Artificially grown meat. We're basically at a stage where it exists, it's just really expensive. But prices going down is usually something you can rely on with any mature technological...
Artificially grown meat. We're basically at a stage where it exists, it's just really expensive. But prices going down is usually something you can rely on with any mature technological breakthrough and the benefits are obvious. No animals suffering, no barns, no manure, etc. I predict some uproar about the "ethics" of it but I've already pretty firmly decided which side I'm on. Unless some absurd, unpredictable downside pops up, it's a net-win for everyone and I'm looking forward to it.
Sure, but I see that more as a process of gradual improvement, growth in popularity, and increase in scale, rather than any single breakthrough. Sort of like solar.
Sure, but I see that more as a process of gradual improvement, growth in popularity, and increase in scale, rather than any single breakthrough. Sort of like solar.
Those iterations that result in massive improvement should still be celebrated though! This is also known as the "solar learning curve" and it describes—and in some cases, can make accurate...
Those iterations that result in massive improvement should still be celebrated though! This is also known as the "solar learning curve" and it describes—and in some cases, can make accurate predictions about—the ubiquity and cost of solar energy; based on technological learning. Here's a very good (long) read about how solar will end up dominating the electricity mix over the next 20-30 years.
I really hope they do become affordable and not just an excuse to charge more like 'organic' tends to be. Like, I know veggie patties cost more (presumably) for the "exotic" ingredients, but...
I really hope they do become affordable and not just an excuse to charge more like 'organic' tends to be. Like, I know veggie patties cost more (presumably) for the "exotic" ingredients, but c'mon... $3 more? I can just see them doing the same with lab-meat.
Well I agree the "organic" label is a load of bullshit. The veggie patty thing is slightly different, that's more to do with supply/demand. The demand for veggie burgers is high enough that it's...
Well I agree the "organic" label is a load of bullshit. The veggie patty thing is slightly different, that's more to do with supply/demand. The demand for veggie burgers is high enough that it's worth producing at scale, but not high enough that there's been enough invested in innovation/scaling/supply chain to bring it's price per lb on parity with a regular hamburger.
That's going to be the key with the artificial meats (both the petri dish and Beyond Meat/Impossible Burger kinds). Once either kind can achieve price parity with standard ground beef, they'll probably see a solid uptick in adoption by the general public. If they can tip it a bit further and undercut ground beef (even artificially) for a few years, I think the demand will surge and the beef industry will lose a significant chunk of demand fairly rapidly.
I also think that the artificial meats have a lower price floor. Beef in general has been around for centuries. It existed before modern industrial processes, and has been optimized at every opportunity. There might be a few more efficiencies to be squeezed out of it, but in general I think it's price is pretty much what it is (barring external events such as cattle pandemics, etc). The artificial meats however, require less input resources to generate the same amount of product. Which is part of the appeal in the first place. They also require less time to produce their product. I think there's a tipping point somewhere along the way where artificial meat prices will not only drop below "real" meats, they will slaughter them.
It just breaks my heart every time I hear people act like they have no agency in the decision they make to eat meat, like the only way we could possibly stop the industrial scale slaughtering of...
It just breaks my heart every time I hear people act like they have no agency in the decision they make to eat meat, like the only way we could possibly stop the industrial scale slaughtering of animals is by literally making a perfect replica of meat in a laboratory using technology that has been on the cusp of existence for years now. Like the health issues, the literal mass killing of thinking and feeling creatures, the ecological concerns, none of it matters if people can’t get their tasties because we are all just apparently god-damned slaves to our most primitive and selfish lusts.
Raising animals for slaughter should not be considered “the alternative” to lab grown meat any more than human enslavement should be considered “the alternative” to mechanized labor.
Your point is well taken, but ultimately I don't think those arguments are going to have a whiff of an impact on the eventual outcome. See, if you can marinate this stuff in a rainbow of flavors...
Your point is well taken, but ultimately I don't think those arguments are going to have a whiff of an impact on the eventual outcome.
See, if you can marinate this stuff in a rainbow of flavors from the day the first cell starts replicating in a tube, and then 3D-print it to have any texture meat is capable of, and any texture you can imagine, it'll simply crush traditional meat right out of the market based solely on flavor. McDonalds can sell you a dollar menu item that will beat any existing steakhouse in the world at any price. Before long animal meat won't be 'real meat' in the eyes of the public if that happens.
It's not just animals. Fish is on the menu too, and our oceans/streams will breathe a collective sigh of relief when that day comes.
Oh there absolutely will be in America, because our culture now revolves around politicizing everything. "Liberals" will generally be supportive of lab and vegetable meat alternatives,...
Oh there absolutely will be in America, because our culture now revolves around politicizing everything. "Liberals" will generally be supportive of lab and vegetable meat alternatives, "conservatives" will loudly brag about how they'd never touch it and probably upload gleeful videos of them slaughtering and eating animals for fun to own the libs. It will be the same as electric cars, basically. Half the culture will appreciate it and be delighted by its benefits, the other half will roll coal and ice.
I usually don’t consider it a possibility to actually change someone else’s mind. From that perspective the best way forward is to give people what they want, but in a more ethical manner. I’ve...
I usually don’t consider it a possibility to actually change someone else’s mind. From that perspective the best way forward is to give people what they want, but in a more ethical manner.
I’ve started to eat a lot less meat recently. I’m also becoming a big fan of oat milk. But that took years of influence from multiple people close to me. I won’t lament people’s unethical desires when I know how much time and effort is required to change just one mind.
It seems to me that changing people's minds about food comes from trying different things in restaurants or as a guests, one dish at a time. It's slower for people who don't try new foods often,...
It seems to me that changing people's minds about food comes from trying different things in restaurants or as a guests, one dish at a time. It's slower for people who don't try new foods often, faster for people who try new recipes.
I agree that this is the most effective way! Anecdotally, people are much likelier to try a new dish, like it, and add it to their repertoire if it's just presented as "one of my favorites, you...
I agree that this is the most effective way! Anecdotally, people are much likelier to try a new dish, like it, and add it to their repertoire if it's just presented as "one of my favorites, you HAVE to try it!" As opposed to you switching to this means you're going to have to face the uncomfortable fact that the decisions you've been making for years are hurtful. I wish more people would understand that getting someone to even 10% better is so much more effective than just making them feel guilty for not going 100%
Agreed. "Waiting for lab-grown" is possibly the most common reply I see on Reddit when these issues are brought up. People saying this clearly concede the ethical debate, but are so ridden with...
Exemplary
Agreed. "Waiting for lab-grown" is possibly the most common reply I see on Reddit when these issues are brought up. People saying this clearly concede the ethical debate, but are so ridden with akrasia they are dependent on technology to completely eliminate the cost involved in the choice.
