THINQon : Technology: What are you most excited for?

Gadget Room Gadgets Technology: What are you most excited for?

THINQon is a platform for a more intelligent web. It aims to replace the ruling paradigm of the web – that of sharing and gathering information – with a sharing and achieving of understanding. Instead of the Q&A model it offers an experience. A platform for discovery of ideas, people, and yourself. Continue >

Mark Opal

Technology: What are you most excited for?

Latest Post: July 26, 2009 at 8:26 PM

13 followers

"In 1965 MIT had a computer. It cost 11 million dollars by today's standards. Four decades later, the computer in your cellphone is a million times smaller, a million times less expensive and a thousand times more powerful. That's a billion-fold increase in the amount of computation you can buy per dollar."

It is expected that in the next 25 years there is going to be another billion-fold increase in computation. According to a growing group of scientists, “we won’t just experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress” (by today's standards).

Every year our technological capacities are at least doubling. That means exponential growth. And if you think about it, it's been this way since the industrial revolution. Aren't computers getting magnificently better each year? Right now the technologies are just beginning to overlap. Computers and biological engineering are coming together and doing fascinating things. And it will only get better.

Already right now scientists are regrowing tissues and organs and implanting them back in people. An experiment was done where all the cells from a human heart were removed leaving just the cartilege. They then sprayed mouse stem cells onto the heart and the cells self-organized and the heart started to beat. Deaf people are beginning to hear, blind people are starting to see, and every year artificial limbs are becoming more lifelike with more capabilities. Eventually scientists will have created cochleas for deaf people that can hear frequencies humans can't. So what's stopping us from putting that cochlea in non-deaf people?

In most of our lifetimes we are going to see a profound change in the human experience. The technology will exist so that we can shape human evolution. We will be able to pick and choose which genes our children get from us. And this of course will bring on so much moral debate. But there will also be other technologies that won't be debated.

I am greatly excited for the green technology. It is going to get better so quickly that we might see a world that doesn't need fossil fuels because we'll be able to get all the energy we need straight from the sun. The power of solar panels is doubling every year. Eventually all buildings are going to be green buildings. And these technologies already exist! The only thing that's changing is they are getting better! More cost effective!

Think of where technology was 50 years ago, 1959! That was around the time the Microchip was invented. It only had one transistor on it. Today there are millions!

And you can be sure as the technology no doubt comes, so will the debate.

Will the Olympics allow people with artificial limbs to compete? Will mothers not be allowed to meddle with their own eggs? It's time to consider these things because it's going to come up sooner than you think.

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Clark Thomas

in "How fast is too fast?"

(The Living Room)

George Browning sent kudos.

Reply to:

Robin Layter, I qualify as a youth. I have long hair and it...

July 1, 2009 at 8:39 PM

21 followers

It's chilling how right you are Mark. All the science fiction stuff is coming to life right now and is hardly being advertised. At MIT right now they have created an interactive computer that is personalized and can be projected anywhere. It allows you to take pictures with your hands or even find all necessary information about a consumer item before purchasing. It's obviously in the early stages, but already it is very cheap to make. In a few years the technology will be perfected and it will be on the market.

Things like this obviously raise a lot of questions. What sort of dependence should we place on technology? What can it mean for privacy if you can just grab any information about a person while they are standing in front of you? What will it change? Education? How will such availability to knowledge change the face of society?

At this stage we can hardly guess. But I think there are a bunch of other postings around thinqon that are getting at this sense of change coming with the internet and technology. And while my guesses about the dangers have a lot to do with a growing apathy in the general public and a desertion of art, there will also be unequivocal benefits. Problems of hunger and poverty will be solved and as you say global warming will be fought with newer and better technologies. Just writing this I begin to sense your enthusiasm for what's coming because if you just look around the evidence is everywhere.

We have a lot to look forward to no doubt

Reply to: or

Solveig Wright, Where to begin?

July 8, 2009 at 1:43 PM

33 followers

On the subject of dependence on technology: the nice discussion on vampires is quite apropos.

Still, what I find surprising about all of the technological imagination one sees these days is how related it is to our current experience. As you say above: we'll walk better, see better, look better, move faster...
It seems to me that in every age people dream "wouldn't it be great if we lived kind of like how we do now, only Much Better!" And so the medieval saints have more and more intense experiences, and write more and more precise and profound descriptions of the kingdom of heaven as they see it which, it must be admitted, is in certain deep ways medieval.
And the Norse descriptions of Valhalla...

At the same time, people's experience through history certainly changes dramatically; we don't imagine ourselves in the same way the medieval people did, and it is certainly related to major inventions -- the printing press, the railroad, the airplane.

So it might be interesting to ask the original question a bit differently: Of all these ideas mentioned in the posts above, or on the horizon, what do you think has the most potential to transform our understanding of the world?

Reply to: or

Mark Opal

July 8, 2009 at 7:52 PM

13 followers

Interesting links you found there Robin and that's a very topical question you posed Solveig about transforming our understanding of the world.

In my opinion and not intended as a copout answer, there won't be any single technological advancement that will transform society, but rather, it will be how all the new technologies overlap and access many different areas simultaneously. There is a good TED Talk from Juan Enriquez about how the new technologies will shape each other and work off each other in the future:

As discussed in post the internet is the one thing shaping the direction of technology most. We're already seeing it shape our understanding of the world. I mean in just 15 years it has infiltrated every mode of society and we keep shoveling it more responsibility. The smart phone is its current manifestation and soon smart phones will be the only phones and they'll be completely necessary. We bank online, we can order food online, we work online, we play online. From year to year we're spending more and more time online.

Knowledge and information is so readily available that there is greater mobility for ideas and conversations and innovations. This website for example creates dialogue across the world and can enhance our own understanding of any single topic. Companies can now pool their information and artists can easily collaborate. The internet has fundamentally changed advancement itself. No longer are we always seeking the next thing down the line, the newer and better technology, now we are crisscrossing new technologies with other new ones. Top innovators aren't figuring out how to make their product the end all be all of the market, but they are making it so it will be whatever the consumer wants it to be. The internet has put power in the hands of the individual. No one person has the same smart phone. And that's the direction we're heading in, where every consumer product is marketed specifically for me, for Mark.

The internet doesn't have the potential to transform our understanding of the world, it already has. We've obviously always had the power to design our own lives, we were already our own personal architects before, the internet has just given us the best tools.