Asklemmy

That has a real chance of existing? Something with clean power.

That I really want? Replicators. Man think about a life not having to cook or clean dishes.

Earth unity. Whatever they did to make humans stop attacking each other was crazy.

We probably need another species to compete against to unite us. I'd put Billions into nasa to find aliens so we can fight them.

I'd like to support solarpunk development. I just want to live a simple life, with high tech in cooperation with the environment. We need it badly. I would fund so many community libraries. Don't misunderstand me though. I still want space travel, but I no longer trust capitalists with it.

A fully open source tech manufacturing company such as chips, gpu, ram, motherboard, connectors, ssd .etc you get the idea.

Asteroid mining. This may still be too far off and too expensive. But the first person to get this working successfully will be a trillionare.

This plus fusion are the two things most needed to transition humanity to a space based civilization.

Two chicks at the same time.

An end to the problem of aging, and death. Whether that means turning into cyborgs, I don’t care. I just want to choose when I die. Not having dying slowly happen to me like a terminal illness. Plus life is way too short. If I get tired of immortality let me off myself. But let me at least get tired of it first.

Bacta Tanks. Maybe a few days in one would fix my back.

How about a UBI? Do social policies count as technologies? They do in 4X games, so I'm going with it.

Doors that go "swish" when they open.

I would fund a truly fair AI and a very gentle, but firm, self replicating robot army to enforce it's benevolent will on everyone.

So basically SkyNet, after I make a pointer arithmetic mistake.

Curing aging.

That would leave the time to see all the other inventions to come. It would also cure age related diseases like Alzheimer's and Cancer.

Regrowing teeth

Current against foetal alkohol syndrome

Every single suggestion so far has been positive, life-affirming, and productive, so I'm going to be Gru here for a change:

Bolos. AI tanks with no crew and heavily (Greek) Spartan-centric model training.

Faster-than-light travel. Which is physically impossible, but whatever.

Consciousness storage and transfer

The fiction part would kind of keep me from doing that. And I fully believe that everything that actually is possible is already being worked on as quickly as possible.

So, maybe just pay for a whole lot of renewable energy plants all around the globe. Buy up all fossil fuel plants, demolish them and put in renewables instead.

Or fund a fully open smartphone with modular components like a PC with good specs and an optional keyboard.

Nanotech robots for garbage recycling.

Imagine if we dumped our trash into one end of a big fuckoff machine and out the other end it came out in microscopic pieces into hoppers for reuse or correct disposal.

Throw in an old appliance and out the other end comes the aluminium from the body, the steel, the copper from the wiring, the silica... you get the idea.

Open source non destructive Brain machine interfaces

I want to interact with machines at the speed of thought so bad. Not to mention what it could mean for people when they are disabled.

Those machines that can make food instantly for sure. Put a few of those bad boys in the right place and we've solved world hunger. Also, healthy tasty food for those of us who can't cook and can't afford to eat at restaurants.

Granted, people in the restaurant would largely lose their job, but we can retrain them for something else like we did with stagecoach drivers, telephone operators and honest politicians before them 🤷

Antigravity, Durasteel, shields, cold fusion, nanotech, time travel, warp, dimension sliding/hopping, mind mapping, cryo sleep, teleportation, Positronic brain, ...

Van Neumann probes

I don't know how plausible this is, but a way for trans men and trans women to exchange sexual traits. There might be an answer elsewhere in that there are animals that can change sex in certain conditions so there is some biological evidence of possibility in a singular case. However it seems anti-poetic that we have genetic females who want to be genetic males and genetic males who want to be genetic females and the answer that we currently have as society is for them to go fuck themselves.

I guess for more realistic, then deep dive VR.

Space based mirrors for asteroid mining. Bounce a sh*tton of light from the sun around and just melt asteroids. Love that in the Troy Rising series.

Lots of problems getting there irl (need a better way to get out of the gravity well, and light speed lag for command and control would be a real issue) but the idea is just too fun.

May be poulsen treatment or immortality cruciform from Hyperion. Not sure if immortality is such a good idea though. Throughout history horrible dictatorships tend to end after the death of the despots. Imagine if these horrible people are immortal...

room temp superconductors.

Fusion, nuclear propulsion, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, biomining, biological fuel cells

Do I have to choose one? The world food program is never overfunded, and that would buy a stupid amount of lobbying for whatever overlooked domestic issue, or even just research grants for neglected but foundational things. Boring/ugly animals could also use conservation.

I’m convinced that, despite his denial, Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory was a Red Scare-dodging caricature of historical materialism / scientific socialism. I’d put my money there.