so this image gave me time to think about teleportation machines.

I do think that travelling arbitrarily close to the speed of light (i.e. practically instant) might be doable, and probably actually is, but it would be so expensive that nobody would use it anyways.

i mean, you can just build a rocket and accelerate it arbitrarily close to the speed of light, using enough fuel. but the cost of doing so is prohibitively expensive, so there’s no practical way to actually ever do that in practice.

slow travel is just much more economical, that’s why teleportation is out of the question. but that’s economical reasons, not a fundamentally physical one.

this comic argues that through teleportation machines, travel would become instant and cheap. and i think it’s the opposite: the faster, the more expensive.

teleportation machines probably work by accelerating every part of you to the speed of light and slowing them down again on the other side. so it really is like a rocket acceleration.

and no, they wouldn’t kill you any more than stepping on an airplane does.

there’s also this existential comics about it that argues:

but that’s already the case on an airplane. if you drink a cup of water on the airplane, the atoms inside your body get swapped out for new ones; that literally happens all the time. so it partially kills you? but nobody thinks that way. (ship of theseus)

  • vrek@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    I think the bigger change would be the job market, housing market and the other businesses around to support commuters. First of all imagine applying for a job, now it’s not just the people in your community you are competing with but everyone world wide. Someone can live in Somalia and get the job at Walmart across the street from you. Your competition for a construction job, now a couple billion. You may be able to build a decent house but are you able to beat those odds?

    No one would live in the city anymore. What’s nice about the city? Job opportunities… Doesn’t matter anymore. Close to entertainment? Doesn’t matter. Lots of food choices? Doesn’t matter. Close to friends? Still just a second away even if they are in different country.

    The restaurants around office buildings? Pointless, either jump home and make lunch or teleport to Paris or Tokyo doesn’t matter.

    Any shipping business? Meaningless. No reason we can only teleport people. Imagine every train driver, truck drive, pilot, boat worker, delivery driver unemployed.