When we think of technology, we usually tend to think of its development as straight line. As much as we might need ipad repair or cell phone repair on a daily basis, we tend to think of the technology itself as constantly improving. There’s a relationship built into our cultural minds about the advancement of our machines and the progress we are making in a society. This is an interesting relationship but it’s not as old as you might think. Many societies even a short fifty to one hundred years ago didn’t view this progress as necessary and therefore didn’t constantly strive towards it. It’s only now, in our industrialized, near post scarcity world that we’ve made this connection. This, of course, leads up to a debate about whether it’s all worth it or not. Yes, we have ipad repair, but was so rapid advancement worth the pollution and the suffering it caused? These are big questions and there are no easy answers but the consensus seems to be yes. The acceleration of science and industry has lifted millions out of poverty, provided education and broken social barriers for thousands of disenfranchised groups. Though there are problems, we can absolutely fix them if we just focus on ourselves and the future we want to build. What follows are a few cool technologies that are coming down the pipe that make work to ameliorate all the problems that industrialization has caused.
- Genetic engineering
The eponymous ipad repair or cell phone screen repair is important, of course, but there are other, more subtle and strange technologies that also need our attention. Genetic engineering is a controversial topic and we don’t have time to cover all the questions here but there are a few definitive and positive things we can expect out of this industry in the coming decades. First let’s talk about technologies like crispr. Crispr is a system that lets doctors and scientists edit base genes in an easy and efficient fashion. This is huge but there’s no way to really overstate just how huge this is. Scientists are currently conducting conferences based solely around huge this development actually is. The ability to do this, to change and edit genes, has unlimited potential for all sorts of medicine, from cancer research to organ transplants to broken limbs. It will help alleviate the suffering of millions who deal with chronic pain and chronic disease. There are a ton of questions that have to be asked and there’s no way to downplay them. That’s true. This isn’t a basic cell phone repair service. People aren’t cell phones, after all. But if there’s a huge potential to help people, then science and industry ought to go for it.
Self driving cars
Another popular future technology topic right now is the reality of self driving cars. As far flung or futuristic as self driving cars might sound, the truth is that they are already here, in some limited capacity. There are certain cities that have public self driving cars for testing. There are self driving trucks that have been successfully tested on cross country drives. They are already here and being tested in open world settings for a potential future industry. Of course, making sure self driving cars are safe isn’t quite the same as running ipad repair services. Like crispr, self driving cars are going to be intimate and difficult, a technology that holds lives in its hand while it is functioning. Before they release self driving cars for public sale, they are going to want to make sure they work at one hundred percent capacity. There’s no way to understate just how important this testing is and it’s going to last for a while. Most predictions put self driving cars at a functional market reality in the next fifteen to twenty years. Even then, this a time frame open to those who would be able to afford them which is going to be a limited market at first. It’ll be open only to the rich and the lucky. But slowly, this and other new technologies will emerge to make lives better. It’s only a matter of time and methodical patience.
