Raspberry Pis and other microcomputers can be had for pretty cheap, and they can be put to a surprising variety of tasks. You need to be a bit of a jack of all trades to fully embrace that DIY element, but I'd bet that showing off a project that you mostly built yourself would be seen as futuristic by most people.
Still this thing, 20 years on:
A smartphone
Anything with GPS capability
Devices less sophisticated than smart phones were once pretty common in sci-fi novels, but they still achieved the same sort of thing, all the world's knowledge in the palm of your hand.
You can get smartphones for absurdly cheap these days, and while crappy by modern standards they're still technological marvels.
A knife. Futuristic in that it will be handy for hunting and self-defense after the future collapse of civilization that results from our insatiable appetite for consumption - of, among other things, useless gadgets.
It's interesting the difference in what people think a collapsed civilization will look like.
Some people think we will "return to monke" where wilderness survival skills will be essential and people who have them will be the "main characters." That would probably be the easier and better future.
The more likely option will be technofeudalism where rich people have small, brutal armies and control localized power grids, farming operations, and politics with tech as mass migrations happen and wildlife becomes all but extinct outside of human cultivation. Survival skills won't matter when all land and food scarcity is controlled by a rich few with absolute control. The average survivalist will be wiped out with the first natural disaster or by the feudal lords with drones. Return to nature might only come after 50 years when chip supplies and power grids have dried up and fallen apart, but it would just as likely be mad-max as oil could likely still be used.
Who knows. Fascism might take over with how it is going now and solve the climate crisis with mass genocide and forcing green energy for all we know.
3 sea shells.
I feel like that really depends on how you view futuristic.
I think things with colored e-ink displays, USB C chargeable AA batteries, handheld emulators, 2230 NVMe drives, and USB C power portable displays are really cool but I feel like their availability these days has made them lose a bit of their futuristic luster. They would have blown my mind when I was a kid.
More niche products like Meshtastic and ESP32 Marauder devices are things I view as futuristic (and can be found for under $100).
The thing about meshtastic is the walking distance range and limitation to text messages.
Though I don't know if it is possible to integrate a LoRAWAN concentrator with a nice collinear J-pole antenna to mount on the top of your house to move to a double digit range where it could be useful as a neighborhood mesh with multiple channels. (With the added benefit of using lorawan devices like pet trackers and things).
Still Lora smart (but local) home agriculture, water collection, etc... Is a really cool technology for large properties.
If you shop around you can find a Brother (B&W) laser printer for about $100.
Imagine this weird future: Printers that always just work no matter what type of computer you have or how long they've sat since you last used them. And the "ink" cartridges last forever. And you can buy 3rd party refills or even refill them yourself. Plus it's completely reliant on microplastics to do its job, what's more futuristic than that?
Imagine this weird future: Printers that always just work no matter what type of computer you have or how long they've sat since you last used them. And the "ink" cartridges last forever. And you can buy 3rd party refills or even refill them yourself. Plus it's completely reliant on microplastics to do its job, what's more futuristic than that?
I lived in the 90's, when office work was a tad more reliant on printers and late stage capitalism wasn't as bad. My dad had a laser printer for his business. Very reliable, fast, never needed anything.
I remember that as the past, is my point.
Even better, if you scour your local thrift stores you can occasionally find them for as little as $10 and all they typically need is a cleanup and a new toner cartridge.
I bought mine for $7 4 years ago and it's still working on the toner cartridge that was in the printer when I bought it.
Admittedly, I only print about 40 or 50 pages a year but that's a hell of a deal.
A 1-terabyte MicroSD card
For under 100$ ?
Yeah, as low as $61 on Amazon for 1TB. Pretty amazing if you're old like me and remember diskettes.
Those can't be real
They're sold as 1TB for that price. But if you actually write that much, you'll find that only part of your data is there. The rest is garbled or zero.
There's tools to restore this (on windows/linux), and it'll show up as a smaller size when you run them. You can also use such tools to set any fake size you like
I bought a large capacity unknown brand cheap SD card somewhat recently, it seemed real at first but after installing an OS on it and running a few minutes became bricked somehow. At least I got a refund.
Most of the ones on Amazon aren't trustworthy. Especially at high capacities. But apparently you can get up to 2TB now, at least in theory. I imagine the support for them is pretty limited though still.
In the uk I can get 1TB for 95gbp from sandisk website.
So probably less than 100 usd in usa from a reputable seller.
A bow drill fire starter.
...I suppose it depends on what you assume the future will be like...
Barring that, you can get some small vials of tritium gas for under that price.
What would one do with small vials of tritium gas?