A big part of why I decided to give up meat, at least 10 years after realising it was wrong, was realising what it said about my character that I was doing the wrong thing because it was easy.
I don't know if it will (if not backed by the "meat industry"). Most of the religious people I know don't view animals on the same plane as they do people. Where they would go out and protest...
I don't know if it will (if not backed by the "meat industry"). Most of the religious people I know don't view animals on the same plane as they do people. Where they would go out and protest growing anything human in a lab (including life saving organs even if they were to come from medical waste stem cells), animals just aren't on their radar as something that needs to be protected. Maybe they don't want lab grown because "God gave us something safe to eat" and they're worried lab grown might cause cancer, but I don't think they're worried about man made food vs God made food
I think the improvements in machine learning are going to sneak up on people. It has a reputation as an over-hyped field, and it is, but there seems to be pretty rapid progress behind all the...
I think the improvements in machine learning are going to sneak up on people. It has a reputation as an over-hyped field, and it is, but there seems to be pretty rapid progress behind all the hype. It's hard to say what that will look like from a consumer perspective. Maybe some new product that none of us are expecting?
And then there are driverless cars, the product everyone has been expecting, but never arrives. But maybe it does, and then we will be surprised?
I think an AI that has access to some of your biological information (like a smart watch can provide), combined with as much information as your phone has on you could provide people with...
I think an AI that has access to some of your biological information (like a smart watch can provide), combined with as much information as your phone has on you could provide people with automated health and meat space entertainment suggestions.
Right now AI is being used, with great success, to keep people on platforms using recommendation engines. What if the same type of software could tell you you’re 90% likely to be happier if you drink some water and go on a walk. Then it figures out you like movies and suggests you go to the theater with a specific recommendation.
Plenty of healthy people know themselves well enough to anticipate their needs and take care of their mental and physical health. But they won’t be the target demographic. These engines were designed to keep people on YouTube for as long as possible. The most susceptible people to that modus operandi are probably depressed, and those people could most utilize a meat-space recommendation engine.
That's exactly what all the assistent like Siri and Google Assistent were promising years ago. But they didn't seem to get much further than reminding you when to leave for some calendar event....
Right now AI is being used, with great success, to keep people on platforms using recommendation engines. What if the same type of software could tell you you’re 90% likely to be happier if you drink some water and go on a walk. Then it figures out you like movies and suggests you go to the theater with a specific recommendation.
That's exactly what all the assistent like Siri and Google Assistent were promising years ago. But they didn't seem to get much further than reminding you when to leave for some calendar event. I'm not impressed, even though it was looking good at the start.
That’s why it’s a big future advancement. We’re not there yet. World-shifting technological changes only come so often. We got the Internet 30 years ago. It might be a few decades more before we...
That’s why it’s a big future advancement. We’re not there yet. World-shifting technological changes only come so often. We got the Internet 30 years ago. It might be a few decades more before we see AI running our lives.
Have you used a smart watch set up to help you with fitness? I didn't think they'd be that useful either, then I started using one and it really made a difference where other things had failed in...
Have you used a smart watch set up to help you with fitness? I didn't think they'd be that useful either, then I started using one and it really made a difference where other things had failed in the past. If I'm sitting too long, it reminds me to get up and walk around a little bit. I'm pretty sure that has saved me a lot of back pain over the last few years. Having a fitness goal to reach each day, and getting encouragement from a device has been helpful, too. I tried counting calories to lose weight, and while it worked, I wasn't able to keep up with it because it was so tedious typing in or scanning everything I ate. But a watch that tells me, "You need to burn 100 more calories - go for a 15 minute run," has made it all significantly easier.
I think that AI that can recognize your activities and encourage better ones (if you're motivated to have better habits) could make a big difference in a lot of people's lives. So I am personally optimistic about this particular area of AI.
I bought a Tesla Model 3 last year and the feature I was ready to be the most unimpressed with was Autopilot. Now I can safely say it is one of the best features for any kind of distance or...
I bought a Tesla Model 3 last year and the feature I was ready to be the most unimpressed with was Autopilot. Now I can safely say it is one of the best features for any kind of distance or highway driving. Multihour trips are now pleasant and driving is no longer tiring. I wouldn't purchase any vehicle in the future without this type of technology, and it's only been improving and shows great promise as the technology improves.
ML is certainly much better than it used to be (AI Dungeon 2 is a great example of this), but I'm still yet to be actually impressed with it. Smart assistants still can't reliably tell what words...
ML is certainly much better than it used to be (AI Dungeon 2 is a great example of this), but I'm still yet to be actually impressed with it. Smart assistants still can't reliably tell what words I'm trying to say, let alone properly punctuate my sentences.
Driverless cars have been around for a while now. They're just most commonly seen in theme parks. The real reason why we aren't seeing them on the road is because nobody is interested in having roads where humans are not allowed to drive.
I'm 100% interested in this. Humans are terrible drivers. I also worked for Ford until earlier this year, and they are pouring billions into AV's as is every other major auto manufacturer. Not as...
The real reason why we aren't seeing them on the road is because nobody is interested in having roads where humans are not allowed to drive.
I'm 100% interested in this. Humans are terrible drivers.
I also worked for Ford until earlier this year, and they are pouring billions into AV's as is every other major auto manufacturer. Not as an experiment, but as a deliberate and planned business path. The Big 3 are all planning on unveiling their first AV models in either 2021 or 2022. Car sales are down across the board, because "the millennials". So one alternative is, stop selling the cars. Just manufacture the car, design it so you don't have to pay a driver, and sell the transportation service.
Everyone is using autocomplete all the time, though. People aren't better at taking photos, but smartphone cameras are better, and a lot of it is software. It creeps up on you, year by year....
Everyone is using autocomplete all the time, though. People aren't better at taking photos, but smartphone cameras are better, and a lot of it is software. It creeps up on you, year by year.
Regarding roads, I'd say it's less about nobody being interested and more about it being extremely expensive. It's worth a lot of money to be able to reuse existing infrastructure, as we've seen with Internet service. But we're gradually seeing car-free streets growing a bit in cities.
Is autocorrect ML? I'm pretty sure it's just an overzealous spellcheck. That being said, you can ignore my car comment. That's just me being a bitter old futurist.
Is autocorrect ML? I'm pretty sure it's just an overzealous spellcheck.
That being said, you can ignore my car comment. That's just me being a bitter old futurist.
I'm not sure about autocorrect in particular, but Google is using machine learning in their Android keyboard software. When you type on a phone's touchscreen, you might not actually be typing...
