Category Archives: Commercial Applications

More Inventions We Would Like to See

Who knows what the future will bring. But here are a few more inventions that I wouldn’t mind seeing.

Grow Your Own Home
Archer Daniels Midland is getting into the housing market. Utilizing expertise gained from genetic engineering in the farming industry, they’ve come up with fully organic homes. Fruits and vegetables grow inside on the walls. And in a pinch, yes, the walls are edible too.

organic-house

The house feeds on sunlight, compost, your waste and CO2. The roof grows over time to maximize solar intake and rain water capture. It even heals when cracked or broken. The electricity captured by the modified chlorophyll gets converted to usable voltage via cells grown from electric eel DNA.  Plumbing is taken care of by a series of “bladders” and “stomachs”. The bladders hold water and the stomachs purify used water and waste into pure H20 which is then pumped back into a bladder. Housing extensions or extra rooms will be grown on farms, made to order. Attachment is easy because the organic walls grow together when in contact with one another

All you will need is a plot of land, some water, and a seed. A typical seed takes 5 years to grow into a standard 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house. If you want to spend extra, you can purchase fertilizer that quadruples the growth rate.

 

The Google Presidential B.S. Meter
With the presidential election in full swing, it is only fitting that Google would release its latest breakthrough. It’s called the Fact Finding Heuristic Algorithm. Also known as, the Presidential B.S Meter.

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Here is how it works: It scans every instance of a candidate speaking, their posted writings and what other people say about the candidate. The algorithm then determines how many times the candidate had conflicting statements and gives you details. Utilizing facial microexpression technology, the system also gives you extensive statistics on every speech and interview telling you how many times it detected the candidate lying.

 

Tuneable Magnets
Scientists have figured out a way to make magnets that they can tune to attract/repel nearly any substance. Most people are familiar with magnets attracting metal. But now, magnets can be tuned to attract or repel plastic, glass, air and organic materials. The number of applications are astounding.

Tuneable Magnet Repels Ground

Tuneable Magnet Repels Ground

Those long sought after hovercrafts could soon be a reality. Attaching magnets to the bottom of any vehicle and setting them to repel the ground provides lift. Or imagine you need to hang something on your wall. No need to make a hole, no need for adhesive that will eventually fail. Simply tune the magnet to bind to your wall and you are done. Companies such as Waste Management will be able to integrate these magnets into their sorting facilities. Thereby, eliminating the need for recyclable materials to be separated by consumers before disposal. A magnet that attracts plastic could also be helpful in removing the large amounts of plastic in our oceans.

 

Inventions We Would Like to See

I’d like to make the disclaimer that the inventions mentioned here are purely fictional.

The New Apple Transformix: The Last Device You’ll Ever Need

This Summer, Apple releases it’s new device called the Transformix. It’s an adaptable and transformable device that can become any object of roughly the same mass. It will come in 3 sizes (tablet size, big screen tv size and car size). In its raw form it only has a voice interface.

Tablet Sized Transformix

Tablet Sized Transformix

At their latest demonstration, Apple showed the tablet sized Transformix change from a cell phone, to a tablet, to a rock, to a glass, to a furry Pokemon doll. In other demonstrations, the car sized Transformix was able to mimic the exterior of several different cars including a Ford Mustang, Mercedes E Class, a Corvette and a pickup truck. Before you get too excited, the engine is sold separately. The Transformix is due to hit select stores in late July.

 

Car Cameras to Catch People Texting and Driving

Texting while driving, or distracted drivers cause 100s of accidents every year. Despite an expensive and far reaching ad campaign meant to stop people from texting and driving, it still remains an issue. In response to this, car manufacturers will be installing a multitude of outward facing cameras in all vehicles starting next year.

Car_camera_front_usageCar_camera_side_usage

The system is set up so that when you press a button on your steering wheel, the surrounding 30 seconds (15 seconds before you pressed the button and 15 seconds after you pressed the button) of video from all cameras is saved.  When you get home you can choose to review and upload the video to authorities.

 

New Facebook App Measures the Diversity of Your Network

How ethnically diverse is your circle of friends?  And how does it compare to the diversity of other peoples groups? If you are a Facebook user, you will soon have the answer. Facebook plans to roll out a new feature that will identify different ethnic groups in your photos and among your list of friends.

Exactly how the algorithm works is a secret. What we do know is that it works pretty well. In test after test the app was able to calculate a diversity score of profiles and guess which friends were mere acquaintances and which friends were close confidants. It could also accurately guess the ethnicity of the people in the photos about 95% of the time.

 

The Big Business of Dating Gets Even Bigger

The latest players to get into the match making arena make for strange bedfellows. Comcast, Google, Microsoft and Apple have joined forces to create the ultimate predictor of romantic success. At first glance it would seem that these huge corporations would be the last to know anything about romance, let alone give advice. But as it turns out, these 4 companies know more about most people than the people know about themselves. Online habits, mood fluctuations, food preferences, political beliefs, communication styles and habits, vocabulary, movie preferences…you get the picture…they know a lot. In recent beta testing over the course of 2 years, the algorithm did some pretty amazing things. Follow up interviews verified many of its predictions.

matching

Seemingly unlikely matches were sometimes made. There were even several subjects who were matched with someone of the same gender even though they had never been in a homosexual relationship. When asked about the results they reported having had those longings but never acting on them.  “It’s not as easy as pairing people who like the same things, together.” Says Ike Sterling, head of the new dating initiative. “Differing tastes and preferences sometimes interact in a complimentary way that you could not predict unless you see the data.”

