in two places at once, but I am noit putting money into teleportation research. Then I guess I give some thought to whether whoever is talking about it has read a lot of science fiction. Then I ask myself who might make money by lying about it. At some point I will also ask myself how much I want to believe in it/disbelieve in it.

That is assuming I dont think something like "that is just bonkers" and move swiftly on.