The Future of This Year and Beyond

I'm kind of down in the dumps again. I was actually looking forward to returning to work this past Monday to keep from stagnating anymore inside. I welcomed it as a definite mark of reaching near recovery. I suppose I was a bit delusional about it. More than one person observing me commented that I'm probably not ready to return yet. A recent sinus infection has been stifling me, and has set me a few squares backward in the recovery game. With this current cold snap, straining myself to breathe the super-chilled -30 to -45 degree air while doing some trips outside has been doing no favours for me either. It has been difficult, and I'm back to gasping for breath, and tiring very easily. This morning, I could barely crawl out of bed; not that there was anything pressing to crawl to and attend to. It was -30 °C this morning with an even more ridiculous wind chill: same as it has been for the past while since the day after New Year's Day.
 
As last year has been a period of pronounced frustrations, stress, and hardships, I haven't bothered to fashion an entry about the year in review of 2014 as I have with other years. It's nothing I want to regale here now. I reviewed back to the beginnings of last year, and the year before that, and noted that there sure hasn't been a good start to any of them. The notable thing that was happening after reviewing those times was a pattern straining myself to be active when I was indeed ailing, or ill with some damn thing. This year I'm going to make it point not to be that stupid again. There was nothing heroic in doing so, and all it has seemed to do was incur and beget more trouble and misery.

The one sensible thing I did at the beginning of the year was to hoard a huge stack of my favourite magazines* from my nearest library. I made a point to list and note all the things of science and technical innovation that I will be hoping and wishing for in the near future. If these things actually come to fruition, it will actually give me some optimism for us a human species.

1. Plastic from Thin Air: It basically involves taking captured industrial/agricultural gases like waste methane and other hydrocarbons, and processing them through a bioreactor, using enzymes to create plastic polymers rather than relying on petroleum by-products to produce them. The petroleum-based plastic productions create pollution; the making of plastics from methane capture reduces greenhouse gas and reduces pollution. Stick that up your ass, Big Oil!
   
    
2. Cleaner and Cheaper Energy Storage: One of the bigger hurdles there is to sell green and renewable energy as viable alternatives to the paradigm we have now is the fact that energy storage of wind/solar energy requires piles and batteries that themselves are made of toxic substances, and are just as taxing to the environment for their production. There is now the Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI) battery than relies on salt water based electrolytes to use for that. On top of being non-toxic, it is also relatively cheap and can be set up in a scalable modular fashion, and doesn't risk overheating. It is versatile enough to be used within a home or on the grid.
    
3. Robo-Crabs: This sounds like some sort of exotic super-mutated affliction you might get after visiting in a brothel in Tokyo. Actually, it is a robotic development in Korea where they've made six-legged, ¾ tonne, walking robots that can crawl along the sea bottom of previously unexplored places. They are equipped with such features as 11 cameras, sonar, and a Doppler array that can accurately chart the sea floor and monitor currents. Exploration is all fine and good, but what I would like to see them outfitted for is the ability to do deep sea salvage, and to be able to have some role in cleaning up some of the millions of metric tonnes of toxic junk and contaminants we've already thrown in this world's oceans.
   
    
4. Self-Fueling Ships: One factor of the expense of a shipped product is always the fuel used to transport the car, computer, or other thing-a-ma-doodle from their production centres, like for example in Asia, across the Pacific, and to the ports here. If you checked your globe or atlas lately, the Pacific Ocean is a pretty friggin' huge expanse, and getting stuff across it from point to point gulps up a lot of oil per shipment. What if then something else amazing can happen, like a ship that has its own power generation plant on it that can produce its own fuel right from the seawater itself, not needing to carry along any dirty petroleum? This research and development is happening right now with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, known as it is right now as Electro-chemical Acidification Carbon Capture, and they are making commercial grade fuel this way. The process involves, like making plastic from air as I mentioned earlier, taking carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and hydrogen, and with a catalytic process, the ship makes its own fuel from that stuff found in the seawater. What I don't know is how the rate of production to the rate of consumption ratio is within such a system. If it allows for a completely self-sufficient system, and can even produce more fuel than it consumes, this would be a revolutionary thing. The potential for this as I see it is:
   1. Less dependence on foreign-oil from unfriendly nations if there is no longer a need to dock at these places halfway around the world to refuel.
   2. A greatly reduced need for military spending, because as it is now with the U.S. Navy at least, the military cost of securing corridors to import oil from regions from the Middle East greatly surpasses the actual value of the oil tanked and shipped through these shipping lanes.**
   3. If the model of this sort of cargo ship is such that there a constantly running plant for making fuel, and a reduced need for actual fuel storage, more space on the ship can be utilized for loading on more cargo, thus there is more logistical efficiency. If the ship somehow has maritime accident where the hull is breached, there is then less stored fuel being dumped back into the sea, thus a lessened risk of an environmental disaster.
   4. The use of harvesting ships/plants with this technology to mass-produce surplus fuel (if possible), so that there is a less energy consumption (more passive way) to glean (renewable) fuel directly from the ocean, instead of environmentally destructive exploration, water diversion/contamination through processes like fracking, and reduced drilling through land and seafloor to get at it.
   5. This technology actually absorbs CO₂ and thus helps to prevent global warming, or at least reduces the carbon footprint.
      
