We might just have punted a few atoms or the odd photon less that a meter away–  it’s early days – but it pays to think about teleportation well in advance.

Some futurologists, lazy ones, predict that eventually we’ll be carrying portable teleportation devices, similar to ipods. The reason I say ‘lazy’ is that they’ve just assumed that as like other technologies that have been developed, the end result will be portable, personal use.

That’s not always the case though. Unless you’re carrying a portable, personal nuke.

Then you have to consider an implication of teleportation – allowing people to zip off anywhere is going to redefine the term ‘security issues’, but perhaps that can be circumvented with the use of anti-teleportation zones, like you can do with mobile phones… That should cover prisons, banks and such, but then there’s the whole issue of immigration and theater tickets.

Theater tickets… what I mean is this: Imagine there’s a really popular play in town, and everyone wants to get in… the theater has already anticipated this and has one of those anti-teleportation devices installed to prevent people from just appearing in their seats.

This doesn’t stop everyone trying to teleport as close as they can to the theater… chaos and crushing ensues.

Unless people have the good sense to book ahead… which somehow I doubt.

…even so, that won’t stop people teleporting themselves into the sides of buildings and waste deep in concrete. Just look at the mess we’ve made of ourselves using cars. The same principles apply – you’re not supposed to drive them into the sides of buildings, but it still happens.

Nope, telepotation will be similar to train travel, with large stations teleporting to other large stations and those stations will still sell the same terrible coffee and people will still be late because the teleporter was delayed or because they got up late and missed their teleportation time.