When the UI doesn't change, that makes it harder to notice when a smarter algorithm is used. It just works a bit better and you can be sloppier. If you went to back to the old way maybe you'd notice, though.
Commercialization and adoption of molten salt reactor technology. It's not even close - unlimited carbon free energy outclasses everything else on the table.
Commercialization and adoption of molten salt reactor technology. It's not even close - unlimited carbon free energy outclasses everything else on the table.
Depending on how you look at it, solar and wind could be considered free and unlimited too - it's not like we will run out of sunlight or wind. But focusing only on fuel costs results in strange...
Depending on how you look at it, solar and wind could be considered free and unlimited too - it's not like we will run out of sunlight or wind. But focusing only on fuel costs results in strange answers. Fuel being free just means other contributors to cost are more important. (In particular, cost of construction and maintenance.)
At large enough scales it starts being more efficient to store energy with gravity (e.g. pumping water up a slope and run it back down a hydroelectric setup) or osmotic pressure. So you wouldn’t...
Batteries are good, but once you start scaling up to have batteries a critical component of our entire grid we quickly run into the ethical & environmental costs of mining the requisite material.
At large enough scales it starts being more efficient to store energy with gravity (e.g. pumping water up a slope and run it back down a hydroelectric setup) or osmotic pressure. So you wouldn’t want to rely on chemical batteries.
I can’t imagine we’d have less of a footprint than existing coal or uranium mines. The only difference is we’d be having it closer to population centers instead of distant mountain towns, which is...
I can’t imagine we’d have less of a footprint than existing coal or uranium mines. The only difference is we’d be having it closer to population centers instead of distant mountain towns, which is actually preferable in my mind. Like, you could just build this stuff in the middle of a city and design it to work as a park. Imagine whitewater rafting down a hydro dam when they release it each night.
Hydro isn’t the only option though. You can have gravity storage with elevators, flow batteries, or crack some water to make hydrogen fuel cells based on whatever the chief considerations in the...
Hydro isn’t the only option though. You can have gravity storage with elevators, flow batteries, or crack some water to make hydrogen fuel cells based on whatever the chief considerations in the area are.
The thing is, these are all problems for nuclear too since power demand is so lumpy. They also need to have some way to store the surplus they’re generating so it’s not as if that fixes the problem.
Once we're past the R&D the estimates I've seen say we can get our molten salt reactors for about ten million each with a decade lifespan. The argument that the plant costs billions is ancient...
Once we're past the R&D the estimates I've seen say we can get our molten salt reactors for about ten million each with a decade lifespan. The argument that the plant costs billions is ancient history, and only applies to pressurized water reactors that require such ridiculously overbuilt plants and safety measures. It's really the water we're keeping at 150 atmospheres of pressure that's the chief risk and the chief cost - MSRs sidestep that issue completely because they run on salt, not water, and salt doesn't care if it gets hot as hell. Eventually they will be rolling off the assembly line like airplanes (but cheaper) and likely fit in a shipping container, ready to go anywhere in the world.
I expect we'll see them at every military base, at every factory, and probably in every city backing up hospitals and police stations and other critical services someday. If the power grid goes down nationwide there's no reason we even need to notice it happening. If we're generating enough power at essentially no cost, it may no longer even make sense to have long distance power transmission. Local generation for all energy needs is possible using this tech.
They are still dangerous enough not to be a good idea for engines in most vehicles. Those reactors can't blow themselves up, but you can still blow them up or crash them if they are operating while mobile. Crack the core, and you're getting a hellish white hot salt mess that is lethal even without the radiation due to the byproducts in the salt.
Their original R&D purpose in the 60s was nuclear powered airplaines and they may very well be able to do that job for military craft. You don't want a passenger jet powered by this stuff coming down in a city, though. The regulations need to be tight and sensible.
For everything else, we'll use batteries, especially if the glass battery (another promising tech) comes to fruition. Keep your eye on this legend, dude's 97 and still in the lab making this happen.
It's not my area of expertise, but in general I am wary of cost estimates made so early in development. Such estimates are going to leave out important tasks that will be discovered during R&D,...
It's not my area of expertise, but in general I am wary of cost estimates made so early in development. Such estimates are going to leave out important tasks that will be discovered during R&D, and lots of promising technologies have trouble getting to production.
I don't know enough to say it won't work, though, and after all we're talking about future technology here.
We built it in the 60s for tens of millions, this tech is almost comically simple. It's just a big tank and some pipes, that's all there is to it at the basic level. I think that simplicity was...
We built it in the 60s for tens of millions, this tech is almost comically simple. It's just a big tank and some pipes, that's all there is to it at the basic level. I think that simplicity was the one single thing that astonished me the most while digging through all the journal articles and reporting around this new industry. It's like building a space shuttle just to invent the quadcopter later and discover that's what you really needed in the first place.
Latest research is showing us a silver lining that makes it far easier than we thought, too - it's trivial to measure everything in the salt in real time using light pulses. We'll have total knowledge of the state of the reaction on every level. The mechanism for detailed online reactor monitoring was never developed in the 60s and was one of the last major outstanding questions, which is now answered.
The core tech may be simple, but maybe there were shortcuts taken for 1960's research reactors that would now be considered unacceptable? Safety and environment concerns have changed a lot since...
The core tech may be simple, but maybe there were shortcuts taken for 1960's research reactors that would now be considered unacceptable? Safety and environment concerns have changed a lot since then. Without any specific knowledge, I suspect boosters of this technology might be low-balling it a bit.
Cost disease isn't well understood, but it's affecting many different areas of modern life including housing, education, healthcare, and public transportation. Somehow everything is more expensive than it should be, with the exception of a few technologies that scale very well. It seems hard to say how it will go.
But that's all based on shallow, outside-view considerations and I'm not inclined to research it. It will happen or it won't and it's not my decision.
The biggest mistake they made in the 60s was failing to decommission the salts. While they live in the reactor they are just fine cooking up a nuclear stew, as long as you care for them properly....
The biggest mistake they made in the 60s was failing to decommission the salts. While they live in the reactor they are just fine cooking up a nuclear stew, as long as you care for them properly.
After the reactor was shut down, the salts sat in the drain tanks for years (decaying and outgassing) before anyone thought to get around to dealing with them... and by then, the decay products had become a literal nightmare. It cost them over a hundred million just to clean up the mess from that one tiny experiment that would fit in your garage. Yikes.
That was the big 'oops' moment you're looking for, and luckily it's behind us - and we keep the experience and research into how that cleanup was done. Mismanagement of the salts remains the most likely expense going forward, and the folks working on this all over the world are well aware of this problem. Don't let it happen, get that salt into another reactor, or clean it on the way out. The possibility exists of using it in a burner reactor, designed just for this purpose. You just burn it all up.