       
5. The Solar Roadway: It's incredible to think of how much actual space we have dedicated just to drive on and reserve for parking our vehicles, and all the rest of that time that a road surface isn't used it just lies there being exposed to the sun, growing and producing nothing. Why can't we multi-use these roadways and parking lots to serve us with harvesting energy? Think about how many square meters of roadway there is in your general area alone. Well someone has already thought of that and is working on a solution. There is development going on right now for the implementation of photovoltaic cells that collectively act as an actual road surface, that not only collect and covert solar energy, but these cells networked together can potentially do to the following things:
   1. De-icing roads and reducing the need for deploying and powering snow-removal equipment, and less fuel to be used for surface maintenance and applying salt and grit.
   2. You could actually recharge an electric vehicle with passive solar power in the very spot you park, extending the range of your E-car within and throughout the city you are using it in where these are equipped.
   3. Powering Signage, and through a traffic computer network, power LEDs to create messages to apprise motorists of adverse road conditions ahead using the road surface itself.
   4. Animated markings and road warnings that are triggered with foot traffic and the crossing of cattle and larger wildlife like deer. It would protect both the motorist and the wildlife, saving countless lives and many millions of dollars, and spares us all irreparable damage to the natural habitant from the loss of many creatures. The downside is that this might have some Hill-Billy Rednecks being upset and disappointed that there is less road kill to scoop up off the highways for some vittles.
   5. Since the road itself is already based on a network, it can be used as a default pre-existing conduit to conduct and transmit power and use fibre-optics to boost communications/internet connectivity, without extra cost or needing to claim more land to build separate infra-structures for such things.
      
       
6. Improved Virtual Reality Platforms: I've been long hoping for the day that VR technology will become more sophisticated and dynamically interactive, so integrative and vivid to the senses, and most importantly affordable that it will become more practical on a household. I think the amount of unnecessary travel time and costs it will save, there will be no risk of lost luggage when you want to tour the Louvre. I can't even find the right words to pluck the ideas from my imagination as to what will happen with online shopping, architectural design, fully-immersive game experiences, and other alternative virtual lifestyle scenarios. The technology that will help enable this is the new 360fly Camera, which records video in a 360 degree space, and 240 degree up and down field which will make for a completely immersive video experience. I think Facebook will really amp up R&D and make huge strides with this technology this year after settling in with their acquisition of Oculus Rift. Google and Samsung is really. I think I'll be buying stock in this stuff, plus investing in Depends adult diapers, because you'll indeed be needing them after playing around in the more dramatic and vivid scenes with this stuff.
   
    
7. 3D Printing: It's becoming more than just some fad now for model makers and geeky hobbyists fashioning chess sets. A functional electric car has now been 3D printed. For now on a domestic level, if there is anything that isn't strictly material composition dependent around the home, this is going to be a huge game-changer. Homes themselves may soon become 3D printed, as predicted by futurist and social engineer, Jacque Fresco. Using organic matrices, collagen, and living stem cells, the prospect of printing replacement organs is coming closer to a reality.
8. Aerial Drones (UAVs): It is interesting seeing these develop, but they are last on this list because I see them being mostly on the bad side of the double-edged sword of technology if placed in the hands of the common public. For law enforcement, I see them as being valuable tools for surveying accident scenes, and maybe tracking/pursuit of marked criminals, as they are a lot cheaper than helicopters. However, I can also see them being used in questionable and wrongful purposes by law-enforcement, like equipping them with teargas or pepper spray canisters to intimidate or discharge on peaceful protesters. For commercial use, it may be an instantaneous, and as-the-crow-flies way to transport smaller objects, but for now their relatively short range, glitch-fill guidance systems, and their vulnerability to bad weather still makes them a questionable choice to use for a quick and reliable delivery service. I certainly don't see them as being cost effective enough yet for an average company to deploy them. I haven't yet heard of any overwhelming positive feedback about Amazon's trial use of them. They are, however, making big steps into having these things more maneuverable, simplified, and function more autonomously for civilian use, and that's what scares me about them. The ones with the cameras mounted on them make my cringe when I think about all the different ways they could be used intrusively and to violate others' privacy. In the wrong hands, I see them being more dangerous than handguns. They aren't regulated, and there is nothing to stop some terrorist or some other demented, Unibomber-esque type of psycho-bozo out there to equip one with an incendiary or explosive device, or to use it as some other kind of weaponized platform and fly it into God-knows-where. Then again, that already happens with conventional vehicles, however this way though seems just a little more treacherous and insidious because it is capable of an extra vertical axis for destruction, and capable of being maneuvered into previously hard to access places.  

