Global futurist and author Jack Uldrich offers essential strategic information on nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology, RFID and many other future technologies to help you prosper as exponential trends converge at this unique moment in history.
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Industries: Nanotechnology
15 Ways Nanotechnology is Making Life Better Today
Nanotechnology is expected to a $2.6 trillion market by 2015. At the heart of this big new sector is something very small—molecules. To understand how and why nanotechnology—which is defined as the manipulation of matter at the molecular level—matters, you can begin at home.
The Writing is Off-the-Wall
Behr and others are now using nanoparticles to produce anti-mildew paints and anti-graffiti paints. Another company is perfecting a nano-enhanced wall paint that blocks cellphone calls and, longer-term, researchers expect to create a nano-solar paint that can turn your wall and even your house into a giant solar cell.
Scratch-Free
BASF has developed a nanoceramic material that is three times more resistant to scratching. It is already being employed on kitchen tabletops and car exteriors. The company hopes to have self-healing materials on the market in the near future.
Wipe Away Your Worries
Pilkington’s “Activ” glass uses nanoparticles of titanium dioxide to create self-cleaning windows; while Eddie Bauer, Tommy Hilfiger and Brooks Brothers all sell clothes that contain tiny “nano-whiskers” and make pants, shirts and ties resistant to stains of every kind. Upholstery and carpet are up next.
Wrap Your Head Around This: The New Flat Will Be Round
Nanostructured polymer films are being used in next-generation OLED (organic light emitting diode) lights. The benefit is that the lights are ten times more energy-efficient than regular lightbulbs and can be wrapped around poles. Super-thin, flexible electronic television screens that can be curved to create a more immersive experience are on the drawing board.
A Germ-a-phobe’s Dream
Nano-silver particles and nano-silver coatings—which have amazing anti-bacterial properties—are being used to control germs, mold and fungus and are now in refrigerators, air conditioners, humidifiers and food-storage containers.
Another Reason to Despise Cloudy Days
A new solar fabric embedded with nanocrystals has helped turned tents into solar collectors. The real pay-off will come when the fabric in your clothing can help power your cellphone. The army is already investigating this possibility and commercial products are expected by 2010.
Get Some Skin in the Game
L’Oreal employs nanotechnology to deploy tiny capsules of Vitamin A to the optimum level under the skin. The effect? Fresher-looking skin and fewer wrinkles.
Less is More
Shemen Industries, a small Israel company, is deploying 30 nanometer capsules of phytosterol—a natural ingredient that helps lower cholesterol—in a variety of food products.
So Long Skunky Beer?
Miller Beer uses clay nanoparticles in its plastic beer bottles. The minute particles make it difficult for carbon dioxide molecules to escape and help keep the beverage fresher longer.
Can You Hear Me Now?
Starkey, Inc., an Eden Prairie-based company, uses a nanotechnology switch in its Destiny nFusion hearing aid to deliver high quality of sound to the user.
No Blood Money
Apollo Diamond uses a process called chemical vapor deposition to grow two-carat diamonds virtually overnight. Not only are Apollo’s diamonds are molecular identical to natural diamonds, they less expensive; don’t take billions of years to form; are more environmentally friendly; and no one is exploited in the mining or manufacturing process.
Nano, Nano
The iPod Nano contains flash memory chips made with components measuring less than 100 nanometers. Within a decade, continued advances in nanotechnology are expected to help store all of a family’s digital content—photos, songs, videos, TV programs—on a device the smaller than an iPod Nano.
Get in the Game
NanoDynamic has created a nanotech golf ball that reduces the distance a ball hooks or slices; Easton is making a super-strong, superlight hockey stick with carbon nanotubes; and there are even now nano-enhanced fishing rods, fishing lures, ski waxes and bowling balls on the market.
Ice-fishing Just Won’t be the Same
Aspen Aerogel’s “Toasty Feet” insoles employ an innovative nanomaterial designed to keep a shoe a stable 72 degrees even if the wearer is standing on a block of ice. The company has also developed a new building insulation material that has eight times the thermal insulating properties of the best material currently on the market.
You’ll Be On Your Way in No Time
A new nano-titanate material is being used in car batteries. It reportedly allows cars to run for 300 miles on a single charge.
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Unlearning Death
In 1899, just a few years before the Wright brothers achieved their historic accomplishment, Lord Kelvin—then one of the world’s brightest men and most accomplished scientists—declared heavier than air machines to be “impossible.”
He was wrong. To add insult to injury, Lord Kelvin was proved wrong by a pair of bicycle repairmen from Dayton, Ohio.
A few years ago, a relatively unknown computer scientist, Aubrey de Grey, declared that aging should not be viewed as something which will necessarily ultimately result in death. Rather, he theorized that aging is a disease and should be treated as such.
The outcry from the scientific community was similar to Lord Kelvin’s reaction to human flight. One group of scientists even declared that de Grey’s idea was “so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all within the informed scientific community.”
