List of emerging technologies • Hacker News Board

Re: List of emerging technologies

#31

Post by ippisl » Thu, May 17, 2012, 9:46 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #28

I'm actually excited about... fake meat. I think this has huge potential to reduce the amount of land and resources we need to use for agriculture. Of course, with that, will probably come an explosion in population... Any of the genetic/medical things will (IMHO) have annoyingly slow progress. The body is an incredibly complex system (duh), one I think that will defy efforts to "reverse engineer" is (so to speak). P…

Another way of replacing meat(and maybe reducing the price of food 10x and land and water use) , is using synthetic biology to manufacture the basic components of food and combine those to create tasty food[1].

The effect of this technology seem both really exciting,and really frightening(millions of the poorest losing their job).

[1]http://www.wesolveforx.com/#t=t&n=ee7350c5

Re: List of emerging technologies

#32

Post by pyre » Thu, May 17, 2012, 9:58 PM UTC

toemetoch wrote: post #21

pyre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but I was under the impression that cryogenic thawing wasn't necessarily a foolproof operation. That would seem to be to be the first step.

I was under the impression that cryogenic thawing has never been done on that level (human head).

I've only ever heard of it being attempted on animals.

Re: List of emerging technologies

#33

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 17, 2012, 10:32 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #28

I'm actually excited about... fake meat. I think this has huge potential to reduce the amount of land and resources we need to use for agriculture. Of course, with that, will probably come an explosion in population... Any of the genetic/medical things will (IMHO) have annoyingly slow progress. The body is an incredibly complex system (duh), one I think that will defy efforts to "reverse engineer" is (so to speak). P…

[deleted]

Re: List of emerging technologies

#34

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:17 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #28

I'm actually excited about... fake meat. I think this has huge potential to reduce the amount of land and resources we need to use for agriculture. Of course, with that, will probably come an explosion in population... Any of the genetic/medical things will (IMHO) have annoyingly slow progress. The body is an incredibly complex system (duh), one I think that will defy efforts to "reverse engineer" is (so to speak). P…

You know, the ability to raise animals on marginal land, land that cannot be used directly for agriculture, has historically been something that allowed herding to be a moderately ecologically friendly activity.

Some folks blame not meat but factory farmed meat for the modern epidemic in heart disease (Eskimos had a mostly meat diet with no heart disease - at least at one time). It's hard to imagine vat-meat as healthier than factory farmed meat.

Re: List of emerging technologies

#35

Post by mynegation » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:20 PM UTC

joshuahedlund wrote: post #7

Why is "reducing air pollution" a potential application of driverless cars? The other benefits allow people to driver faster and safer on the same amount of roads, but I don't see how that would encourage less driving that would lead to less air pollution. Faster driving = less gas mileage, and if driverless cars dramatically lowers the opportunity cost of driving people may be encouraged to put even more miles on th…

A lot of fuel is spent on accelerating the vehicle, much more than to sustain the speed. That is why you spend more gas driving in the city with jams and traffic lights. If every car was driven by a computer, they could in theory form a network and do for example, the perfect meshing on the intersections without stopping, only accelerating or deccelerating a little. Computers could also drive big traffic slowly but steadily without lots of starts and stops.

Re: List of emerging technologies

#36

Post by netrus » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:22 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #26

maybird wrote: post #5

This should be a great source of inspiration for any budding scifi author.

I haven't kept up with science fiction recently but I'd be surprised if most of these haven't already been written about. rec.arts.sf.* would be able to give book titles, authors, and probably page numbers too. It'd be interesting to keep the article to read it in 5 / 10 / 50 years.

Here is a 4 years old version of the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_emerging_t...

Re: List of emerging technologies

#37

Post by netrus » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:27 PM UTC

My (tech/business) University has an obligatory seminar, where all students choose an emerging technology from a similar list and try to evaluate its path to reality, influence on markets and society, etc.

We all were in awe when hearing the amazing stuff the other teams where working on – definitely one of the coolest classes I have ever taken!

Re: List of emerging technologies

#38

Post by klbarry » Thu, May 17, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC

I work for a company working on RFID (radio frequency identification technology on the wiki) for the jewelry industry. Some of the biggest wholesalers on the planet have recently bought our system and we have had requests for proposals from Rolex and more. We're currently looking for paid interns in NYC, feel free to contact.

Re: List of emerging technologies

#39

Post by drhayes9 » Fri, May 18, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #28

I'm actually excited about... fake meat. I think this has huge potential to reduce the amount of land and resources we need to use for agriculture. Of course, with that, will probably come an explosion in population... Any of the genetic/medical things will (IMHO) have annoyingly slow progress. The body is an incredibly complex system (duh), one I think that will defy efforts to "reverse engineer" is (so to speak). P…

Just to throw this out there: imagine the forces a space elevator would have to bear to be viable. Don't just imagine what acts of terror could do to it, imagine the amount of force they'd have to play with just to do anything directly to it!

"Great, now we have a space-borne cable slicing through the Earth's crust. Oops."

Re: List of emerging technologies

#40

Post by anamax » Fri, May 18, 2012, 3:17 AM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #20

Symmetry wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its quite true that driverless cars per se would have just the effects you mention. But if driverless cars mean that suddenly nobody owns a car and just rents a car from the automated taxi fleet when they need a ride we'd probably see most of them be lightweight single occupancy vehicles, meaning less pollution overall.

Right, I just realized I forgot another important effect if we go the autonomous taxi route. Currently we have somewhere around 5 parking spaces for every car. I bet we could at least cut that in half with autonomous cars, making it reasonable to develop more densely, meaning shorter driving distances, and making trains a more attractive option for some trips.

> Currently we have somewhere around 5 parking spaces for every car.

Not in the places with lots of population density.

For example, SF may have more cars than parking spaces. It certainly doesn't have 5x as many.

> I bet we could at least cut that in half with autonomous cars, making

almost no difference.

For example, I have two parking spaces. One on the street in front of my house and the other in my backyard. The latter isn't going away and the former won't make any difference.