OK, well we've been holding up the show waiting for Mr. Weir but considering that I was planning to do this entire roundtable in a week and it's already been 2 weeks and we aren't even halfway done yet we're just going to carry on with only 3 responses this time.
Our parents probably can’t imagine working in an office without computers. We probably can’t imagine working today without the internet. The younger generation probably can’t imagine growing up without cell phones. Speculate on what the next technological break-through might be that we won’t be able to imagine ever having done without it once we have it. This doesn’t have to be something with business application. It could relate to medicine, the military, astrophysics, or anything else you can think of that relates to a technological breakthrough.
John
It may be a little further down the road, but I think it will be the growing of replacement organs through stem cells. I think the days of needing to wait to be matched up with a donor are limited. If this does come to fruition, the implications are huge. We may very well reach the point in the next 50 years where we are able to service our bodies like we service our cars. “I see you’re here for your 50-year service. The manufacturer recommends changing the heart and kidneys every 25 years.”
Mike
I expect the next big technology breakthrough to come along will have to do with transportation. The movement of man from one location to another is as primal an urge as reproduction, and I think with the planet reaching its limit for sustaining life we are in for a mass exodus soon. With current methods of propulsion, we won’t make it far enough fast enough for humans to survive the journey to our nearest neighboring stars, so someone is going to have to develop a breakthrough propulsion technique. Since this probably won’t happen for quite awhile, the next big breakthrough in my lifetime will hopefully be a way to make Hot-Pockets that don’t give you the runs.
Becky
In 50 years of tinkering, no one has yet been able to get a computer to translate nearly as well as an actual human being. Programs exist that attempt this (such as Babelfish), but the resulting translations generally make little sense and need to be corrected by humans. However, I think we may be at a point now where accurate machine translation becomes a reality. Picking up lessons from Google, Wikipedia, and others, we can theorize how a successful program might be designed (for example, it would utilize a strong human component to populate the database and rate accuracy, and it would continuously learn from its mistakes). We can even theorize about things like how it would be financed and maintained. If there is one piece of the puzzle missing as we try to increasingly flatten the Earth, it’s the language barrier; I think this is motivation enough that researchers in the near future will redouble their efforts toward this technology and finally nail this thing down.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
Worthy entries, John and Mike. John, I actually had the Chia organs thing as one of my finalists. And hey, let me just lay claim to the others while I'm at it....
1. wireless energy transfer
2. bioengineered nanoorganisms to be used in various fields, such as in medicine (stitching skin) or environmental preservation (e.g. in-home rapid-process composting)
3. no-kill weapons for police forces (although admittedly there may be social repercussions from this in terms of criminal activity)
4. incorporating prediction algorithms and perhaps game theory into current data from maps, GPS, and traffic reporting in order to suggest the fastest routes for any trip at any given point in time. (However, from what I understand from how weather prediction algorithms work, they lose validity over time, so there would be a limit to the number of hours or days in advance you could predict.)
I was going to go with bio engineered microorganisms actually. Good call Becks.
I think I already posted a while back about the company in California that has created a single celled organism that consumes organic material and excretes a petroleum like substance. It is also allegedly carbon negative (is that a term?)
Then I read this article. This is a high school kid that isolated a microbe that could successfully break down plastic at a rate astonishingly faster than it would naturally degrade. A freaking high school kid is playing around with microbes.
Things like this could solve a variety of problems. A microorganism that sits in a cars tailpipe and eats CO2 would balance nicely with the oil excreting bug. Then a bug that consumes garbage and excretes dirt would help with the landfill problem. Also, IIRC, they found a naturally occurring microbe that 'eats' radiation. (Now, by 'naturally occurring' I actually mean that it is probably a mutated version of something that already existed, and I failed to mention that they found it at Chernobyl. But in theory we can create a microbe that eats nuclear waste and excretes a material usable in power plants.)
This could, however, become a disaster. I remember that when I as a kid there was a TV show about a scientist that created a bug that ate garbage. It was a carefully controlled experiment in a lab that was successful. Then the bug got loose in the world and as it ate more and more garbage it became larger and larger until it was a crisis of Godzilla-sized proportions. Fortunately, there were some eco-conscious teenagers around to help solve the problem. By calling on their respective environmental specialties they were able to summon Captain Planet in the nick of time to save the day.
I was also thinking about writing on Battery Innovation. There have been supposed major strides in battery production that allows a battery to hold a greater charge for a longer period. It has to do with microfibers and nanotechnology.
It seems my memory was close, but a bit off. This IMDB episode guide shows the episode I was talking about as Season 2 Episode 2 (yes there were multiple seasons.) The episode was called "The Garbage Strikes" and the description is as follows:
"Dr. Helix, a scientist Gi is a fan of, appears to have found a solution for oil spills by placing his invented substance in the water where it absorbs the oil. Sly Sludge decides to get rich off of this so poses as an interested scientist then steals the formula before it's tested, offering to let it devour trash in France where garbage-collectors prove a problem by going on strike. It turns out that the substance grows after "eating" the garbage, turning into a type of blob with an appetite growing with its size. The Planeteers must stop it before its hunger-rampage destroys everything in its path."