See, when this went down in the 60s, it was just 'one' reactor. We know better now.
The molten salt enables as many designs as there are engines that burn gasoline and then some. We really get to play with the concept of what a reactor can become. That's why there are fifty companies and a dozen governments chasing so many crazy designs. We don't know what a 'best' design looks like yet, and it's almost certain we're going to end up with several. Something small, safe and portable, something large, stationary, and powerful, and something else just to burn up nuclear waste, a nuclear incinerator that solves our waste issues going forward. There may be more, but those three seem to be the ones pulling ahead of the pack at present. Thorcon, Seaborg, and China.
I do not believe they've found a 'cheap' way to truly decommission salts yet, so those costs will end up being baked in to the business model, just like current nuclear plants. It's much less of a problem if you don't let the salts sit, they need to be cleaned immediately if they aren't going to be used again. It'll require specialized chemical processing facilities just like current nuclear fuel. There's one place in France that specializes in that job and they handle all the world's nuclear fuel. I expect they'll get good at cleaning salts once there's money to be made.
This is not a 'pie in the sky' technology like every other breakthrough you see pimped on reddit. It is now a multi-billion dollar international arms race, and whoever wins it will own the energy sector until/if fusion comes along to crash the party. If we can only do large scale fusion and can't lock down portable micro-fusion, this tech is going to live alongside fusion until we do. Portability in power is a killer feature.
All we have to do now is educate the general public out of their fear of nuclear power. No problem! :P
I'm not finding a whole lot of news about these companies. Are they in stealth mode? It seems like if they were getting major investments there would be more business news?
I'm not finding a whole lot of news about these companies. Are they in stealth mode? It seems like if they were getting major investments there would be more business news?
Most companies working in this space are on government grants or other forms of pure research funding. Investors run away when they hear about the red tape, so there's a lack of commercial...
Most companies working in this space are on government grants or other forms of pure research funding. Investors run away when they hear about the red tape, so there's a lack of commercial investment. Your best bet for up-to-date news is to stick to Gordon's youtube channel. He's been documenting this movement since the beginning. When there are major developments he usually posts a video about it.
The most firsthand/accurate news you'll get in a single place is following TEAC. All of the various scientists and engineers working on this technology come together once a year for a couple of days to talk about it and share their progress.
Nearly everyone Gordon points a camera at is one of the people in the lab working on this tech, you couldn't ask for better sources than the engineers themselves. The few investors brave enough to be involved also put in time at these conferences.
You can also find a lot of the material (slides, papers, etc) from the TEAC conferences at this link.
Oh, and there's a more historical archive of the research that got us here at Kirk's website. You can read the original reports from ORNL and all of the work that branched off from it there, and that's probably the only place on the entire internet you can find these papers. Kirk built that library scanning that stuff in from print himself.
Kirk's own company, Flibe Energy, did indeed go dark about two years back. The rumor is they've had some breakthroughs and some angel investors, so Kirk has been in the lab since then rather than doing his usual sales pitch at TED/wherever. If I had to pick one single horse in this race to bet on, it's him. He's patient zero for this stuff, and he's got every inch of Elon's zeal.
But not Elon's money. And Bill Gates bet on the wrong horse, apparently, with Terrapower? Seems like development is still in low gear if investors aren't interested? There is a lot more money...
But not Elon's money. And Bill Gates bet on the wrong horse, apparently, with Terrapower?
Seems like development is still in low gear if investors aren't interested? There is a lot more money going into rockets.
Gates is betting on nuclear candles and he's dissed molten salt many times including during his ted talk. Traveling wave reactors ran right into that brick wall you talk about - it turns out you...
Gates is betting on nuclear candles and he's dissed molten salt many times including during his ted talk. Traveling wave reactors ran right into that brick wall you talk about - it turns out you need a very tricky geometric configuration for the fuel and they've failed to make any progress getting it to work. We have, basically, a wet road flare rather than a warm campfire. This just proves money doesn't win this race, though it helps.
Well, if we're going that route, then fusion reactors are something I'd love to see happen! I have no idea whether they're likely to figure it out while I'm still alive or not, though.
Well, if we're going that route, then fusion reactors are something I'd love to see happen! I have no idea whether they're likely to figure it out while I'm still alive or not, though.
Fun fact, molten salt tech has applications for fusion as well, though in fusion it's typically used to capture the heat rather than house the fuel itself. Some designs even incorporate a molten...
I think we're closer than a lot of people realize. Newer high temperature superconductors let you achieve net gain in tokamaks that are more on the scale of JET than ITER. Look up MIT's ARC and...
I think we're closer than a lot of people realize. Newer high temperature superconductors let you achieve net gain in tokamaks that are more on the scale of JET than ITER. Look up MIT's ARC and SPARC concept reactors.
Synthetic blood is something that I'd like to see happen. There's been a decent amount of work in the area, some candidates reached Phase II trials but never completed them, most candidates end up...
Synthetic blood is something that I'd like to see happen. There's been a decent amount of work in the area, some candidates reached Phase II trials but never completed them, most candidates end up leading a swath of bankrupt companies behind them. The most advanced candidates weren't even based on haemoglobin, but rather a set of chemicals known as perfluorocarbons that are immiscible in water and actually form an emulsion instead of a coherent liquid.
Any successful candidate which can demonstrate efficacy and safety is going to dramatically improve the health outcomes for millions of people, and render blood donations a historical aberration—eliminating with it the chance of donor transferrals of viruses and diseases like HIV.
That's probably why not a lot of people are talking about it then. /joke New battery tech is kind of like Cold Fusion in that it's always five years off, there's always some advance in the pipe...
Last time I saw a similar thread It was what most people commended.
That's probably why not a lot of people are talking about it then. /joke
New battery tech is kind of like Cold Fusion in that it's always five years off, there's always some advance in the pipe that's going to change everything, and it's either doesn't scale well, or is used in a way that lets Apple make iPhones just a little bit thinner.
Yeah, that concept. Some years ago computers were things that only big institutions could afford, and people had to time share them, but now almost every person has at least one computing device....
Yeah, that concept.
Some years ago computers were things that only big institutions could afford, and people had to time share them, but now almost every person has at least one computing device.
I think that people will learn do edit genes of multiple things, sometimes just for fun, like we currently do with computers
In fact, there are already a lot youtube videos of people making bacteria glow. Of course they need highly specialized equipment and formal training, but 40 years ago programmers were in the same spot.
Widespread insect farming. It’s sustainable and efficient, with the potential of eradicating protein deficiency worldwide while mitigating global warming. They could be a convenient source of...
