101–110 of 1001 posts
Large-scale seawater desalination.
Elderly care... in fact this pandemic showed precisely the opposite: our elders were neglected, converted into a statistic that dies more then young people. A complete lack of humanity in a lot of developed countries. This is the example we gave to the upcoming generations, we're fucked when it's our turn lol. I've been reflecting a lot on this, and thinking of ways to solve this, but it's not easy - it's bigger than…
I realize that a fully-general voice interface is an "AI-hard" problem, but surely we can improve over what's on the market now?
Computing tools for non—programmers. In the early days of computing, we quickly came up with the spreadsheet and the user-friendly relational database (Access, FileMaker). Then we just sort of stopped. The no-code thing today is a step in that direction, but we could do so much better. I’m actually ashamed of the software industry that we have done so poorly at this.
Voice interfaces. We have Siri and Alexa, yes, but they're very limited -- they just have a list of pre-programmed tasks they know how to do. I realize that a fully-general voice interface is an "AI-hard" problem, but surely we can improve over what's on the market now?
Regenerating top soil. We have degraded 1/3 of the top soil in the last 150 years. At the current rate, we won't be able to grow food in 60 years. This is a significant threat to our food production capabilities as a planet, and has severe 2nd, 3rd degree repercussions as well. At the moment, agroforestry and syntropic farming are the only large scale solutions, but they need mass adoption. https://www.scientificamer…
First of all, it may take a 1000 years to naturally create topsoil, but that's not our problem. We have topsoil and can make topsoil much much faster. So how do we preserve, and continue to create topsoil faster than it is depleted.
What is top soil? A collection of macro and micronutrients, microorganisms, and organic matter in the first 5-10 inches of soil. Essentially, its compost.
Traditional farming depletes topsoil because it takes more than it gives. By traditional, I mean subsistence up until early industrial. After we figured out that plants need food, and supplemented it accordingly, the draining of nutritive value of the topsoil largely ended 100 years ago.
However, industry brought about destructive methods such as deforestation and deep tillage which increase erosion. Even if you are adding in enough inputs to balance out what your crops are taking, erosion may simply sweep away your 5-10 inches of good soil. However, in the last 40 years, tiling and no-til methods have vastly improved this. No-til and more efficient combines have also much improved soil organic matter (which take decades to build, but not 1000s of years).
In general. Yes, the erosion of soil is the erosion of civilization, but don't believe the media hype. Farmers aren't dumb, they are incentivized to manage their soil as best they can.
Actual, practical human longevity improvement. It seems ridiculous how small of a healthcare tech niche this is given the potential impact.