Apple Island and The United Google Federation

Corporations and private entities may create their own countries some day. It’s called Seasteading. What is Seasteading? The Wikipedia definition says it best “Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. Most proposed seasteads have been modified cruising vessels. Other proposed structures have included a refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.”

The technology for creating self sufficient dwellings at sea is already here. Electricity can be provided by solar. Food can be grown with hydroponics. Sea water is convertible to drinking water via desalinization. Communication with the outside world is just a satellite away.  And of course, there is plenty of marine life on which to feed. Influential people are already working on this idea, The Seasteading Institute.

Seastead by corporations

Apple Island?

What happens when multiple seasteads are created and new and autonomous societies can develop? The United States is one semi recent example of a conventional societal evolution. When creating our government, this former English colony took pieces of the old ways and improved upon them in many areas. This could happen with seasteads too. Imagine multiple seasteads experimenting with new types of governance and economic structures. All of them competing for inhabitants. Survival of the fittest. It could accelerate the slow evolutionary process of government and potentially move it in a totally different direction.

Humanity’s potential is tightly interwoven with the type of society it finds itself within. Think of the GDP/Power/Wealth of ancient Rome compared to the United States. The two populations, for the most part, are the same from a biological perspective. The difference in accomplishment is solely due to the difference in the technology and how they are organized (culture, government, economy etc). The next step in the evolution of how we organize ourselves could lead to a new Renaissance.

 

 

Self Driving Cars and Office Spaces

Automotive technology has come a long way. We’ve made cars safer than they have ever been. Yet the global casualty rate for car accidents is close to 1 million. Over 90% of the time it’s due to human error. If we can remove our fallibility from the equation, our roads could be much safer. The solution, the autonomous/self driving car.

Self Driving Car

Mercedes Shows what the Interior Could Look Like

It’s not science fiction anymore. In fact, car manufacturers have already created vehicles that can drive across the country safely. In test after test the autonomous car beats a human when it comes to safety. It makes sense. Human beings can be distracted, we get tired, we make mistakes. OK, so let’s say at some point in the future we relinquish control to an autonomous vehicle. What then?

Safety is enhanced but the list of potential benefits could be limitless. Imagine cruising around in your self driving car with an internet and cable connection. Your laptop, tv and all your devices could have power and high speed internet anywhere. This has broad ramifications for work and play. You could have a mobile office that takes you around town as you work. What types of occupations might arise as a result of this new found freedom?

Once there is a proven and safe track record for these cars, we’ll start sending our kids and pets out in them on their own. Millions of hours will be saved that would have otherwise been spent taking the kids to school or the dog to a grooming appointment, dog sitter or vet.

Going to the Vet

Going to Doggy Day Care

We could see autonomous vehicles that can link to one another physically to create larger inside spaces. Think square cars merging to form a long tractor trailer type unit. Want to hold a wine tasting with your closest friends out in the middle of no where? No problem. The car drives you there, you link vehicles, you drink wine in the shared space while enjoying a scenic view, then the car drives you home.

When your car becomes your home office/game room on wheels, all of a sudden that 5 hour drive to NYC doesn’t seem so long. Or that road trip down the East Coast takes on a whole different meaning when you can sleep comfortably as your car drives all night.

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An App that Knows How You Feel

I recently watched yet another fascinating Ted Talk. It was about an app that measures your facial expressions to determine how you feel. Watch it below.

If this technology is successful, the number of applications for it will be enormous. Rana touched on just a few examples.

What might be some of it’s long term effects on our society? What happens when we have Google Analytics for your emotions?  You face a video camera every time you look at your smart phone. And if you work at a computer for extended periods of time, chances are you’re facing a video camera for hours a day. That’s a lot of potential data. With mounds of data, there is the potential to vastly improve our lives.

Let’s assume that happy people are more productive and beneficial to society, government and corporations. We might see the use of our emotion data to improve the quality of our lives.  The media that we consume will react to our reactions to it. Over time it might become very efficient at making us feel the way it wants us to feel. Hopefully, it will be a positive emotion.

The mental health field might be able to help many more people with this data. What if individuals with certain conditions, depression to schizophrenia, exhibit patterns of facial motions?  Programs and apps might be able to pick up on those patterns. Potential patients could be somehow connected to a mental health professional.

Imagine existing security, street or other types of video cameras monitoring our emotions via our faces. If this technology turns out to be reliable, there will be an incentive to have as many cameras as possible to monitor as many faces as possible.  More cameras in public and more cameras integrated in to your appliances. What happens when parents or loved ones can get an automatic text alert, Facebook post, Tweet…. when you are feeling depressed?  Might we all start paying more attention to the emotional state of the people in our lives?

Grandpa This Should Cheer You Up

Grandpa This Should Cheer You Up

There will be data on the happiness of nations. We’ll know what country has the happiest citizens. Maybe this is how we move toward measuring the success of a society using multiple types of metrics, not just economic ones such as GNP (Gross National Product).

If laws do not keep up with this technology it may quickly be assimilated into all our devices. Our consent will be in some agreement we check off, never having read the whole thing. Big data firms will crunch numbers and compare what they know about us now to the patters of facial expressions we exhibit in a myriad of situations. The conclusions they reach could revolutionize areas such as marketing, entertainment and health care.

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