Futurity Young Inventors’ Club: RELIGION3000

Today, we unveil the first in a series of world-transforming machines developed by teams of young inventors in residence at the Murphy School (public K-8 in Dorchester).  We asked these intrepid pre-early-career scientists to imagine a device that, when turned on, would make the world a better place.  How did these middle schoolers view utopia, and how did they perceive the path to its attainment?

One group ideated this ingenious invention:

THE RELIGION3000

(pronounced ree-lih-jee-on)

This machine’s purpose is to end worldwide conflict (which the inventors see as a function of misunderstanding one another’s belief systems) by educating each opposing side about the history and tenets of their enemy’s religion.  It does it in these ways:

•  An on-board artificial intelligence teaches the user about the selected religion and answers questions (which are delivered via attached microphone)
•  A portal-maker creates temporal/spatial doorways to the era and location where the selected religion was at its height– users can travel back in time to experience key moments in the belief system’s provenance
•  A question during early design stages (posited by the Royal Society of Science) was how users can return from their time-traveling; the inventors cleverly whipped up a wireless “return button” that users can carry with them while traveling in Biblical Judaea or 7th Century Middle East, to name a few options

Though the above photo depicts only a prototype, we can expect much from this clever team of young inventors.

Check back tomorrow for another invention profile!

Futurity:  A Musical By the Lisps, now playing at OBERON until April 15th.