June 2018 – Cuong Lam

My research project of BCM325: Future Cultures focuses on Doraemon, a Japanese manga, and its wonderful technology predictions. I decided to base my work around one technology that I think is the best technology presented in the manga, Anywhere Door – a door that takes you anywhere you want by simply walking through it. In this short piece of writing, I will explain the reason why I chose Anywhere Door as the research focus and reflect on my aims and findings.

First of all, I want to talk about why I chose Anywhere Door for my research project. In total, there were 1344 chapters of Doraemon released in the original series, featuring hundreds of gadgets. Although all of those gadgets are interesting technologies of the future, I cannot do research about all of them due to the massive amount of work required. Therefore, my approach was focusing on one prominent gadget while briefly presenting several other gadgets as background information, which I think is a more suitable approach for the scope of my research. Another reason rooted in my personal circumstance. As an international student in Australia, I have to stay away from my beloved family. Although I want to see them every day, I have to wait for at least three and a half months to come back home by the end of the semester with at least nine hours travelling by airplanes. Therefore, I want to discover whether Anywhere Door or Teleportation can be reality in near future, which can make travelling, especially over huge distance, way easier.

Secondly, the research aims and findings are reflected. The aims of my research are divided into two small points: human transportation development progress and teleportation scientific theories. Although I have noticed that human beings have achieved many breakthroughs in transportation recently, I have never actually paid attention to how significant they are compared to other means of transport in previous decades. Therefore, I want to investigate this progress in order to see if the future of transportation is bright and optimistic, and if there is still room for further improvements. I decided to look at commercial transportation only because Anywhere Door is meant to be a more accessible to the public. After doing some research, I have figured out that it took around 150 years for human travelling speed to increase by 30 times, from the first railway to commercial airplanes nowadays, which I think is incredible and signals a very promising future.

Finally, another goal of my research is to discover some possible scientific theories that can turn Anywhere Door or Teleportation into reality. There were several possibilities came up during my research, among which ‘Quantum Entanglement’ was the most notable. Simply speaking, teleportation using quantum entanglement can function by scanning and sending the state of the transported object from the departure point to the arrival point where it can be recreated identically using the transmitted data. However, this sounds more like scanning and printing rather than transporting, because the original object remains in the first place and will be destroyed afterwards once being recreated successfully to guarantee that there is only one version of it in the universe. Another possibility is travelling through wormholes, or in other words, the connection between two black holes. This idea was proposed by Stephen Hawking with his theory Hawking Radiation about how the two black holes can be entangled, which creates a connection or a wormhole in between which people can travel through. However, there are lots of barriers to this theory because no one has approached a black hole to know exactly what is inside, or there are other arguments that nothing can escape a black hole. Therefore, at this stage, ‘Quantum Entanglement’ is still more feasible than wormholes because tiny objects like photons have been successfully transmitted over huge distance such as from the earth to the orbit by a group of Chinese scientists. However, there is still a big gap from transferring a photon to teleporting a person.

In conclusion, this short piece of writing has informed about my choice of Anywhere Door as my case study, as well as my research aims and findings. It is obvious that transportation in particular and technology in general, have attained significant achievements over time, and will continue to progress in the future. On the other hand, the barriers in teleportation possibilities signify that it will take much more time and effort for Anywhere Door to be brought into reality. However, I still believe that we have the right to hope, because according to the book Sails in the sky (1938), people of the 15^th century used to claim Leonardo da Vinci’s idea of airplane to be crazy, and now we are absolutely not crazy, but are actually sailing, in the sky, with airplanes.

References:

Agarwal, A 2017, ‘Anywhere Door: Doeramon’s Gadget into a reaity’, Research Paper, Aligarh Muslim University.

Benson, A 2015, ‘The utopia of suburbia: the unchanging past and limitless future in Doraemon’, Japan Forum, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 235-256

Brodwin, E 2016, An Italian surgeon has renewed his promise to perform the world’s first head transplant after a ‘proof-of-concept’ experiment on a dog, Business Insider, viewed April 29th 2017, <http://www.businessinsider.com/italian-surgeon-head-transplant-dog-experiment-2016-9&gt>

Captain Cartoon 2015, Doraemon Intro (American Version), online video, December 28th, Captain Cartoon, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

Coke 2013, Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Transporter Accident, online video, April 6th, Coke, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

Hardy, MA, Furr, A, Barret, JP, & Barker, JH 2017, ‘Review: The immunologic considerations in human head transplantation’, International Journal of Surgery, vol. 41, pp. 196-202

Human Progress 2015, Quantum Entanglement Simplified Microscopic Universe, online video, December 23rd, Human Progress, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

Minutephysics 2017, How to Teleport Schrödinger’s Cat, online video, March 15th, minutephysics, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

Minutephysics 2016, Transporters and Quantum Teleportation, online video, March 15th, minutephysics, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

‘Sails in the Sky’, 1938, Time, vol. 31, no. 18, p. 69.

Seeker 2018, Will We Ever Be Able to Travel Through a Wormhole?, online video, February 3rd, Seeker, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

Seeker 2013, Will Teleportation Ever Be Possible?, online video, February 8th, Seeker, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.

The Atlantic 2015, An Animated History of Transportation, online video, July 8th, The Atlantic, viewed May 30th 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQK1WDYI_k&t=216s>.