Not much really. Looks cool though. I suppose it's more of a decoration than "tech." About the only practical application of it is a tool to terrify the uneducated. The quantities of tritium the average person can buy are beyond harmless. You could breathe a hundred vials of the stuff and be completely unaffected. If you drank nothing but tritium water for several weeks, you would have some issues. But tiny vials with micrograms of tritium vapor inside? Utterly harmless.
Or, I suppose for the criminally minded, you could find some evil uses for it. You could probably rob a bank with it. "Give me all the money or I break this vial of radioactive vapor!" That would probably get you a wikipedia page, if you're just dying for your 5 minutes of fame. You could go down in history as, "that mad scientist that robbed a bank using radioactive gas." Of course it would be a bluff.
Though if you're just going to bluff your way through bank robbery, you can just stick your hand in a hoodie pocket for the same effect.
I suppose you could use it for other similar criminal acts of varied nobility. You could probably use the same bluff to create a hostage situation to bring awareness to whatever political/religious cause is your cup of tea. Ultimately most people are very ignorant of nuclear science, and simply the words "radioactive tritium" would cause people to shit themselves. And that fear could be harnessed for all sorts of malevolent purposes. (Even better as you can actually show people the faint glow from it, and prove that you do have something radioactive.)
Hmm... what else could you use tritium for? I suppose you could use it for religious purposes. Absolute quantities really don't matter much for that.
What else? You could tie it to a keychain and be able to find your keys in a dark room.
But really, it's mostly a novelty. I think small amounts of it can be used for gun sights. But in any quantity the average person could afford or legally be allowed to purchase, it's a harmless novelty. Larger quantities can be used in fusion reactor experiments and nuclear weapons. But if you try to acquire that much, you better have a budget in the millions, and the NRC is going to be on your ass. The average person can get a small vial of it that faintly glows blue in a dark room. It looks cool embedded in jewelry, but it really doesn't have much practical purposes beyond perhaps terrifying the ignorant. But I really don't consider malevolent uses to be truly practical applications.
(In case it isn't obvious, I do not endorse using radioactive tritium in the commission of any crime or act of violence or threat of violence.)
Lmao I love that this became a thought exercise on the nefarious uses of tritium. Thanks for the info! I'll keep all of these in mind when trying to determine what to do with my newly acquired tritium. >=)
I have a little tritium vial on my keys because I am a clumsy oaf with ADHD and the little greeny glow has been useful a couple of times. It's great when I'm out at night and my keys yeet themselves out of my pocket and land in the darkest possible area.
I mostly got it because it's cool though. Radioluminescence is fukken rad!
I've wanted one of these for decades but I thought they weren't legal to purchase in my country anymore. I'm living vicariously through you.
Probably a cheap 3D printer
I'm actually blown away by how good of a 3D Printer you can get for ~$200 now. Huge improvement from just a few years ago.
£76.77
The pound isn't the future since Brexit.
You can buy a cheap smartwatch that will monitor your pulse, give you a pulse oximeter reading, handle text messages and phone calls, take photos, and also within a reasonable margin of error check your blood sugar for about $35 on AliExpress.
And ping all that data to CCP instead of our corporate overlords? No thanks
And if you read the manual of even the latest fancy pancy samsung or apple ones, you'll find that it's health monitor is nothing more than a gimmick
What do you mean with that? Depending on the recency of your device they can be quite accurate. I use a Garmin though because they last longer on battery and are a bit more oriented towards sports and health. Some studies I found back then suggested Garmin is not that far off lab testing on most metrics. Yes even the guestimated ones like vo2max.
I mean what I said. There's a reason it's in their manual. And it's not in the back of the "legally cover our butts'" section. It's right next to the description of the feature itself
An R36s is like 40 bucks, and can emulate a LOT of old game consoles. I think that's pretty neat
Sam with miyoo mini plus. Great time to get into emulation machines.
I once found a curved 4k monitor at my local thrift shop for $70.
While "good for you" and "congrats", it's not something anyone can buy for under 100 bucks.
Bluetooth headphones/headset/earpiece. You too can look like Uhura from Star Trek by sticking a wireless speaker in your ear!
She is hearing always in mono. Maybe she lost one of them?
A Voxellab Aquilla FDM printer. They're regularly on sale for about $70. Maybe cheaper these days since they're kind old now.
what is “futuristic” in this context?
A calculator is pretty futuristic depending on where you start
I was thinking of something that would be considered futuristic to an average person today. So, maybe something uncommon, with impressive capabilities, but still affordable?
Not sure if many items fit that criteria, but was curious if any!
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