Change Agent - Issue 50

3. A cell-phone chip implanted in the ear so that you can talk to anyone without making a sound -- by subvocalizing

4. Farming in the ocean

5. Efficient solar cells that generate "free" electricity

6. A solution to global warming

7. Antigravity devices

8. Vaccines and cures for all chronic degenerative diseases

9. Permanent contact lenses with variable telephoto lenses

10. Effortless, effective birth control

11. Food that eliminates the need for livestock

12. Behavior modification for criminals that would eliminate the need for jails

13. Faster-than-light travel beyond the solar system

14. Time travel (forward and backward) or, at the very least, nonfiction "movies" made by time-traveling cameras

15. Personal submarines and vacation homes located at the bottom of the sea

16. Processes that reverse decades of pollution at EPA Superfund sites

17. A worldwide force field that disables handguns and nuclear weapons

18. Computers that really and truly think

Some of these ideas are nonsense, clearly impossible, and not worth working on. But so were ICQ chat, travel to the moon, and the fax machine.

What is the point of these visions? I've intentionally tried to paint some unreachable goals, just as Isaac Asimov did with his vision of smart, kind, and useful robots. Technological change is accelerating, and frankly, our daydreams just aren't keeping up with it. Do we really need to double the speed of a computer just so we can play Donkey Kong faster?

When a computer is fast enough, why won't it be conscious? Or couldn't a fast-enough computer scan my brain and know what I know and act how I do? And if it could, why couldn't I just send that data structure to a meeting in Hong Kong or to another planet?

The Jetsons was fun to watch, largely because we knew that such a future was far away, imaginatively fanciful, and likely impossible. Yet, as I write this, Dennis Tito has just returned from a week in space -- our first space tourist. And he did it less than 40 years after Hanna and Barbera invented Elroy, Judy, George, and Jane, his wife. So, what are you working on?

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is the author of Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers (Simon & Schuster, 1999) and Unleashing the Ideavirus (Do You Zoom Inc., 2000) . Get his latest book for free on the Web (www.ideavirus.com) .