Emerging technologies and early adoptions are our current day science fiction. Every day I stumble across something that makes me just sit back and say “wow” at human innovation, and the potentials we are unlocking for ourselves.
Following that thought process, I would like to share with you a few of the things that I am really looking forward to, or have been amazed by. A lot of these are new ideas, some barely beyond the drawing board, and as such I can’t comment on the how or why.
I’ll start with Google Glass. Google is one of my favourite companies; they support open source sharing of ideas. They have recently announced they are allowing the majority of their patents to be used without fear of being sued, as long as you are not generating a profit from them.
Google Glass is a futuristic take on a pair of glasses. You wear the frames and they provide a data overlay for environment. Say you are on a vacation to Scotland and you are looking at Edinburgh Castle: Google Glass could provide historical information. Or let’s say you are out shopping for groceries and need an idea for dinner: look at the item you want to cook, and Google Glass could display a list of recipes. Read more at google.com/glass/start .
Then there’s graphene, modern science’s new wonder material. The more I read about this stuff, the more my brain boggles at the possibilities. Graphene is a material constructed of pure carbon, with its atoms in a single layer sheet, allowing an amazing size to weight ratio. One square metre of graphene weighs only 0.77 milligrams! Currently, graphene is praised for its thermal conductivity, energy storage as a capacitor, and even as a replacement for silicon in solar panels! One lab even made a set of earphones out of it! Watch this: wimp.com/supersupercapacitor
This last item is an older technology that keeps evolving into some more spectacular. Cochlear implants are devices that allow people to hear. Maybe you were born deaf and want to hear, or maybe you lost your hearing in accident. The newest versions of this technology are surgically installed sub-dermally, leaving almost no external signs they are there. I’m a big audio guy: I love listening to music, or just the nuance and tone of a person’s voice extolling the virtues of something they are passionate about. That’s why this interest me so much! And you get great videos like this: wimp.com/hearingherself .