So here is a scene I can imagine happening with these innovations, within the next decade, put in the context in a contrasting comparison of the experience of what I went through while shopping recorded in the last entry.
 
Let's say that it is -35° C, like it was on the day of my last entry. You are strongly disinclined to tax yourself and your vehicle to make a shopping trip, so you slip on your VR goggles (#6). Even in -35, the power to run the computer and VR peripherals is banked solar energy stored in the home battery (# 2). You now walk through the virtual showroom, of let's say, IKEA. You find some object, and can you can get a better sense of function and dimensions of objects when you now explore through online shopping. Maybe you'll chat a bit with the fellow consumers/avatars as you shop. If you don't speak each other's language in real life, the VR will compensate and translate the dialogues between you and others simultaneously. As you shop, you could then simply import a sample copy of a virtual object temporarily and place into an exact virtual augmented reproduction of your real living space for a comparison and "feel" before you make up your mind to buy it (the real object to occupy your real space). You even have the option to scale the object larger or smaller, or change the patterns and colours as you see fit. The (real) object's material composition, dimensions, and weight are such that when you decide to buy it, you have the options of A.) to use a drone(#8) to deliver your purchase to you (or to the nearest distribution center with a dronepad at its shipping depot, where then a regular delivery truck service may relay it to you within a day), or B.) have the form plan downloaded directly to your own 3D printer, and for a reduced price that excludes material and shipping, having the object made there at your home, also within a day. You select option B. The plastic filament loaded in your 3D printer to make your salt and pepper shakers, or whatever, is locally produced from a bioreactor stationed at a manure lagoon (#1) at a dairy farm. Speaking of dairy farms, I need in both this scenario and in real life.
 
Your electric (or hybrid) car, or possibly the vehicle that may deliver your milk to you, was being charged by #5, and even though it's -35 outside, the roads are clear and de-iced. The battery in the electric car is a lithium-manganese composite. The manganese was harvested from nodules gathered from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, harvested by Robo-Crabs (#3), and thus have been made much cheaper to manufacture. The operational platform for this mining project was a ship that produced its own fuel (#4). Another such ship that re-supplies it is a modular cargo vessel, a concept by Jacque Fresco, where one module exchanges the manganese nodules for sustenance, meanwhile the other separate and modulated cargo units split off from the "mother ship" which is anchored or stationed at the most logistically ideal launch point for maximum efficiency and economy, and they scatter to deliver, exchange, and return with their particular consignments nearly simultaneously to Manila, Jakarta, Seoul, wherever they are conveniently needed within that region, rather than having that one ship slowly and serially visit and waste precious time loading/unloading and refueling at each separate destination port, spending less time at sea. Each reloaded modular pod ship would then rendezvous and reattach to the mother ship before it collectively returns to its home port.***

It is fun to imagine and speculate how developments like the ones I listed, how combined together and made to work synergistically, and paint a whole picture of what living on this globe could look like. In these few paragraphs alone, I think I just theoretically reduced the world's reliance on petroleum through alternative energy, and reduced and rectified shipping by a grand percentage, as well as cleaned up some greenhouse gas to boot. I hope I live long enough to see such improvements happen.

*- As nice and easy as it is to download things on an e-reader or laptop, I still like and appreciate the old-fashioned method of reading and turning of physical pages. Plus, using the public library is a free pleasure we should never take for granted. The magazines I chose were: Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Make: magazine.
**- Because this is being developed by the US Navy, its first deployment will most likely be destined and claimed for some insidious and low-brow barbaric military utilization, all guised in the name of defense. The proof of how wasteful military spending gets is pretty much self-evident as indicated in this one point here.
*** - It shows how stupid we are in allowing our governments, military, and policy makers to get with destructive power when we've sort of already developed a model for a multiple simultaneous delivery system like this for the function of laser-guided bombs and nuclear warheads (MIRVs), but failed to orchestrate such a system that benefits us as a model for more efficient commercial shipping.