Why do we need smart tattoos and slingshot machines?

Only one who commits wholeheartedly to a cause with whole strength and soul can create a true technology. Therefore, new technology demands all from a person. New technology and devices are becoming everyday tools to enrich our existence. These attractive devices are a reflection of creativity, products of focus, and tools to add value in the society. Our brain craves novelty, therefore, many technologies are growing and impacting our lives exponentially. We wouldn’t discover new things if existing things captivated and attracted us for longer periods. Only completely new devices or technology activate our brain and increase our level of dopamine.

Faster and safer technologies are today’s need to cope with ever-growing population. The question is why we need exponential growth of technology? There is a very clear answer by Peter Diamandis in book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.” If we look back at the history, it took 123 years to double 1 billion population to around 2 billion. But it took only 33 years to add another one billion, and surprisingly only 14 years to add 4th billion. Today, in the middle of 2019, we have around 7.8 billion people on the planet and it is projected that it would be around 10 billion by 2050. Can we sustain this growth considering our resources in perspective?

Thinking innovation is only half of the game and it is pretty much old schooling because its usefulness is the new school of technology. One way to see this challenge is how can we maximize human’s superpower brain for more useful technologies. There is a huge difference between unique innovation and useful innovation. We definitely need more of useful innovation to prosper. And, more importantly, how to connect this brain to more useful technology so that unseen resources and potentials could be target. Our brain can conceive and believe anything. It is actually two million years old and is so vital that it is the source of keen specialized knowledge economy. The key question is are we ready to invest in superhuman brain who specialize unthinkable and unimaginable.

As Stephen Covey said, the best way to predict our future is to create it. We have to make our planet livable. UN’s climate study panel has concluded that the world has to remove at least 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere this century and Harvard climate scientist David Keith is developing direct air capture technique (carbon dioxide catcher) to pull carbon dioxide off the atmosphere. Needless to say, Ray Kurzweil from Google gave us Siri in our iPhone, and Craig Venter, a human genome pioneer, gave us artificial life. Breakthrough in technology happens when great minds change impossible to possible.

Very soon, mobile phone would be outdated, and we will be moving to wearables and implantables as seen in Hollywood movies. Smart monitoring treats diseases in real time and we can use cyber-implants that are directly connected to smartphone apps. Smart tattoos bring microparticles that can be infused under the skin like tattoo and track body’s chemistry. Cyber-pills work with microprocessors which directly communicate with doctors from inside your body. The expansion of this kind of technology will become normal in near future.

Slingshot machine is a small refrigerator that vaporizes dirty water and provides safe and clean drinking water. Its inventor Dean Kamen, an engineer, inventor, and businessman explained that this machine needs no overhaul or maintenance for five years of operation and uses less than a kilowatt of power to generate 1000 liters of pure water per day. This power is lower than the power consumption of a microwave oven. Thousand liters water is enough for 100 people for hygiene and cooking.

Furthermore, vertical farming is another technology where we can grow plants vertically, and also grow meat without killing animals. It is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and integrated in other structures like skyscraper and shipping container. In-vitro cloning of muscle tissue in computerized factories brings lower costs and high nutritional values. There is no environmental impact because there is no insecticides and pollution.

We have to nurture these technological explosions as tools to cope the growing population on the planet. If the population explosion continues like this, we need deliberate great minds to try something new that has never been done before to direct against existing saturation. Any new jump into the unknown is called reckless science but that’s where the human progress lies.

-Yam Timsina