Widespread insect farming. It’s sustainable and efficient, with the potential of eradicating protein deficiency worldwide while mitigating global warming.
They could be a convenient source of protein during space colonization.
The idea is not to sell crickets for you to eat (although there will be a market for that — some cultures already eat them whole), but rather as nutritious sub products like flour and also as an...
The idea is not to sell crickets for you to eat (although there will be a market for that — some cultures already eat them whole), but rather as nutritious sub products like flour and also as an ingredient for other products (including meat substitutes).
While I'm pretty optimistic about the near future of fusion, before that happens I think we're going to see a revolution in space development, starting during the 20's. Even forgetting about...
While I'm pretty optimistic about the near future of fusion, before that happens I think we're going to see a revolution in space development, starting during the 20's. Even forgetting about SpaceX's Starship, the Falcon 9 has, with comparatively little fanfare, achieved most of the Space Shuttle's original design goals when it comes to launch cost and cadence. The satellite market is slow moving, thanks to the huge lead times for construction and launch under the conventional paradigm, but once it fully adapts to even current launch costs, I think the market is going to explode, and that's before we see if Starship and New Glenn come into their own.
Lab grown meat, as already noted by another user Human Embedded Computing (putting computers in people). Mobile devices are the latest global computing platform, and self-driving automobiles is...
Lab grown meat, as already noted by another user
Human Embedded Computing (putting computers in people). Mobile devices are the latest global computing platform, and self-driving automobiles is probably the next. After that, I hope Human Embedding Computing takes off.
Taking a broad view on what is a "technology", I also have high hopes that Parfit's theory of personal identity(Relation R) because widespread in society, with applications in education, law, and government.
With the acquisitions Apple has made over the past few years, it looks like they're making a concerted effort to create AR glasses that look normal and can carry a prescription. I think they...
With the acquisitions Apple has made over the past few years, it looks like they're making a concerted effort to create AR glasses that look normal and can carry a prescription. I think they recognize that people don't want a device that will stand out like the Google Glass or the current offering from North, even though it, design-wise, is closer to what we'll soon accept as the norm.
I think mass adoption of VR is the next big thing. We're 2 or 3 generations of GPU advancements and maybe 3-4 years away in price reductions due to scales of economy from your Grandma being able...
I think mass adoption of VR is the next big thing. We're 2 or 3 generations of GPU advancements and maybe 3-4 years away in price reductions due to scales of economy from your Grandma being able to pick up a headset at BestBuy for $200, plugging it into her laptop, and jumping right into any number high res VR activities.
As it stands, you need a $700+ PC or 1500$+ laptop and 400$+ headset to enjoy a relatively seamless VR experience.
IMO (in the next 15-35 years), along with gene editing/CRISPR as said by @vaddi, artificial wombs. Artificial wombs, once produced could effectively make parenthood useless and allow for...
IMO (in the next 15-35 years), along with gene editing/CRISPR as said by @vaddi, artificial wombs. Artificial wombs, once produced could effectively make parenthood useless and allow for mass/factory-like production of people, which has far reaching implications for the bottom layer/bedrock of our society, which is us. This, under capitalism would effectively make the amount of people in earth a corporate decision.
Artificially grown meat. We're basically at a stage where it exists, it's just really expensive. But prices going down is usually something you can rely on with any mature technological breakthrough and the benefits are obvious. No animals suffering, no barns, no manure, etc. I predict some uproar about the "ethics" of it but I've already pretty firmly decided which side I'm on. Unless some absurd, unpredictable downside pops up, it's a net-win for everyone and I'm looking forward to it.
Sure, but I see that more as a process of gradual improvement, growth in popularity, and increase in scale, rather than any single breakthrough. Sort of like solar.
Those iterations that result in massive improvement should still be celebrated though! This is also known as the "solar learning curve" and it describes—and in some cases, can make accurate predictions about—the ubiquity and cost of solar energy; based on technological learning. Here's a very good (long) read about how solar will end up dominating the electricity mix over the next 20-30 years.
I really hope they do become affordable and not just an excuse to charge more like 'organic' tends to be. Like, I know veggie patties cost more (presumably) for the "exotic" ingredients, but c'mon... $3 more? I can just see them doing the same with lab-meat.
Well I agree the "organic" label is a load of bullshit. The veggie patty thing is slightly different, that's more to do with supply/demand. The demand for veggie burgers is high enough that it's worth producing at scale, but not high enough that there's been enough invested in innovation/scaling/supply chain to bring it's price per lb on parity with a regular hamburger.
That's going to be the key with the artificial meats (both the petri dish and Beyond Meat/Impossible Burger kinds). Once either kind can achieve price parity with standard ground beef, they'll probably see a solid uptick in adoption by the general public. If they can tip it a bit further and undercut ground beef (even artificially) for a few years, I think the demand will surge and the beef industry will lose a significant chunk of demand fairly rapidly.
I also think that the artificial meats have a lower price floor. Beef in general has been around for centuries. It existed before modern industrial processes, and has been optimized at every opportunity. There might be a few more efficiencies to be squeezed out of it, but in general I think it's price is pretty much what it is (barring external events such as cattle pandemics, etc). The artificial meats however, require less input resources to generate the same amount of product. Which is part of the appeal in the first place. They also require less time to produce their product. I think there's a tipping point somewhere along the way where artificial meat prices will not only drop below "real" meats, they will slaughter them.
Animal meat is actually pretty heavily subsidized, both directly and in the form of subsidies for the feed the animals eat.
How would ethics be called into question when the alternative is to raise animals to be slaughtered?
It just breaks my heart every time I hear people act like they have no agency in the decision they make to eat meat, like the only way we could possibly stop the industrial scale slaughtering of animals is by literally making a perfect replica of meat in a laboratory using technology that has been on the cusp of existence for years now. Like the health issues, the literal mass killing of thinking and feeling creatures, the ecological concerns, none of it matters if people can’t get their tasties because we are all just apparently god-damned slaves to our most primitive and selfish lusts.
Raising animals for slaughter should not be considered “the alternative” to lab grown meat any more than human enslavement should be considered “the alternative” to mechanized labor.
Your point is well taken, but ultimately I don't think those arguments are going to have a whiff of an impact on the eventual outcome.
See, if you can marinate this stuff in a rainbow of flavors from the day the first cell starts replicating in a tube, and then 3D-print it to have any texture meat is capable of, and any texture you can imagine, it'll simply crush traditional meat right out of the market based solely on flavor. McDonalds can sell you a dollar menu item that will beat any existing steakhouse in the world at any price. Before long animal meat won't be 'real meat' in the eyes of the public if that happens.
