Just to follow up on the thread from a few weeks ago, there is no longer any need to choose.

Tonight: Sat. 4/6/08 on C-SPAN2 (US) at  7:00pm (CST), Book TV, Michio Kaku, Physics of the Impossible.

Both are now possible...any one day...

Wow - where can I sign up Not too fussed about invisibility - I believe I will be soon as an older woman  -but teleport for the daily commute or the tedious 24 hr journey to Europe - now that would be nice!

Oh I missed it! I wish I had more time to hang out in the forums. Hmmm... maybe when they get the whole teleporting thing worked out...

I would opt for invisibility, with the restriction that teleportation be banned and here's why:

In an age of technology such as the world has never seen whenever I have a free moment I don't know what to do with myself.  I can watch TV from hundreds of channels, from various countries, and in a myriad of languages.  I can download music and play it in my car, on my iPod, or my stereo, or even my phone.  If I want to read I can pick up a paper, a book, got to Wikipedia, order something on Amazon, search through the dozens of related authors on Amazon for hours on end.  If I have an idea I can pick up a pencil, Blog it, text it, SPAM it, e-mail it, Hub it, or waste it.  If I want to watch a movie I can watch a DVD, go to the cinema, download it online, open a newspaper to read reviews, call a telephone service for movie times, and in doing so find a variety of distractions which will ultimately lead me back to the original predicament.

Now take this mentality, the A.D.D. Generation, and translate it to teleportation.  This would be my day:  Paris, Rome, Morocco, Australia, Philippines, Chicago, Argentina, Kyoto, Zimbabwe, Paris again, home, laundromat... and the chances of that all being done in under 30 seconds are immense.  I don't know about you, but I don't need another means of instant gratification in my life. 

With invisibility you have the ability to do the opposite: to sit back, unnoticed, and patiently watch something that your presence would otherwise detract from.  Sure, there's the possibility of a bunch of nightmarish voyeuristic situations, but who's to say you can't teleport into that situation and scare the crap out of everyone?

Teleportation would probably be the better power, as you could travel wherever you wanted whenever you wanted. Although, this may detract from some experiences, as the fun is in getting there than actually being there.

For some the fun is in getting there, for others the fun is in being there with the people and coming to an understanding of other cultures.

In my honest opinion should we find a viable energy source soon (within the next 100 years) that would provide the means to make teleportation feasible energy wise we will still need quantum computers (which would map all 1000 or so types of atoms found in the human body) to make it work.  In the end I sincerely think teleportation will be used to enhance the survival of our species and colonization of other planets and solar systems in our general vicinity.  Even with teleportation you have to be careful because you cannot just easily put yourself in a highly advanced space ship 400,000 lightyear clicks out there with a thoroughly reliable way of knowing what your getting yourself into.  So in this sense teleportation will be used as a means to "punt colonize" the human race across the stars, one sector at a time rather than vast reaches.  Of course there is the consideration that at some point in time our quantum computers could become sophisticated enough to enable us to develop computer simulations that could accurately and replicably predict what a section of the known universe 1 million lightyear clicks away would be like before a colonization mission went underway, however, we are still currently far faaaar away from such a realization of that conception.

With the advent of the ability to interact with multiverses (should that come to fruition) that would provide us with even more options of inter-demensional travel.

Wow, used to be Jules Verne would write a novel and someone would come along and try to build what he wrote about, nowadays George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry writes a movie or television script and someone comes along to try to realize (within the laws of physics) that which is indicated in that particular artistic medium.  Scientists need artists just as much as artists need scientist, (funny how that works).  Some things never change..

Excellent point, Zarm.  Speaking of, I'm going to draw a million dollar bill right now and take it over to the research lab!

well if I actually had to be taken apart then put back together again for teleporting,I also go with invisibility.

TellitlikeIseeit wrote:

well if I actually had to be taken apart then put back together again for teleporting,I also go with invisibility.

ahahahahhaahahah

This may seem out of left field, guys, but I thought "teleportation" is when a burglar steals your television set and carries it away.   (Just another way of looking at this word.)  - Creativita

Creativita wrote:

This may seem out of left field, guys, but I thought "teleportation" is when a burglar steals your television set and carries it away.   (Just another way of looking at this word.)  - Creativita

If that's the case then I choose teleportation, if I have a giant television I won't feel the need to be invisible for any reason.