I came across an interesting article on encarta today, Great Inventions of the Next Fifty Years by Tamim Ansary. It talks about the future. There are tons of people who are talking about what our future will be I believe. This maybe one of them that I like. I think it's good because it based on the principle of "After all, if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, what we get tomorrow will reflect what we need today."
Stock market eyes on future. How many companies in fortune small 200 are doing these cool things?
Here are the author's nominees for the eight greatest inventions of the next fifty years:
1. Newfangled Super Power Source
our need:
How much oil is left? Enough for about fifty years.
invention:
I'd bank on sunlight. Giant mirrors will orbit the Earth, collecting solar energy and focusing it on power stations below, whence electricity will be distributed to all. That's where I'd put my money. If I had any.
2. The Waste Converter
our need:
we were making more waste than any jungle could swallow.
invention:
Inventors like Ray Kurzweill (a modern Edison) talk about self-replicating microscopic robots that will be able to manipulate matter at the molecular level. I picture shoveling truckloads of nanobot-dust into landfills where they get busy transforming the steaming piles into---what? Hey, once the oil is gone, we'll need a new source of plastic. Fifty years ago, plastic was the new garbage. Fifty years from now, garbage will be the new plastic.
3. The Weather Wand
our need:
we have been "doing something" about the weather--warming up the world by burning fossil fuels.
invention:
We'll use those space-based mirrors and stuff to manipulate high and low pressure zones and ensure sunshine for the seventh game of the World Series. Politicians will promise sunny weekends and deliver. Rain will fall only at night. Man-made breezes will herd smog.
4. Biological Identification Card
our need:
Consumers will demand a foolproof way to identify themselves.
invention:
someone will invent a nontransferable ID based on biological markers such as DNA. You'll have to submit a hair to buy a beer or board an airplane. Bald people will have trouble. Or the identi-tag might rely on some other unique tag such as a person's brainwave patterns. In fact, researchers in Seattle are currently developing "brain fingerprinting," an EEG-based system that can supposedly determine whether a person's brain contains specific bits of information.
Right now, an interrogator still has to ask questions while measuring a subject's brainwaves, but in the future, I picture machines that will scan your brain and check your thought patterns against your files to determine who you are without even slowing you down. Some might not relish living in a world permeated by such a technology, but invention is driven by current needs, not future consequences.
5. Automatic Personalized House
our need:
every comfort level becomes normal, then indispensable, then inadequate. Futurist Glen Hiemstra predicts that within a decade, houses will routinely have up to 100 computers "embedded in all kinds of appliances and amenities," the way today's houses have plumbing and electricity in their walls.
invention:
A network of programmable computers will let occupants fine-tune their house to their idiosyncratic needs. At first blush, such a house may not seem like "an invention," since all the components exist. But many great inventions had this cumulative character. The car, for example, emerged as a gradual accretion of existing inventions engineered to work together. At some tipping point, people suddenly saw the conglomeration of devices as one new thing. Similarly, houses that cater to their occupants' whims might suddenly seem less like houses and more like something new, a second skin.
The language will then produce a term to distinguish the newfangled domiciles from clunky "houses" that don't do anything. Once "fully automated, programmable, digital house" gives way to a term like "exoself," a momentous new invention will have entered the world.
6. Dr. X's Patented Genetic Cure-All
our need:
Today, doctors attack tumors the way they once attacked fevers, boils, and catarrhs (whatever those are). Someday soon, however, we'll discover the powerful basic principle that generates all tumors. Doctors will then stop cutting, burning, and poisoning cancer patients and start treating their underlying illness.
invention:
As it happens, medical researchers are currently unlocking the genetic anomalies that cause such illnesses as Parkinson disease and multiple sclerosis. Cancer can be described as a genetic disorder--as outlaw cells that start multiplying randomly in defiance of their genetic code. Research aimed at defeating genetic and degenerative disorders may also turn up the cure for cancer.
7. Artificial Sense Organs
our need:
My friend Mike Chorost is completely deaf but can nonetheless hear, thanks to a cochlear implant.
invention:
Neurostimulation technology can be applied to other nerve cells. A nerve is a nerve is a nerve. Retinal implants, for example, may enable the blind to see. The hardware will not necessarily be limited to the range of signals human senses can register. People with digital implants might someday see like hawks and hear dog whistles. External hardware may also extend the senses. Steve Pittman, a technology consultant with IBM, thinks we're on the verge of inventing self-adjusting glasses that provide telescopic or microscopic vision, depending on where the viewer is focusing.
8. Instant Sleep Chamber
our need:
those who dispense with sleep gain seven or eight hours a day. They could spend that time working, while their competitors slept. In a dog-eat-dog world, they would get an overwhelming edge. If anyone began using this device, their rivals would have to start using the same tool too, just to stay even.
invention:
So, if an instant sleep chamber were invented, it might indeed take hold, even if no one wanted it, because even though necessity is the mother of invention, invention can also be, and very often is, the mother of necessity.
