10 Things if we invent a teleporter

Technology is wonderful,  It makes hard things easy and impossible things commonplace.  At this point we have cellphones that can take pictures at a greater resolution than the human eye can see.  We have cars that can drive themselves and people are launching drones that fly around and see the world for us.  Everything we have is fine, but it depends on us going places and doing things.  Well, eventually technology may figure out how to make a genuine teleportation device.  Once that happens we have trouble.  BIG trouble.

- Privacy?  WHAT PRIVACY? - You think you've got troubles with privacy now, imagine if people can teleport wherever they like?  Teleportation would mean that your mother could pop in any time night or day.  In fact people would be able to come and go anywhere at any time.  So your home is your castle?  Not any more.  There would be no such thing as guarding a building or keeping people from it.  If it exists.  people are teleporting there.

- Government just got a LOT bigger - With teleportation just imagine what the government could do.  Police could now actually be everywhere in an instant.  yay.  Of course they will be constrained by something like 'displacement enforcement act of 2035'  Where people that had very little understanding of the technology made rules defining behavior within the technology to the benefit of large corporations and the detriment of the regular people.  We will decide that it can only be used by government and along with that we will need huge cadre's of people to enforce the new governments attempts at making our lives livable.  Also if we get teleportation, we won't really have any use for sovereign nations anymore.  Everyone will be able to go anywhere.  There will be one world government.  The problem is, who is running it?

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Goodbye Travel - Obviously the entire travel industry is upended.  Cars, Trains, Boats, Planes, they are all out of business.  The strange thing is the first things to go will be the trucks, tankers, and trains because they mostly ship cargo.  Cargo isn't alive so it won't be a risk, but once people are comfortable with teleporting goods wherever it needs to go, then people wont be far behind.  Then the travel industry as we know it will be dead.  That's a lot of jobs gone.  Buses and cars of course will still be there, but in a different capacity.  We will still want these devices so we can drive the countryside and see the sights or go on tours of historic areas.

- Immortality...maybe - Depending on how the teleportation is effected, we will immediately have the ability to become immortal.  This is based on us using some kind of transmission of the pattern of physical matter.  Like StarTrek.  If we are using a computer to store your body's pattern and then re-create it at the destination, then every time we teleport, a computer will have a 'backup' of our bodies.  If we get off of the transporter and die because we didn't watch our step on that cliff, we can simply re-materialize our bodies from the point that we left the origination point.  We will know that we died because the time will be different and if you wanted to think about it enough, you would know exactly when you died.  Instead your friends/family will stop by the teleporter to re constitute you.  The real problem there is if you are re-materializing somewhere else, what do we do with the original version of you that we just copied to send there?  We have to disintegrate you.  So you are kind of immortal, and yet you are getting killed regularly.  My problem would be how can I know if my consciousness will move with my newly materialized body?  What if my new body gets created but it's not really me?  I know,  deep thoughts.

- Home Sweet Home - One of the great problems with travel anywhere is not only how much time and money it takes to get there, but where you sleep once you are there.  Well worry no more.  Now you can visit the Grand Canyon for a lunch outing.  Stand on the edge of the precipice and look down at the canyon then zip back home for the rest of your day.  Travel anywhere will be based from your own home.

- Disneyland just raised their prices - If you have no travel barrier to anything, you now have reduced a large barrier to visiting any place on earth.  Well that includes the happiest place on earth.  Disneyland will of course have some kind of transporter blocking technology that will allow them to charge money to visit.  but since you don't have the cost of travel or even lodging (you just teleport back home and sleep in your own bed at night), Disneyland will raise their prices quite a bit because part of the price is based on limiting how many people will be in the park on any given day.  Well if the world can suddenly show up to the Magic Kingdom, you can bet Mickey will raise the prices.

- Being a person just changed - Once we have transporters, we will no longer have any need for potty training.  The next time we transport somewhere our waste is not transported with us, and we are scanned for all known diseases and troubles.  We will have forgotten what it's like to have bowel control and we will be constantly scanned for waste that is discreetly removed from us.  Houses will no longer have bathrooms.  Gas will still be a problem, but after a few generations we won't know why we have it, but it will still be funny.

- Space Travel - Local travel has changed, but long term space travel changes as well. The mechanics are of course different depending on what kind of technology we use, if it's transmitted travel, we just have to get probes out to places we want to visit that will be able to get our signal and then we pop over there.  If it's thrown teleportation where no actual receiver is necessary but we just show up in a place we might be able to get to far away places without worrying about much more than where we materialize.  Kind of like hyperspace I guess.

- Everybody gets everything - Well I discussed before that we can move anything anywhere.  That's great.  Once again, if we are using the atoms around us to recreate matter that was transmitted from somewhere else, what's to stop us from just making copies of things we want?  Nothing.  At that point there will be NO scarcity and no need.  The more interesting thing happens with things like cooking.  Lets say that you have found the best Doughnut in the world.  You scan it for transport before you try it and after eating it you find it's the best one you have ever tasted.  You want your brother across the world to get a taste of this doughnut, so you beam it over to him.  Now that there is a pattern of a hot doughnut, it's immediately available to everyone in the world that would like to teleport your doughnut to them.  They just pick it and eat the doughnut.  then they rate it.  A year later, nobody is making any new donuts and the top 5 donuts as rated by the world are the only ones being copied.  All recipes for all food will find their superlatives in teleportation.  We will only ever have the best of all hot foot and it will never need to be cooked because the heat gets teleported too.  Of course people will always want to tinker with the recipes adding a dash of this and a shot of that, but they will be able to do that virtually and just print the result to try it.  All the restaurants will close and we will all be eating the exact SAME package of Oreos.  Oh yeah, packaging goes away too, since that's made for shipping and advertising since everything would be free at that point not much point in advertising more than word of mouth and we've already discussed shipping.  You won't save any leftovers for later either because what's the point?  You'll just dump it and get fresh food whenever you like it.  Since you need molecules to create new things from our teleporters all of our waste material will suddenly have new use.  Our landfills will be empty because we are using the garbage molecules to make new stuff.

- Teleport Trolls -  When the internet came into being we thought it would be the ultimate in information sharing for the betterment of mankind.  We would all join hands and sing Kum by yah and watch as the world emerges from it's cold war chrysalis and forms into a new free butterfly.  Then we saw the Internet trolls come and rip the wings off of that butterfly.  They just like causing trouble online with unwelcome comments and stupid fights. Not because it benefits them but because it messes things up and they like that.  Well add teleporters to the mix and I think we can see what happens next.  Most downsides to everything involve people.









There it is,  I hope you liked it.  Thanks for reading.  See ya later.