Technologies that exist in a parallel universe

[Mozai]

computers... a syllabary instead of an alphabet

Katakana has 16 consontants (four bits) and five vowels (three bits), which we can fit in the same space as 7-bit ASCII ...
Canadian Aboriginal is only 55 glyphs, tho some dialects want up to 25 more glyphs, for a total of 80. ...

But the A in ASCII is "American," so English phonemes.  UNIFON claims it can do all English phonemes in 40 characters -- 24 consonants 16 vowels.  With every syllable as "CV" that'd be 24*16 = 384 sylllables.  add a null consonant and a null vowel and it's 424 syllables (25*17 - 1 for the "null null" syllable).  384 and 424 would need 9 bits, bleah.
A    Δ    Ʌ    B    Ȼ    D    E    𐊑    Ԙ    F    G    H    I    Ŧ    J    K    L    M    N    И
O    O̲    𐐅    ꐎ    ꐎ    P    R    S    Ꞩ    T    Ћ    Һ    U    ⩌    U̲    V    W    Z    Y    Ƶ

[Diabolizer]

Cars that don't turn unless you signal (stolen from a random redditer years ago).

Spell check based on phenetics instead of the dictionary (seriously, why hasn't anyone done this?).

Guns that only shoot bad people. 

[Mozai]

[nepnep]

A world where websites all have background music and browsers have an easy to access setting for adjusting BGM levels, just like BGM in video games.

[kayimbo]

tactile feedback in the steering wheel of the car so you can feel in your hands what cars are in the space around you, how fast you're driving, the moment by moment traction of the wheel.

Embeded compasses in your arm that you always feel which direction is north or closest path to mecca, situation depending.

[Mozai]

Embeded compasses in your arm that you always feel which direction is north...

Oh! oh! I met someone at a party who had small magnets under some fingertips, and she said she learned it as a new 'sense', whether things were ferrous.

[Diabolizer]

Subtitles for IRL conversations

[here cums the fuck truck]

Subtitles for IRL conversations

one of the accessibility things i hoped google glass and other augmented-vision systems would bring around - seems pretty reasonable.

it was never even floated.

[Mozai]

QWERTY? DVORAK?  try sucking dick instead.

[Fishmé]

A device that allows you to speak to animals, but only the animals understand you. You still can't understand what they are saying.

[Diabolizer]

A device that allows you to speak to animals, but only the animals understand you. You still can't understand what they are saying.

Conversely, in the next universe over...