6 Exponential Technologies of Tomorrow

In my last post “6 Grand Technological Challenges for 2011 and Beyond” I summarized 6 important challenges that might impact at least one billion people’s lives over the next decade. Now, I’ve build up my preferred list of answers embracing a set of exponential technologies.

The mentioned challenges couldn’t be separated entirely and so their solutions. However, I’ve done my best to give a vivid answer to each one as far as possible. As you may see, in each of these challenges there are potential opportunities for jobseekers that may help them overcome their hiring or income obstacles. So, they are interlinked especially when considered as job openings.

The challenges embraced these areas: energy, poverty, global health, education, security, and space.

Here is a list of suggestive technologies.

1. Energy: In addition to well-known renewable sources of energy like sunlight, wind, water and so on; we should learn to think about other sources such as the kinetic energy of humans that can be collected through the materials they usually come in contact with, from floors to everyday objects, and even clothing.

The power created by an individual could operate his/her personal energy consuming devices. In a broader range, the power accumulated by a group of people (office employees, factory workers, apartment dwellers) could run a city block. The remaining problem is designing proper repositories and batteries to save unused energy for later times. We may really need what Ms. Wagner named “Energy Harvesters” in the latest issue of the Futurist (January-February 2011) in the coming years. So an energy harvester or an engineer who can design energy storage systems may be potential jobs for those who will be interested in saving energy in new ways.

2. Poverty: Poverty usually depends on unemployment. So we should think simultaneously about a dual solution.

There may be no common problem greater than unemployment in both developed and undeveloped countries. A global intelligent network of employers and potential employees (unemployed people) and new jobseekers under the UN’s supervision may seem a reasonable response to this challenge. The network will have regional and local branches equipped with proper communication technologies and sensors detecting job markets and potential candidates, bringing them through a qualifying process to a joint point: “employment”.

A second approach may be envisioned in the process of inventing new jobs. A hybrid approach composed of three elements: “retrofitting, blending and problem solving” may help both the entrepreneurs and unemployed people in defining and introducing new jobs.

Just like the problem of unemployment, this time a global intelligent network of entrepreneurship may be required to fix the problem. The network will monitor both the entrepreneurs and the poor’s problems bringing them together so that meeting each other’s needs. The entrepreneurs usually need cheap working force (human resources) and the poor need money not a very high income. They can satisfy each other effectively.

Meanwhile, education will play a great role in this regard and thereby reducing the level of poverty. Trough education, people can find themselves in new positions helping each other produce more income by working together or using each other’s resources at cooperatives. Credit cooperatives and unions may form a new popular technology of saving-loaning contributing the people pass over their business and revenue hurdles faster than what it was usually done in the past. New credit cooperative professionals will save financially injured people and recover them at monetary health centers or clinics.

3. Global Health: With the number of overweight people in the world now equal to the number of underfed, and with more children growing up in the grip of chronic diseases that will last a lifetime, noninfectious disease will become the leading health threat. And with new technologies for repairing and extending the human body, health will become a domain for discovering the future of the human species.

Emerging technologies in health care have altered the way health care is delivered and the Internet and the media have been instrumental in making consumers more and more knowledgeable about health care. Increasingly these well-informed consumers believe that they should be able to get the best value possible for every dollar spent. We should remember that health care and related technologies are changing at an amazing rate across the globe.

Information technology is and will continue to be a central enabler that ties together the disparate functions of health care by empowering consumers as active participants and decision makers in their personal care process, and enhancing communication between and among patients and providers.

A solution to the great challenge of global health can be envisioned by a new technology called “digital health mirror”. Digital health mirrors are intelligent interactive robots that monitor the healthy situation of people daily and offer online health services including: health info storage, creating daily personal health reports and introducing best diagnosis and remedies. They will play the role of a home-based doctor 24/7.

Another technology may be conceived as body-manufactured drugs. Through a set of intelligent agents and Nano-robots implanted in patient’s bodies, they’ll receive body-manufactured drugs just according to their personal curing needs. It will be a significant step toward the personalized health care.

4. Education: Education is like the food for hungry minds. People with no education are starving intellectually and suffering from the emptiness of their minds. In the same way that we usually fix problems of starvation or undernourishment by making and distributing packages of food, we may be also able to solve intellectual hunger by designing and distributing educational kits.

A solution to this problem can be shaped by offering self-education kits equipped with not so expensive communication utilities bringing them under a global network of education in different areas of the world. When a person (pupil) opens up the self-energized kit, it will be connected automatically to the nearest satellite-controlled post and give him/her necessary instructions to be entitled to required education according to his/her immediate needs. In case of no available connection, a series of built in softwares and rich content can provide on time response to emergency educational needs.

5. Security: Security imposes huge costs on many societies yet it is hard to imagine an entirely secure society. If we cannot get rid of security costs, then we should think about new ways which makes security less costly and more effective for all societies to handle.

A new kind of “DNA-implanted RFID” that can be activated or deactivated chemically or electronically inside the body could be created. A prisoner, suspect or detainee may drink sweet syrup containing RFID Nano-robots. After swallowing the syrup, RFID Nano-robots will target a certain range of cells smartly and infiltrate their nucellus. They will be patched to the DNA structure and will be connected to related detective networks. As far as the RFID Nano-robots are active and the suspect is in the range of monitoring, he/she can be traced anywhere, anytime.

6. Space: Remembering that there are many undiscovered resources in our planet, I prefer to concentrate on the most important precondition of using material resources of space: “Space Exploration”.

The most important challenge regarding the outer space is space transportation. Observing UFOs once in a while, leads me to think about a new source of energy used to travel into the space. Whatever the UFO’s source of energy could be, it seems that they have managed their energies successfully for enduring travels, no need to refuel as we usually need to do on this planet.

We may design a new technology for absorbing environmental wandering energies, condensing them in certain focal points (capsules) and releasing them in desired direction to attain reasonable movement, hovering or maneuver.

The researchers and innovators have already produced machines for producing drinking water (material) from humidity (material) of normal air. Now it’s time to produce energy from energy (or energetic elements) by capturing and releasing environmental wandering energies. Someday in the future we’ll regret that we’d missed huge amounts of energy just because of our delay in inventing energy absorber devices and technologies.

Through mentioned above suggestions, I think that we may be able to solve a number of problems among the most pressing of today's grand challenges. I hope we will.