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Have you ever catch yourself regularly mentioning technologies like Quantum, Graphene, Digital Twins and most recently Meta (Facebook) over the dinner and among friends and have become the go – to person for questions about future innovations? These technologies no longer hold any secret for us and we heard, seen them a lot.
Technology, is ever – changing, and this precious knowledge must be both managed and updated all the time. With this in mind, let’s explore and put together with you friends, the order of technologies that are likely to make big waves and huge impact on our lives, however are not on the public network radar as of today.
#1. Zero – knowledge proof
Computer scientists are perfecting a “cryptographic tool” we could use to prove something without revealing the information underlying the proof. It sounds incredible, however, not impossible once you wrap your head around the concept and the fact that it is a bit more complex than saying “Come on brother, you know I am good for it”.
Let’s simplify through an example.
Imagine, a man, John Doe has a blind friend Jane Doe. He also has in his possession two marbles of different colors, though they are identical in shape and size. Jane puts them behind her back and shows one to John. She then does it again, either changing the marble or showing the same thing once again, asking if this is the same as the marble previously shown. If John were guessing whether it was the same or not, he would have a 50/50 chance of getting it right, so she does it again, many times. Because John sees the marbles’ colors, he gets it right each time, and the chance that the guessed lucky diminishes. Jane thus knows that John knows which marble is the original shown without her ever knowing the color of any of the marbles. Boom, zero – knowledge proof! Obviously, it all gets mathematic and cryptographic from here, however you get the gist.
How it can affect and change the world?
It is easy to come up with cool use cases, for instance, if an application needs to know that you have enough money to put a transaction through: your bank could communicate that yes, that is the case, without giving an amount. It could also help identify a person without a birth certificate, allow someone to enter a restricted web resource without needing to display their date of birth or help with nuclear disarmament. Additionally, it could provide proof of a crypto – currency transaction without revealing its amount, as BitCoin does, and always will be.
Resource: Wikipedia
#2. 20 – minute Water
Not all technology needs to be high; there is often something rather elegant in low – technology solutions to complex issues. 20 – minute water is one of these solutions, promising to provide clean drinking water to the masses. All one needs to do, is soak a piece of cotton (which is highly conductive) for 20 minutes in an inexpensive solution containing carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, then connect to it two electric wires to pass a little current through it. Twenty volts is enough to instantly electrocute bacteria and make the water passing through this filter drinkable, without the need for the electricity – thirsty pumps that are used throughout the developing world. The silver then nullifies anything that is not been killed by the electrical current.
How it can affect and change the world?
We can save remote areas where people do not have access to chemical treatments such as chlorine and they are mostly developing countries. It could save some of the 300 000 children under 5 who die worldwide every year because of waterborne diseases such as the cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis. It could also help some of the 2.2 billion people who do not have a wastewater treatment system.
Resource: Stanford News
#3. Robotic bees
It is not great out there, climate – wise. And that is killing bees, which we need to pollinate 35% of our crops, which we also need for food, for not being dead. Are we going to stop climate change to save the bees, I guess we can’t and that is not how we roll. Instead, we are possible going to create robotic bees to pollinate plants just as the real things do.
Find out how Walmart did it. Details are scarce, however, most researchers estimate, that the bees would work by attaching horse hair coated with ionic liquid gel to a tiny drone. The hair, picks – up pollen from one flower, and moves it to next one. Researchers at Harvard have long been working on “RoboBees” using such techniques. What Walmart offers on top, is a wide array of sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence to locate the relevant crops and pollinate them as needed.
How it can affect and change the world?
Costs. Operating such a technology will make us see autonomous insect pollinate large fields in the coming years, which could save thousands of farmers from ruin, and ensure we can still have almond milk on the shelves.
Resource: The Wall Street Journal
#4. Two – Photon Lithography
3D printing is still a solution looking for a problem, having failed to find its target audience over the past decade. On the one hand, 3D printers are still too expensive for the average John Doe; on the other hand, they are not sophisticated and fast enough for large – scale manufacturing companies. This may change over the next few years: researchers have developed a method that uses lasers to project millions of points simultaneously onto 3D – printing material, instead of using one point at a time. And because they are bad at branding, they called it “Femtosecond Projection TPL”. To easily understand FP-TPL, simply imagine using a million heated needles to strategically melt a block of wax versus using a single needle, which means that incredibly tiny structures can be 3D printed much faster, while still ensuring a good quality of build.
How it can affect and change the world?
Teams working on the innovation seem focused on flexible electronics and micro – optics. However, quick discoveries around materials (both liquid and solid) have led researchers to think over that we can be able to build small but imagination – baffling structures in the near future. Once the quality can be controlled over large scales, one could easily imagine this technology being used for the creation of healthcare – related nano robots, allowing for the treatment of a multitude of diseases on the molecular level.
Resource: Science Journal
#5. YOLO version 5
Real – time object detection is a technique used to detect objects from video / clip. It is the underlying technology behind… well, most things we want to use in the future, from Tesla’s self – driving cars to Amazon’s cashless stores. The YOLO “You Only Look Once” models refer to some of the most versatile and famous real – time object detection and labelling models.
The latest iteration “version 5” of the model is worthy for the couple of reasons. It is written in PyTorch, which will make its deployment to mobile a lot easier. It is also fast, pretty quick. 140 frames per second, while also preserving accuracy. Finally, YOLOv5 is nearly 90 percent smaller than YOLOv4.
How it can affect and change the world?
This innovation is important in terms of to deal with real – time analysis; detecting and labelling video files 140 times per second. For context, previous models struggled to get to 10 frames per second. At this speed, we can use AI technologies on video of fields as varied as the world of medicine or that of sport. It can also improve detecting obstacles in autonomous cars earlier to avoid even more collisions. Big deal, huh?
Resource: Github repository
What do I disagree with and what I can counterbalance?
- We have to solve the issue with zero – knowledge proof imperfection. The minimization of destroying or changing the messages while sending to verifier or prover by building knowledge around and listening to feedback from our community.
- We have mentioned the 20 – minute water technology and the amount of silver used for the the nanowires is so small the cost in negligible, and the electricity needed can be easily supplied by a small solar panel or a couple of 12 – volt car batteries. Since the filter does not trap bacteria (killing the instead), it can have much larger pores, allowing water to speed through at a more rapid rate. More than 80 000 times faster than existing filters, to be exact. And it does so without clogging, an issue which plagues existing solutions.
- I have a few gripes with Robo bees. First thing is, small budget farmers might never be able to afford robotic bees, and we would once again be empowering the BIG GUY against the little one. We also do not know how these bees would impact the fauna overall, both on and off the fields. How about if we try to save the real bees? Open – ended questions.
