Big questions for the future

The Big Questions Contests aim to expand Quora’s already marvelous system for posing quandaries and getting fascinating answers.  

For example “How can we prevent runaway AI (Artificial Intelligence) from becoming a dystopian threat to humanity?”  Interesting discussions!  My own suggestion – unlike any other – was re-published on Forbes, in an article titled: The one thing we need to stop robots from achieving world domination.

Another Quora contest question asks: “What technological changes will create the most opportunities for new startups over the next 2-3 years?” My answer?

I believe the nearest and most blatantly obvious, transformational shift will come from the micro-biome. Within two to five years there will be an end to voodoo-guesswork-yoghurt-based "probiotics." They will be replaced by far more specific and well-understood implantations we can add to our digestive tracts (from both directions), as well as skin and other crevices, with major effects on individual and mass health.

Why so quickly? Because although there is a dizzying array of these firmicutes and other bacterial genuses in our guts and skin etc... the variety is actually fairly limited and very, very linear. Various versions of Moore's Law (in computation, sensing, genetic analysis) will cross the microbiome's complexity in very rapid order. Big studies - some already underway - will nail down how these bug-zoos correlate with your genes, body type, heredity, diet......and truly useful prescriptions and lifestyle and diet recommendations will issue forth quite rapidly, enabling us to both add beneficial microbiota and target species that currently wreak harm. For example by forcing upon us low-level, erosive inflammations.

There are many other biomedical miracles on the horizon, of course. But most of those -- in the genome, proteome, regulatome, connectome and so on -- get exponentially more complex as we dive in. Hence, our tools must improve at an ever-increasing rate, just to keep stepping forward. The same appears not to be true of the microbiome, whose linearity and limited needed dataset make me certain it will se amazing developments in just 3-5 years.

== More opportunities on the tech horizon ==

Where should we look for the next Silicon Valley? What industries will survive -- and which are likely to perish in the near future? In his new book, Industries of the Future, Alex Ross peers ahead to the next decade to identify major global trends and technological forces driving innovation and pervasive social change. Openness and transparency will be critical requirements for success in both business and government. Ross notes, "the 21st century is a terrible time to be a control freak," for the next stage for innovation is more likely to arise in "50 different versions of Silicon Valley, all unique from each other and all focusing on different domains."

How soon will we see workable brain - computer interfaces?  The first dry-electrode, portable and commercially off the shelf 64-channel wearable brain-computer interface (BCI) has been developed by bioengineers and cognitive scientists associated with UCSD Jacobs School. Obama's Brain Mapping Project seeks to better understand and map the neural activity of the brain. Meanwhile, Harvard is trying to build an AI as fast as the human brain.

Is evolution in the natural world at all “tendentious” (directional)… or even propulsive… in directions that might be called “intelligent?  A computer scientist and a biologist propose to unify the theory of evolution with learning theories to explain the “amazing, apparently intelligent designs that evolution produces.” 

Meanwhile, human design work looks more like nature. Drone evolution moves quickly, with now an ecological niche for predatory “falcons” -- a drone catcher that can pursue and capture rogue drones that might threaten military installations, air traffic, sporting events, and even the White House.  Wow, watch it spit a net over the intruder and draw it in.  I want one!

How do parts of the brain communicate? With around 200 billion neurons in a single human brain, and the possibility of hundreds of thousands of synapse connections from a single neuron, the brain can process a vast amount of information. Yet, a hundred trillion active synapses aren’t all there is.  We now know that there is chemical information exchange between neurons and neighboring glial or astrocyte cells.  Also there is increasing evidence suggesting that intracellular computing may take place, perhaps as many as a hundred thousand transactions per synapse flash.  Is that plenty?  Well, now research suggests that we may use electrical fields to communicate information across different sections of the brain.  Well, well, some of us expected this.  Take the “standing wave” of consciousness that I speculate about, in both EARTH and KILN PEOPLE.

== And more science still! ==

How has quantum mechanics expanded our understanding of time and the cosmos? My friend and colleague John Cramer’s new book on the translational interpretation of quantum mechanics, entitled The Quantum Handshake- Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions has just been published by Springer (ISBN: 978-3-319-24640-6). It is available at the Springer website or on Amazon.

Researchers have developed a remarkable new injectable bone foam that not only repairs bone damage but also allows bone formation.  

Kyocera's fourth floating solar power plant in Japan will suspend modules on the surface of a reservoir. It’s the latest in a series of innovative solar plants, such as India's solar powered airport and ambitious plan to cover canals with sun-harvesting panels. 

Prehistoric massacres... Wow, archaeological proof of how far back go our ways of war. Of 12 relatively complete skeletons recently unearthed at the shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, 10 showed unmistakable signs of violent death, the scientists said. Partial remains of at least 15 other persons were found at the site and are thought to have died in the same attack.

Woven nano-materials may have a wide variety of uses that require exceptional resiliency, strength and flexibility. 

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has awarded a $1 million grant to UCSD to develop new skin-wearable systems that can rapidly and efficiently detect chemical and biological agents.  The proposed wearable epidermal sensors will also be equipped with therapeutic agents that are released upon detection of the chemical and biological threats.

See the extent of warming of the oceans. The actual, non-fox’d science. 

But of course the real alarm bell is ocean acidification.  It is utterly demonstrable, clearly happening and no one has even proposed a reason, other than human generated CO2.  Denialist cultists hurry to change the subject, whenever the words “ocean acidification” come up. Try it and watch what happens! Sane people need to start using those words more often! 

Heck it’s getting so blatant that even Forbes is allowing articles like this one, showing that science and denialism are opposites, at least when it comes to the oceans.  When this happens on Forbes, you know that some folks in the oligarchy have started realizing, they need the planet, too. 

. . ...a collaborative contrarian product of David Brin, Enlightenment Civilization, obstinate human nature... and http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ (site feed URL: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/atom.xml)