As you read this, scientists, engineers and designers in laboratories, research facilities – and even a few garden sheds – all over the world are working away at the next emerging technologies that will change our very way of life.
5 Hot New Technologies
Here is a quick rundown of five of the most exciting emerging pieces of tech that are going to blow us all away, and change the way we see and interact with the very world around us.
1. Wireless Energy Transfer
Ok, this may be a personal bugbear of mine, but surely I can’t be alone in hating wire chargers? These days it seems as if every home in the country is near enough drowning in wires to keep all of our respective devices fully charged up and ready to go.
Wireless energy transfer, which looks like a thick, plastic mouse mat, is going to put a halt to this madness. A one-stop port to charge all of your electrical devices, with no need to plug any of them in?
2. VR Games Consoles
The virtual reality revolution is upon us – even if it hasn’t quite fully arrived. We have though come an awful long way since the days of the video game industry’s first attempts at VR.
Fully working and completely immersive VR, when it comes, will not only take gaming to the next level, it will change our interactions with a variety of media. The same way the PS2 came bundled with an integrated DVD player to smuggle the medium into our homes, so too will we learn to operate in a new VR world via our games consoles.
If you want to know what the benefits of a fully immersive VR system look like, I would suggest you read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, or watch the Black Mirror episode San Junipero.
3. Space Based Solar Energy
Heralded by many scientists as the true solution to the Earths ongoing (and likely to worsen) energy crisis. Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) will involve a fleet of satellites in Earth orbit, harvesting solar energy and beaming it back down to special receiving stations on Earth in the form of lasers, microwaves or both.
By stationing the satellite solar panels in Earth orbit, they will be far more efficient than their earth based counterparts who see up to 30% of the potential solar energy lost in the earth’s atmosphere before it can be harnessed.
This new form of energy is therefore clean, efficient and completely renewable – therefore very much a suitable fuel for a 21st century world.
4. Nanotechnology
In 2016, a new antibiotic called Teixobactin was discovered. As we speak it is still in its early testing stages, however the signs are good that it will be ready for widespread use by about 2025.
Why is this important? Because Teixobactin is the first new antibiotic to be discovered for over 30 years. Just this year, the World Heath Organization reiterated it’s warning that overuse of current antibiotics were lessening their effects, and that more and more strains of bacteria were presenting that were becoming immune to antibiotics.
Some people however maintain that we shouldn’t even bother, that it is Nanotechnology that will lead tomorrow’s fight against disease. Some scientists in fact maintain that soon nanotechnology will exist to produce devices as small as human cells, devices that can in fact be introduced into a patients bloodstream and programmed to hunt and destroy a specific virus, bacteria – perhaps even cancer cells.
5. Artificial Intelligence
A science fiction staple for many years that is slowly becoming science fact. The key problem that scientists and engineers face now is to harness the power of a AI “brain” with the ability to learn and get it attached to a sturdy enough mobile platform that actually allows it to perform physical functions too.
Overcome this, and the signs are they are close, and you have a true robot – a being with autonomous thought and the ability to carry our programmed actions. Just think of the applications, and you can see why this would be such a leap forward.
All the hottest, most dangerous jobs can be performed by AI equipped robots, as can the most boring – like house cleaning or street sweeping. Imagine, all the chores you hate doing, taken out of your hands by a helpful machine that never gets grumpy it has to empty the dishwasher or take out bins out.
- 5 Hot New Technologies That Will Change Everything - April 12, 2018