Advance to help Humanity

[Iroscato]

Clean, affordable, unlimited energy. It would benefit in so many ways and potentially give us the resources to unlock many other technologies, so it's the perfect 'staple' advancement to start off with IMO.

[brewer]

Thanks for playing. I'll stick mine in now.

How about cost effective conversion of cellulose to human consumable glucose. Convert glucose to alcohol for energy (I think this is close), if consumable provide some calories in areas that can't sustain crops but can sustain other plant life.

[ignoramus]

A pill to stop the poor from having 11 kids.
I know it sucks, but if half are going to die painfully anyway, isn't it the right thing considering the huge food shortage problems?

[Longhorn]

Unlimited waffle batter source.....

[robvalue]

Better mode of transport (stargate).

All the petrol powered things are kind of embarressing compared to the rest of our technology, and we spend such a lot of time and dirty resources crawling from one place to another.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Fusion. Free (or very cheap!) unlimited power.

[QuarkDriven]

I'm not too well versed on this particular subject, but GMO's seem to be big right now... either for or against it... so far, it seems to be helping get higher yields and feed more mouths... It's been going for years and I havent heard of cases where people get something from it... I'd maybe like to see more research and production on GMO's to feed more people....

[Whateverist]

I'll vote for a popular movement to cut the human population on the earth by 90% over the next 100 years. That's right, the privilege of having babies would become a matter for the U.N. to decide. Illegal breeders would be publicly shamed with a second offense being a capital offense.

But then I woke up.

[brewer]

I'll vote for a popular movement to cut the human population on the earth by 90% over the next 100 years.  That's right, the privilege of having babies would become a matter for the U.N. to decide.  Illegal breeders would be publicly shamed with a second offense being a capital offense.

But then I woke up.

HAH. In that dream I become a black market baby broker. Get me some of that BIG baby money. It'll be a white collar crime just like now. I'm not in the breading, I'm just charging an exorbitant fee to hook up. I'd do the time standing on my head.

[AFTT47]

Like others have said, fusion power. That's a world changer. Climate change goes away and large-scale desalination of seawater becomes practical.

A working space elevator is a close second.