It's not just animals. Fish is on the menu too, and our oceans/streams will breathe a collective sigh of relief when that day comes.
There's probably going to be a counter movement to support real meat, similar to the way people despise GMO foods.
Oh there absolutely will be in America, because our culture now revolves around politicizing everything. "Liberals" will generally be supportive of lab and vegetable meat alternatives, "conservatives" will loudly brag about how they'd never touch it and probably upload gleeful videos of them slaughtering and eating animals for fun to own the libs. It will be the same as electric cars, basically. Half the culture will appreciate it and be delighted by its benefits, the other half will roll coal and ice.
I usually don’t consider it a possibility to actually change someone else’s mind. From that perspective the best way forward is to give people what they want, but in a more ethical manner.
I’ve started to eat a lot less meat recently. I’m also becoming a big fan of oat milk. But that took years of influence from multiple people close to me. I won’t lament people’s unethical desires when I know how much time and effort is required to change just one mind.
It seems to me that changing people's minds about food comes from trying different things in restaurants or as a guests, one dish at a time. It's slower for people who don't try new foods often, faster for people who try new recipes.
That's a good point. The turning point for me was when I started cooking most of my own meals.
I agree that this is the most effective way! Anecdotally, people are much likelier to try a new dish, like it, and add it to their repertoire if it's just presented as "one of my favorites, you HAVE to try it!" As opposed to you switching to this means you're going to have to face the uncomfortable fact that the decisions you've been making for years are hurtful. I wish more people would understand that getting someone to even 10% better is so much more effective than just making them feel guilty for not going 100%
Agreed. "Waiting for lab-grown" is possibly the most common reply I see on Reddit when these issues are brought up. People saying this clearly concede the ethical debate, but are so ridden with akrasia they are dependent on technology to completely eliminate the cost involved in the choice.
A big part of why I decided to give up meat, at least 10 years after realising it was wrong, was realising what it said about my character that I was doing the wrong thing because it was easy.
I can imagine the religious fundamentalists opposing it on the grounds of it being immoral to "play god" or something like that.
This will 100% happen.
I don't know if it will (if not backed by the "meat industry"). Most of the religious people I know don't view animals on the same plane as they do people. Where they would go out and protest growing anything human in a lab (including life saving organs even if they were to come from medical waste stem cells), animals just aren't on their radar as something that needs to be protected. Maybe they don't want lab grown because "God gave us something safe to eat" and they're worried lab grown might cause cancer, but I don't think they're worried about man made food vs God made food
You know, I'm very curious, too! All I can guarantee is that we'll have that conversation.
I think the improvements in machine learning are going to sneak up on people. It has a reputation as an over-hyped field, and it is, but there seems to be pretty rapid progress behind all the hype. It's hard to say what that will look like from a consumer perspective. Maybe some new product that none of us are expecting?
And then there are driverless cars, the product everyone has been expecting, but never arrives. But maybe it does, and then we will be surprised?
I think an AI that has access to some of your biological information (like a smart watch can provide), combined with as much information as your phone has on you could provide people with automated health and meat space entertainment suggestions.
Right now AI is being used, with great success, to keep people on platforms using recommendation engines. What if the same type of software could tell you you’re 90% likely to be happier if you drink some water and go on a walk. Then it figures out you like movies and suggests you go to the theater with a specific recommendation.
Plenty of healthy people know themselves well enough to anticipate their needs and take care of their mental and physical health. But they won’t be the target demographic. These engines were designed to keep people on YouTube for as long as possible. The most susceptible people to that modus operandi are probably depressed, and those people could most utilize a meat-space recommendation engine.
That's exactly what all the assistent like Siri and Google Assistent were promising years ago. But they didn't seem to get much further than reminding you when to leave for some calendar event. I'm not impressed, even though it was looking good at the start.
That’s why it’s a big future advancement. We’re not there yet. World-shifting technological changes only come so often. We got the Internet 30 years ago. It might be a few decades more before we see AI running our lives.
Have you used a smart watch set up to help you with fitness? I didn't think they'd be that useful either, then I started using one and it really made a difference where other things had failed in the past. If I'm sitting too long, it reminds me to get up and walk around a little bit. I'm pretty sure that has saved me a lot of back pain over the last few years. Having a fitness goal to reach each day, and getting encouragement from a device has been helpful, too. I tried counting calories to lose weight, and while it worked, I wasn't able to keep up with it because it was so tedious typing in or scanning everything I ate. But a watch that tells me, "You need to burn 100 more calories - go for a 15 minute run," has made it all significantly easier.
I think that AI that can recognize your activities and encourage better ones (if you're motivated to have better habits) could make a big difference in a lot of people's lives. So I am personally optimistic about this particular area of AI.
I bought a Tesla Model 3 last year and the feature I was ready to be the most unimpressed with was Autopilot. Now I can safely say it is one of the best features for any kind of distance or highway driving. Multihour trips are now pleasant and driving is no longer tiring. I wouldn't purchase any vehicle in the future without this type of technology, and it's only been improving and shows great promise as the technology improves.
ML is certainly much better than it used to be (AI Dungeon 2 is a great example of this), but I'm still yet to be actually impressed with it. Smart assistants still can't reliably tell what words I'm trying to say, let alone properly punctuate my sentences.
Driverless cars have been around for a while now. They're just most commonly seen in theme parks. The real reason why we aren't seeing them on the road is because nobody is interested in having roads where humans are not allowed to drive.
I'm 100% interested in this. Humans are terrible drivers.
I also worked for Ford until earlier this year, and they are pouring billions into AV's as is every other major auto manufacturer. Not as an experiment, but as a deliberate and planned business path. The Big 3 are all planning on unveiling their first AV models in either 2021 or 2022. Car sales are down across the board, because "the millennials". So one alternative is, stop selling the cars. Just manufacture the car, design it so you don't have to pay a driver, and sell the transportation service.
Everyone is using autocomplete all the time, though. People aren't better at taking photos, but smartphone cameras are better, and a lot of it is software. It creeps up on you, year by year.
Regarding roads, I'd say it's less about nobody being interested and more about it being extremely expensive. It's worth a lot of money to be able to reuse existing infrastructure, as we've seen with Internet service. But we're gradually seeing car-free streets growing a bit in cities.
Is autocorrect ML? I'm pretty sure it's just an overzealous spellcheck.
That being said, you can ignore my car comment. That's just me being a bitter old futurist.
I'm not sure about autocorrect in particular, but Google is using machine learning in their Android keyboard software. When you type on a phone's touchscreen, you might not actually be typing accurately but they figure it out. Usually.
