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Past Shows
March 28, 2009
Nine-and-a-Half Technologies that could change the world
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A special edition of Quirks & Quarks, on technologies that could change the world.
If you went back fifty years in time, and tried to imagine what our world would look like today, I doubt you could have forecasted the astounding technologies that now shape our lives. Who could have imagined the way that the computer has taken over almost every aspect of how we live, work and play. Who would have seen the coming of cell phones, satellite communications, pacemakers and heart transplants, gene sequencing and DNA fingerprinting, and synthetic hockey sticks - just to name a few.
Well, today on the program, we’re going to update that list and gaze into the near future, with a special full-edition look at 9 1/2 technologies that could change our world.
We've consulted with some of the brightest minds in science and engineering, and we've set the bar pretty high. We’re not just talking about the latest gadgets. We're talking about transformative ideas that will improve our lives and green our planet.
Batteries
Battery technology isn't new - it's 200 years old. But improvements in capacity and energy storage have been huge. Dr. Jeff Dahn, Canada Research Chair in Advanced Battery Materials and professor of Physics and Chemistry at Dalhousie University in Halifax, thinks there is a limit to those improvements, and we may be close to it. There is, however, a possibility for a revolutionary re-engineering of how we use batteries, as part of a smart power grid that will help incorporate renewable power and make our energy use more efficient.
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In Vitro Meat
Growing meat on animals is resource-intensive and, for many people, raises important ethical issues. So what if we could grow it in a lab - or better still, in a factory instead? Jason Matheny is a Ph.D student from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and co-founder of New Harvest, a company that researches in-vitro meat. He thinks that our growing appetite for meat could be satisfied more efficiently, more ethically and in a healthier way by culturing animal tissue on a large scale, rather than growing cows, pigs and chickens.
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Fusion
The ITER tokamak design - with permission of ITER
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Fusion power has long been the great hope for plentiful and clean power. Sadly, it's long been a disappointment as well, as physicists have found energy generation from fusion to be a troublesome challenge. If we do master the technology, however, its potential is enormous. Huge government- sponsored fusion projects continue, like ITER and NIFS. But researchers like Dr. Michel Laberge, a Vancouver physicist and president of the technology company, General Fusion, hope there may be simpler and less expensive options.
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Quantum Computers
The computer revolution that started in the 1970's and led to the development of the Internet certainly was a technology that changed the world. A new computer revolution, as significant as the first, could be on hand, with the advent of quantum computers. Quantum computers could be exponentially more powerful than standard computers, making computing tasks of almost unimaginable complexity trivial. The implications, according to Dr. Daniel James, Canada Research Chair in Atomic and Optical Physics at the University of Toronto, boggle the imagination.
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Humanoid Robots
Honda's ASIMO robot
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A revolution in robotics could be as significant as a computer revolution, if it led to humanoid robots that might safely navigate our world and assist us. (Unless, of course, they decide to take over). Developing humanoid robots has been difficult, though, as humans turn out to be difficult to emulate. Even walking like a human is a difficult thing for a robot to do. Dr. Josh Bongard, from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Vermont, thinks humanoid robots may be achieved, but will, interestingly, have to be developed in an evolutionary manner from simpler, less capable robots.
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Water
Some of the technologies that might be most important for changing our world will have to be simple and inexpensive. Take clean water, for example. About a billion people in the world don’t have access to clean potable water, and many think the best way to provide clean water is to find simple and inexpensive technologies that can be developed and maintained by the people who use them. Dr. Julie Zimmerman is a professor of green engineering at Yale University, and one of the researchers hoping to help slake the thirst of the world's poorest people with appropriate technologies.
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Solar Power
Solar farm - we can do better
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The Sun provides vast energy to us here on Earth, if only we could find a cheap and effective way to harness it. The expense of current solar technologies has largely consigned them to niche applications, but there is potential for so much more. Dr. Curtis Berlinguette, Canada Research Chair in Energy Conversion at the University of Calgary, thinks that cheaper solar collection options, like the one he's working on, combined with solar generated fuels, could solve our energy needs for the future.
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The Fab Lab
Matchbox flashlight made in a Fab Lab in India, Photo by Jared Sagoff.
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In Star Trek, when the crew needs some item, their handy replicator simply zaps it into existence. That's the ultimate goal for the team who've created the Fabrication Laboratory, or Fab-Lab, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sherry Lassiter, the Program Manager for the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, says their current version is a self-contained, computer-controlled manufacturing facility that can make anything from a cell phone to a bicycle to a house - though some assembly is required.
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Sustainable Agriculture
Like clean water, food is a basic necessity, and satisfying that need is a problem for a billion of the world's poorest people. Simple and inexpensive technologies that could help people grow adequate amounts of food for themselves would truly change the world. Dr. Manish Raizada of the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph is one of the researchers hoping to develop ways to help the world's poor, like crops that can resist drought and insects, technologies for husbanding water, and ways to preserve crops from losses to pests.
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Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein.
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