Ha! Awesome that you brought Captain Planet into this. Where is he now that we need him?
Think we can design an actual ?
Apparently I no longer know how to hotlink. Anyway, the ? is supposed to be babel fish.
Oh, we could totally design an actual. With a couple modifications....
Three steps:
(1. Perfect machine translation technology for text-to-text translation (~5 years from start date of full-speed research & design)
2. Add reasonably accurate voice recognition functionality for 3 or 4 of the most widely spoken languages (to start) (~3 years after that)
3. Fit it with a powerful battery, shrink it, and make it wireless (psh, 5 months).
Then you could place the babelfish in your ear and it would translate for you any form of language that you hear spoken. There would be a 5-10 second delay, of course, since different languages have different syntaxes and you can't translate word-by-word but must take whole phrases and sentences at a time.
The original description of the babelfish doesn't consider what you would do if the other person doesn't have a babelfish and therefore doesn't understand *you*. This is easily remedied, though. You could make it both transmitting and receiving so that, once you heard the babelfish's translation, you could respond by speaking in your native language and your babelfish would broadcast a translation so the other person can understand.
Oh, but that's not good enough, you say? You want the real sci fi stuff, you say?
Scientists have found a way to short out the language center of a person's brain. If they know where the language center is and are able to manipulate it, then eventually they will probably be able to send individuated electrical signals to the language center and the muscles in your mouth, throat and diaphram to make you say certain words. We know they have successfully had humans and monkeys make devices move by just thinking about them--they could do this too.
Other links of interest:
targeting sound straight into your head
the multiverse explained via super mario video (not really related, just fun)
man implants ear in arm (okay, not related at all, but come on! And actually, it's kind of related to John's essay.)
< /end geek-out >
Good topic guys!
Although as someone who watches alot of sci-fi and zombie flicks, the microorganism thing frightens me a bit. I can see the naturally occuring ones as something nature would have some sort of control and influence over, so to speak, but those created in a lab...what are the consequences of some of these 'bugs'? And organism that excretes petroleum...sure it may be benefitial, but what if it multiples rapidly in certain environments and it becomes a population of petroleum secreting bugs...can our natural environment take on populations of them? Would we later have to deal with excessive amounts of petroleum damaging the land for example?
Or in medicine...I hate to reference this movie but in 'I am Legend' or which ever version of that story you can think of, doctors had good intentions, but created something for medical purposes that ended up out of control...
And how are ethics involved?
And with the whole organ development stuff..I see your point John about the need for this medical advancement, but hypothetically if new organs/upgrades are affordable, life spans would last so much longer. We are meant to die at some point...its nature's population balance so to speak. Will there ever be a point where we need to draw the line?
Also, how does something 'eat' radiation? Does it absorb it and convert it to something else?
Wouldn't it be easier if we just made everybody speak English? OK, I'm half joking (but only half). I worry about the possibility of us finding a technological solution to this and then losing the analog one (i.e. everyone stops studying other languages). Since all languages are constantly changing, there would have to be update capabilities. Who do we put in charge of those updates? The propensity for manipulation would be huge, and I don't think I trust either a private corporation or a government to do that. Probably better in the long run if we work on converging to a common language. And since we already failed at Esperanto then it might as well be English (says an English speaking person who has taken classes in French and Spanish and still can't speak either of them)
And Megan, I definitely agree that we are playing with fire when talking about developing and introducing new species into the ecosystem.
This reminds me of a joke Jon Stewart told when I saw him live (and he really needs to come out with a DVD of his stuff). He talked about how when they were about to test the first atom bomb in the 40s they thought there was about a 70% chance that it would work, a 29.99999% chance that it would be a dud, and an extremely slim but measurable chance that it would set off a chain reaction that would ignite the Earth's atmosphere and kill everyone. Of course, they went ahead and tested it anyway and, luckily, it didn't (and they later proved that it couldn't have). He said that's why he believes (and I kind of do too) that the world is not going to end with war or disease (or, yes, even global warming). It will be during a big scientific or military experiment and the last words ever spoken by a human being will be "Yes! It works!"
I personally think that we are at the edge of a major break through in the way that we store energy. Battery technology has been improving slowly but I think that in the next 10 years batteries/energy storage as we know it will go through a transformation similar to camera's transformation from film to digital. This will have far reaching impacts on everything from transportation to portable electronics. Couple efficient energy storage with advances in Photovoltaic films and will could have phones, computers, cars, ipods that never or rarely need to be plugged in. This will change the mobility of humans and make scientific research in remote areas incredibly easier.
Another theory that some of you may or may not be aware of is summed up in this wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#2010
This is all about the evolution of humans from biological beings to cyborgs within our lifetime. Its pretty out there but is an interesting idea. I think his timeline is off by oh a thousand years or so but what do I know.
So that last link didn't work. This should
the singularity is near
Phil, you are probably the closest to correct out of all of us. I think it's very likely that within the next 10 years the question "does this run on batteries" will seem ridiculous because everything will.
On a large scale, mastering energy storage would be the ultimate discovery of sustainable energy. Imagine having giant solar power stations in orbit that charge gigantic batteries which we transport back to Earth to fuel our own electrical grids.
Post a Comment