When the UI doesn't change, that makes it harder to notice when a smarter algorithm is used. It just works a bit better and you can be sloppier. If you went to back to the old way maybe you'd notice, though.
Commercialization and adoption of molten salt reactor technology. It's not even close - unlimited carbon free energy outclasses everything else on the table.
Depending on how you look at it, solar and wind could be considered free and unlimited too - it's not like we will run out of sunlight or wind. But focusing only on fuel costs results in strange answers. Fuel being free just means other contributors to cost are more important. (In particular, cost of construction and maintenance.)
At large enough scales it starts being more efficient to store energy with gravity (e.g. pumping water up a slope and run it back down a hydroelectric setup) or osmotic pressure. So you wouldn’t want to rely on chemical batteries.
I can’t imagine we’d have less of a footprint than existing coal or uranium mines. The only difference is we’d be having it closer to population centers instead of distant mountain towns, which is actually preferable in my mind. Like, you could just build this stuff in the middle of a city and design it to work as a park. Imagine whitewater rafting down a hydro dam when they release it each night.
Hydro isn’t the only option though. You can have gravity storage with elevators, flow batteries, or crack some water to make hydrogen fuel cells based on whatever the chief considerations in the area are.
The thing is, these are all problems for nuclear too since power demand is so lumpy. They also need to have some way to store the surplus they’re generating so it’s not as if that fixes the problem.
Once we're past the R&D the estimates I've seen say we can get our molten salt reactors for about ten million each with a decade lifespan. The argument that the plant costs billions is ancient history, and only applies to pressurized water reactors that require such ridiculously overbuilt plants and safety measures. It's really the water we're keeping at 150 atmospheres of pressure that's the chief risk and the chief cost - MSRs sidestep that issue completely because they run on salt, not water, and salt doesn't care if it gets hot as hell. Eventually they will be rolling off the assembly line like airplanes (but cheaper) and likely fit in a shipping container, ready to go anywhere in the world.
I expect we'll see them at every military base, at every factory, and probably in every city backing up hospitals and police stations and other critical services someday. If the power grid goes down nationwide there's no reason we even need to notice it happening. If we're generating enough power at essentially no cost, it may no longer even make sense to have long distance power transmission. Local generation for all energy needs is possible using this tech.
They are still dangerous enough not to be a good idea for engines in most vehicles. Those reactors can't blow themselves up, but you can still blow them up or crash them if they are operating while mobile. Crack the core, and you're getting a hellish white hot salt mess that is lethal even without the radiation due to the byproducts in the salt.
Their original R&D purpose in the 60s was nuclear powered airplaines and they may very well be able to do that job for military craft. You don't want a passenger jet powered by this stuff coming down in a city, though. The regulations need to be tight and sensible.
For everything else, we'll use batteries, especially if the glass battery (another promising tech) comes to fruition. Keep your eye on this legend, dude's 97 and still in the lab making this happen.
It's not my area of expertise, but in general I am wary of cost estimates made so early in development. Such estimates are going to leave out important tasks that will be discovered during R&D, and lots of promising technologies have trouble getting to production.
I don't know enough to say it won't work, though, and after all we're talking about future technology here.
We built it in the 60s for tens of millions, this tech is almost comically simple. It's just a big tank and some pipes, that's all there is to it at the basic level. I think that simplicity was the one single thing that astonished me the most while digging through all the journal articles and reporting around this new industry. It's like building a space shuttle just to invent the quadcopter later and discover that's what you really needed in the first place.
Latest research is showing us a silver lining that makes it far easier than we thought, too - it's trivial to measure everything in the salt in real time using light pulses. We'll have total knowledge of the state of the reaction on every level. The mechanism for detailed online reactor monitoring was never developed in the 60s and was one of the last major outstanding questions, which is now answered.
The core tech may be simple, but maybe there were shortcuts taken for 1960's research reactors that would now be considered unacceptable? Safety and environment concerns have changed a lot since then. Without any specific knowledge, I suspect boosters of this technology might be low-balling it a bit.
Cost disease isn't well understood, but it's affecting many different areas of modern life including housing, education, healthcare, and public transportation. Somehow everything is more expensive than it should be, with the exception of a few technologies that scale very well. It seems hard to say how it will go.
But that's all based on shallow, outside-view considerations and I'm not inclined to research it. It will happen or it won't and it's not my decision.
The biggest mistake they made in the 60s was failing to decommission the salts. While they live in the reactor they are just fine cooking up a nuclear stew, as long as you care for them properly.
After the reactor was shut down, the salts sat in the drain tanks for years (decaying and outgassing) before anyone thought to get around to dealing with them... and by then, the decay products had become a literal nightmare. It cost them over a hundred million just to clean up the mess from that one tiny experiment that would fit in your garage. Yikes.
That was the big 'oops' moment you're looking for, and luckily it's behind us - and we keep the experience and research into how that cleanup was done. Mismanagement of the salts remains the most likely expense going forward, and the folks working on this all over the world are well aware of this problem. Don't let it happen, get that salt into another reactor, or clean it on the way out. The possibility exists of using it in a burner reactor, designed just for this purpose. You just burn it all up.
See, when this went down in the 60s, it was just 'one' reactor. We know better now.
The molten salt enables as many designs as there are engines that burn gasoline and then some. We really get to play with the concept of what a reactor can become. That's why there are fifty companies and a dozen governments chasing so many crazy designs. We don't know what a 'best' design looks like yet, and it's almost certain we're going to end up with several. Something small, safe and portable, something large, stationary, and powerful, and something else just to burn up nuclear waste, a nuclear incinerator that solves our waste issues going forward. There may be more, but those three seem to be the ones pulling ahead of the pack at present. Thorcon, Seaborg, and China.
I do not believe they've found a 'cheap' way to truly decommission salts yet, so those costs will end up being baked in to the business model, just like current nuclear plants. It's much less of a problem if you don't let the salts sit, they need to be cleaned immediately if they aren't going to be used again. It'll require specialized chemical processing facilities just like current nuclear fuel. There's one place in France that specializes in that job and they handle all the world's nuclear fuel. I expect they'll get good at cleaning salts once there's money to be made.
This is not a 'pie in the sky' technology like every other breakthrough you see pimped on reddit. It is now a multi-billion dollar international arms race, and whoever wins it will own the energy sector until/if fusion comes along to crash the party. If we can only do large scale fusion and can't lock down portable micro-fusion, this tech is going to live alongside fusion until we do. Portability in power is a killer feature.
All we have to do now is educate the general public out of their fear of nuclear power. No problem! :P
I'm not finding a whole lot of news about these companies. Are they in stealth mode? It seems like if they were getting major investments there would be more business news?
