Drop What You’re Doing and Invent Teleportation

Hmmm...you say it only transports matter...

There is no more beneficial technological breakthrough than teleportation.  Alright, curing cancer.  There is no more beneficial scientific breakthrough, outside of curing cancer, than teleportation.  I pondered this one day in college when I was in a particularly dull short story workshop class; the writer reading her pages aloud lulled me to sleep.   (Sorry, but vampires are a snooze-fest.)

I made some notes about how the modern world would be changed with the advent of teleportation.  After a few minutes, my mind exploded.  The changes would be unbelievable.  So much so, the historical record would divide human existence into to eras; pre- and post-teleportation.  To clarify: the ability to almost instantly send a person or object anywhere, and safely return them is what I consider teleportation.  I am not even lose to a science- minded person.  I am a history major with work in creative writing (remember, short story class?) And I know next to nothing about the physics behind teleportation.  It involves throwing matter from one dealy to another dealy.  I’ve also heard the big ethical question.  If you dissolve someone into another form of matter or light beams or whatever in the attempt to transmit that energy to another place, are you not killing that person and reviving them on the other end?  Can you circumvent this by trying to have one object simultaneously occupy two spaces at once?  I don’t know, I studied Woodrow Wilson.

What I can tell you is the impact it would have on everything.  First, if teleportation was safe and mostly affordable, there would be little need for cars.  Erase emissions.  No cars, buses, diesel trucks, trains, semi’s, or the need for all-weather tires. You could walk into your home teleporter and zip right to work one minute before clocking in. Or would you even have to be there?  Would you need a workplace? Could you not just have a meeting room that served as a place where the employees strategize their week, and then go the hell home.  No traffic.  No snow days. (Sorry kids.)

Go to any restaurant.  Get fresh groceries anywhere.  Drunk?  Don’t need a ride home anymore.

 Is it vacation time?  Where do you want to go?  Paris for lunch and then the Bahamas for an overnight?  Did you plan a visit to Aspen but the snowfall sucks?  Pop over to Switzerland.  If you get sick on bad curried goat, come home and sleep in your own bed.  Along with that, if there is an emergency of any kind in any time of your life, you can not only instantly get to the hospital, but if necessary the medics can also get to you in seconds.  No emergency rooms.  Wait it out in your living room and they’ll call when they’re ready. 

No world hunger.  People can stay in their ancestral home and still be able to live and feed their families.  Think of the effect on casualties from natural disasters. 

Think this is a job-killer?  It will reshape the economy, not destroy it. Someone needs to maintain these things.  Why have Amazon.com when you can zip to any store in the world?  If you still want things delivered; overnight would seem slow in comparison.  Shipping without boats.  Vacations industry without planes, airports and bullshit.  Transportation would fall under the weight of teleportation. It would give way to a more personal marketplace.   Cars and bikes and planes would be for fun only. Feel like driving your car in Europe?  Find a public teleporter with a wide opening.  A simple fee and you can hit 200 mph on the autobahn.

(I wonder if it would be okay to throw our trash into the sun.  It could handle it right?  Set up a portal on Mercury or something and launch tons of Styrofoam and rubber tires directly at the sun.  I’m just spitballing here.)

We have suffered culturally in America because careers and opportunities have separated us from our families.  Not after teleporters.  I have family in upstate New York I’d like to see when the snow thaws.  Blam, I’m there.  Want to live where you want but still hang out with your best friends 1000 miles away?  Have a weekly poker night in the time zone of your choice.  Any wedding, funeral or party you don’t feel like avoiding you can attend.  (We will all have to update our excuses for ditching, but we can adapt.)

There would be security concerns, but if the government persists on monitoring phone calls, I think they would be all over a doorway that leads from Afghanistan to Tallahassee.  Let me entertain my fantasy.

Automobiles created the suburbs. They exist because people needed to be near a city but still have a home with land and not live on top of each other. There would be no reason to live somewhere or to not live somewhere.  We could ease city congestion while still increasing tourism.  The world would shrink.  In a generation, think of the amount of cultural knowledge and understanding that would be possible.  Our detachment from each other via internet and phone could dissipate with actual human contact. Live in New York, work in Texas, hang out with your friends in San Francisco on the weekend.  Be at the hospital when your sister has her baby in London and be back home for chili. Take the kids to Disney World on Saturday after you get home from work in Chicago. Scratch seeing the world off your bucket list.   If only.

Damn, maybe we could get one of these suckers on the moon.