Flying troop carriers isn't at all hard to believe since we've had those things since World War II. The only thing that's different in the film versus reality is that chopper blades have been swapped for a sort of Harrier-like ducted jet engine thing. Not really that hard to imagine.

The jet packs have been a staple of science fiction for decades. Like the video phone, it's always a technology that never seems to find a sustainable application to become practical.

It was such a cliche that it ruined my suspension of disbelief while watching the film. Carrying around that much reaction mass to keep a body in the air (How long was that fight between Cruise and the cop? 5 or so minutes?) would have added prohibitive weight to the officer.

I think what would have been cooler and maybe more believable would have been if the police used spider-man-like grapple lines, strength amplifying jumping boots, retractable stilts and retractable gliding wings to quickly ascend buildings. I know the DoD is working on stuff like this for better urban mobility.

In the case of the sonic weapons, I know there is some research into something called a vortex ring gun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Ring_Gun

But I don't know how far it's gone.

As far as the precognitive stuff is concerned--well--this is all based on that other cliche of science fiction: psionics. Since JB Rhine's days at Duke University, science still hasn't found indesputable evidence that psychic phenomena exist. Maybe this will change in the future, I don't know.

On the other hand, it might be possible that predictive pattern recognition in computers might improve to a point where people's actions, whether in groups or individually, might be guessed at. But I think this would require enormously detailed dossiers to be compiled on every person in a community--a massive invasion of privacy.

Other than that, everything else in the film--the sick sticks, the mobile plants, the storage of paralyzed prisoners, the hugely invasive ads, all of it--seems imminently plausible to me.

Flying troop carriers isn't at all hard to believe since we've had those things since World War II. The only thing that's different in the film versus reality is that chopper blades have been swapped for a sort of Harrier-like ducted jet engine thing. Not really that hard to imagine.

The jet packs have been a staple of science fiction for decades. Like the video phone, it's always a technology that never seems to find a sustainable application to become practical.

It was such a cliche that it ruined my suspension of disbelief while watching the film. Carrying around that much reaction mass to keep a body in the air (How long was that fight between Cruise and the cop? 5 or so minutes?) would have added prohibitive weight to the officer.

I think what would have been cooler and maybe more believable would have been if the police used spider-man-like grapple lines, strength amplifying jumping boots, retractable stilts and retractable gliding wings to quickly ascend buildings. I know the DoD is working on stuff like this for better urban mobility.

In the case of the sonic weapons, I know there is some research into something called a vortex ring gun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Ring_Gun

But I don't know how far it's gone.

As far as the precognitive stuff is concerned--well--this is all based on that other cliche of science fiction: psionics. Since JB Rhine's days at Duke University, science still hasn't found indesputable evidence that psychic phenomena exist. Maybe this will change in the future, I don't know.

On the other hand, it might be possible that predictive pattern recognition in computers might improve to a point where people's actions, whether in groups or individually, might be guessed at. But I think this would require enormously detailed dossiers to be compiled on every person in a community--a massive invasion of privacy.

Other than that, everything else in the film--the sick sticks, the mobile plants, the storage of paralyzed prisoners, the hugely invasive ads, all of it--seems imminently plausible to me.

I did not like Minority Report. I did take a few notes with my palm.

The premise: crimes are solved before they occur.

crime rate drops to zero - big brother in every room

3 opinions are generated for every decision or report. the dissenting minor report is lost/covered up/forgotten.

so the story becomes a race to find the "minority" report lost and restore justice....

George, html does not work here, and your link is unusable as it is, so ill repost it in a usable form:

http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-users-planning-to-commit-murder/

Um... I suspect most people searching for methods of killing people don't intend to actually use them. I really hope the government and AOL realize this as well. Look at the other searches of the guy in question: they're largely for pictures of dead people - which would seem to make a perverse but harmless interest in death much more likely than actually plotting to kill someone.

George, do you have some way of deleting my double post at the top?

Anyway, there is so much room for misinterpretation in these datamining techniques. What is someone just wants to write a well researched mystery? What is some is just a cop doing some research on the Internet to help solve a case? Not all queries about weapons or poisons are automatically made by crazy people bent on mass murder.

The later searches reminded me of someone who used to hang around these forums untill he was permanently baned. There are lunatics, but from just a few search queries it is not likely to produce a valid theory about the person who made them.