Most companies working in this space are on government grants or other forms of pure research funding. Investors run away when they hear about the red tape, so there's a lack of commercial investment. Your best bet for up-to-date news is to stick to Gordon's youtube channel. He's been documenting this movement since the beginning. When there are major developments he usually posts a video about it.
The most firsthand/accurate news you'll get in a single place is following TEAC. All of the various scientists and engineers working on this technology come together once a year for a couple of days to talk about it and share their progress.
Nearly everyone Gordon points a camera at is one of the people in the lab working on this tech, you couldn't ask for better sources than the engineers themselves. The few investors brave enough to be involved also put in time at these conferences.
You can also find a lot of the material (slides, papers, etc) from the TEAC conferences at this link.
Oh, and there's a more historical archive of the research that got us here at Kirk's website. You can read the original reports from ORNL and all of the work that branched off from it there, and that's probably the only place on the entire internet you can find these papers. Kirk built that library scanning that stuff in from print himself.
Kirk's own company, Flibe Energy, did indeed go dark about two years back. The rumor is they've had some breakthroughs and some angel investors, so Kirk has been in the lab since then rather than doing his usual sales pitch at TED/wherever. If I had to pick one single horse in this race to bet on, it's him. He's patient zero for this stuff, and he's got every inch of Elon's zeal.
But not Elon's money. And Bill Gates bet on the wrong horse, apparently, with Terrapower?
Seems like development is still in low gear if investors aren't interested? There is a lot more money going into rockets.
Gates is betting on nuclear candles and he's dissed molten salt many times including during his ted talk. Traveling wave reactors ran right into that brick wall you talk about - it turns out you need a very tricky geometric configuration for the fuel and they've failed to make any progress getting it to work. We have, basically, a wet road flare rather than a warm campfire. This just proves money doesn't win this race, though it helps.
I'll let Kirk explain the investor reluctance.
Well, if we're going that route, then fusion reactors are something I'd love to see happen! I have no idea whether they're likely to figure it out while I'm still alive or not, though.
Fun fact, molten salt tech has applications for fusion as well, though in fusion it's typically used to capture the heat rather than house the fuel itself. Some designs even incorporate a molten salt fission reactor as the power source used to drive the fusion reactor. There's an opportunity here to cash in on two major energy technologies for the price of one. ;)
I think we're closer than a lot of people realize. Newer high temperature superconductors let you achieve net gain in tokamaks that are more on the scale of JET than ITER. Look up MIT's ARC and SPARC concept reactors.
Synthetic blood is something that I'd like to see happen. There's been a decent amount of work in the area, some candidates reached Phase II trials but never completed them, most candidates end up leading a swath of bankrupt companies behind them. The most advanced candidates weren't even based on haemoglobin, but rather a set of chemicals known as perfluorocarbons that are immiscible in water and actually form an emulsion instead of a coherent liquid.
Any successful candidate which can demonstrate efficacy and safety is going to dramatically improve the health outcomes for millions of people, and render blood donations a historical aberration—eliminating with it the chance of donor transferrals of viruses and diseases like HIV.
I'm curious why nobody is mentioning a battery breakthrough in recent future. Last time I saw a similar thread It was what most people commended.
That's probably why not a lot of people are talking about it then. /joke
New battery tech is kind of like Cold Fusion in that it's always five years off, there's always some advance in the pipe that's going to change everything, and it's either doesn't scale well, or is used in a way that lets Apple make iPhones just a little bit thinner.
Mainstream genetic programming (which I think is ethically completely wrong).
What is "genetic programming?"
CRISPR, I suppose.
Yeah, that concept.
Some years ago computers were things that only big institutions could afford, and people had to time share them, but now almost every person has at least one computing device.
I think that people will learn do edit genes of multiple things, sometimes just for fun, like we currently do with computers
In fact, there are already a lot youtube videos of people making bacteria glow. Of course they need highly specialized equipment and formal training, but 40 years ago programmers were in the same spot.
Basically the movie GATTACA but in real life.
Widespread insect farming. It’s sustainable and efficient, with the potential of eradicating protein deficiency worldwide while mitigating global warming.
They could be a convenient source of protein during space colonization.
A great podcast on this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gwAkroeQEVk
I still have no idea how you market "bugs as people food" even if the scale works out.
The idea is not to sell crickets for you to eat (although there will be a market for that — some cultures already eat them whole), but rather as nutritious sub products like flour and also as an ingredient for other products (including meat substitutes).
While I'm pretty optimistic about the near future of fusion, before that happens I think we're going to see a revolution in space development, starting during the 20's. Even forgetting about SpaceX's Starship, the Falcon 9 has, with comparatively little fanfare, achieved most of the Space Shuttle's original design goals when it comes to launch cost and cadence. The satellite market is slow moving, thanks to the huge lead times for construction and launch under the conventional paradigm, but once it fully adapts to even current launch costs, I think the market is going to explode, and that's before we see if Starship and New Glenn come into their own.
Lab grown meat, as already noted by another user
Human Embedded Computing (putting computers in people). Mobile devices are the latest global computing platform, and self-driving automobiles is probably the next. After that, I hope Human Embedding Computing takes off.
Taking a broad view on what is a "technology", I also have high hopes that Parfit's theory of personal identity(Relation R) because widespread in society, with applications in education, law, and government.
I think Apple Glasses has the potential to be big.
It's an entirely novel interface, so has the potential to disrupt everything.
Is it different from Google Glass?
With the acquisitions Apple has made over the past few years, it looks like they're making a concerted effort to create AR glasses that look normal and can carry a prescription. I think they recognize that people don't want a device that will stand out like the Google Glass or the current offering from North, even though it, design-wise, is closer to what we'll soon accept as the norm.
Thanks for the reply. I can believe that Apple will get this right. If these glasses have AR and can carry my prescription I'll be stoked.
I’m horrible with names — so if I can have facial recognition with my contacts, that’d save the day.
I think mass adoption of VR is the next big thing. We're 2 or 3 generations of GPU advancements and maybe 3-4 years away in price reductions due to scales of economy from your Grandma being able to pick up a headset at BestBuy for $200, plugging it into her laptop, and jumping right into any number high res VR activities.
As it stands, you need a $700+ PC or 1500$+ laptop and 400$+ headset to enjoy a relatively seamless VR experience.
Oct '21 edit: This did not age well.
IMO (in the next 15-35 years), along with gene editing/CRISPR as said by @vaddi, artificial wombs. Artificial wombs, once produced could effectively make parenthood useless and allow for mass/factory-like production of people, which has far reaching implications for the bottom layer/bedrock of our society, which is us. This, under capitalism would effectively make the amount of people in earth a corporate decision.