NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer • Hacker News Board

Re: NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer

#41

Post by MartinCron » Tue, May 21, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #31

DanI-S wrote: post #26

If anyone is interested by the edible insects concept touched upon here, check out our company Tiny Farms ( http://www.tiny-farms.com ). We're one of a handful of US companies doing real work in this area. Alongside our research, tooling and outreach work, we've actually managed to feed Dave McClure a waxworm-filled Baklava: http://www.tiny-farms.com/2013/04/tiny-farms-in-zagat/

I suppose maybe one day we will see people eating insects as a regular part of their diet. But personally insects on food makes me vomit, not salivate.

I tried to re-frame it as eating arthropods instead of eating insects. We already eat crabs and lobsters, which are just very large wet bugs.

Re: NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer

#42

Post by X4 » Tue, May 21, 2013, 9:27 PM UTC

In 30 Years:

   Son: Mum, my Food toner is empty!
   Mum: I'm sorry we can't afford a new one, share with your sister!
   Imperator: Let's invent chips for food-toners that force stupid consumers to buy new ones before their toner is actually empty!
   Ministers: Yes, Oh Lord! Can we also throw out a new toner model every quarter that is incompatible to the last one.
   Imperator: I agree my followers! Keep the technology the same, renovating our fabrics is out of question.
   Ministers: Oh great Imperator this is a great idea, we order it to be done by this month.
   Dad: Oh world, why did our Grandads trust the Sci-Fi paroles of the United Companies Associations and didn't see the slavery it brought us coming..
   Grandpa: Dear son, it looked so promising and fascinating when the foundations of this technology were born. We were simply confirmed in our dreams by reality, this feeling was too strong to become aware of it's implications.

I don't want to sound too skeptic, because I actually hope that they invent the universal replicator, tricorder, warp-drive, universal-translator, deflectors, AI, Isolinear-Chips, etc. but we all know it is very important when an invention is born and who is belongs to. Remember E=mc²

Re: NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer

#43

Post by contingencies » Wed, May 22, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

On the solving world hunger meme, check out 'Permaculture', which could be reasonably summarized as applying the same type of systematic thinking we deploy in the computer world to natural systems for the production of food, energy and other resources. This movement is fairly old (late 60s/early 70s) but is experiencing a renaissance at present. Coupled with the greater geographic reach of the internet and the cheaper price of off-grid power supplies today, it is really something many hackers might enjoy taking a look at. After all, vast expanses of natural land you can live on and still derive income (eg. with a long-haul wireless link) are undervalued by the rest of the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

Oh, and injecting 'nutrients' is not realistic in the range we require. For a somewhat loaded example, a typical mushroom has hundreds of organic compounds that we have no idea about, but are rapidly discovering have great benefit to us. Fungi and animalia have recently been confirmed in mainstream science to be the same evolutionary lineage; as such they possess millions of years of evolution producing great anti-bacterial and anti-cancerous properties; they can even eat radiation!

Re: NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer

#44

Post by madaxe » Wed, May 22, 2013, 9:23 AM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #32

madaxe wrote: post #3

Sweet, but ending hunger is incompatible with profit, and this will therefore die a sad little death as it gets legislated into oblivion, if it gets anywhere near gaining traction (which it won't, you just know Monsanto and friends will run a massive PR campaign about how synthesised food is terrorism, GMO is freedom, etc.).

Ending hunger is quite likely to lead to a nice profit as dead people don't buy anything. The only reason we haven't ended hunger yet is that the poor people are too poor and have too horrible governments to be able to produce things we value enough to buy from them.

This isn't the view taken by the worlds agribusinesses - they want enhanced shareholder value, NOW, not in 30 years time, not in a century. It's utterly irrational, but the current global stratagem seems to be:

1) Ruin the planet 2) Profit 3) ???