Well, according to this article in Wired, the idea is now beginning to gain some acceptance within scientific circles.
To be sure, society is still a long way from de Grey’s goal of ending again but, as I have written before, I’d encourage people to not dismiss the idea entirely. For if he is right, it will require society to unlearn a great many ideas which it now holds as dear.
In fact, the scale of unlearning our current paradigm of “death as an inevitability” could make other past historic paradigm shifts—such as the idea that the earth is not at the center of the universe (an idea for which Aristarchus was run out of Alexandria and Galileo was forced to recant under edict of the Catholic Church) or Darwin’s theory of evolution—look like child’s play.
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Sound Off on New Metamaterials
I live in Southwest Minneapolis. It is a beautiful part of the city and is near an abundance of lakes and parks. As anyone who lives here knows, however, the one downside is the neighborhood’s proximity to the Twin Cities International airport. In the summer, if you are inside your home conversing on the phone with a friend, it is not uncommon to have to halt your conversation every few minutes while a 727 or 747 airplanes lumbers overhead.
Alas, there may be hope on the way for me and my neighbors—as well as thousands of other people who suffer from noise pollution. According to this article in today’s Technology Review, researchers at MIT have developed a new metamaterial that can distribute sound around various materials. Among other things, this means that the sound from those planes could some day soon simply be transferred around my house.
It is an exciting technology and it is one that architects, builders and designers should keep in mind if they want to “jump the curve” and provide consumers with products that improve the quality of their life.
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BMW Jumps the Curve
The German automaker BMW, in introducing its new “Light Visionary Model” prototype—which it dubs GINA (Geometry and Functions “N” Adaptions")—writes this: ”The key to affecting the development of tomorrow’s mobility lies in our readiness to challenge what is established and in the ability to present new options.” In short, BMW is jumping the curve and embracing the future.
Watch the short video below and notice how doors and hoods no longer open (they fold and zip open) and how the lights do open (much like human eyes), I think you’ll agree that the benefits of jumping the curve could give BMW a very distinct competitive advantage as it boldly moves into the future.
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Get the Skinny on the Future
This morning as my daughter was leaving for school she asked if she could watch the “fat, chunky” movie this weekend. I gave her a perplexed look and replied that I’d never heard of it. I probed a little further and although it took me a few moments to determine what she was talking about, I eventually understood that she wanted to know if she could watch a VHS-format movie.
This incident, along with another this past weekened where she gazed unknowingly at a record player that was for sale at a garage sale, has gotten me to thinking about what else might seem “fat and chunky” to her in the future.
Already televisions, phones and iPods are impressively thin and are likely to grow more so in the future. Alas, it won’t stop there.
A few months back, I wrote about solar energy’s long-term potential and one reason I’m so optimistic about its potential is that I believe thin-film photovoltaics are only going to grow more efficient and cost-effective over time. Among other things this implies that today’s bulky silicon solar cells are likely to fade away.
The field of nanotechnology is also leading to thinner and more effective materials. Therefore, walls made out of aerogels; car panels constructed of new nanocomposites; and automobile batteries (which utilize various nanomaterials) should also become thinner. As will lights which will take advantage of advances in organic light emitting diodes.
Next, as flexible electronics grow more mature and as more people grow comfortable reading information from such flexible displays, there is good reason to believe that books and newspapers will also become thinner. (In fact, they will become so “thin” that their digital content will simply be displayed in atom-sized pixels on the electronic substrate.)
Finally, as I highlighted last week in this piece, obesity - due to advances in genomics—could soon be addressed. In other words, it is entirely possible that we humans (especially Americans) will become less, well, “fat and chunky.”
Of course, just as “boom boxes” staged a surprising counter-trend in the late 1980’s and gigantic wearable clocks became all the rage, I am open to the idea that some products might become larger in the future but, in general, I think “thin” will definitely be “in” in the future.
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Jack Uldrich Speaks on the Future
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Don’t Incrementalize Yourself into the Future
Knowledge, it has been said, is the key to success. It is a statement that is hard to disagree with unless you buy into that old adage that ignorance is bliss. Proceeding on the assumption that if you believed the latter you probably wouldn"t be reading this blog, I will go farther out on a limb and state that for years one of the world’s better recognized fonts of knowledge has been the Encyclopedia Britannica--a reservoir of 30,000-plus pages of information replete with titillating tidbits of data about everything from atoms to zettabytes.
In the late 1990s the revered encyclopedia came under assault from a new form of media distribution--the CD-ROM. Able to store vast amounts of information in a more convenient, colorful, and vivid fashion, Encyclopedia Britannica was forced to deal with this new competitive threat and proceeded in good haste to provide its information in a similarly fresh, snappy, and visually pleasing format.
By 2001 the company was back on its feet and headed down the sweet path of profitability. No sooner, though, had that storm passed when another began forming on the horizon. But just as a hurricane begins with a single molecule and is not immediately discernible, so was this one.
The storm was called Wikipedia, and it started in 2001 with nothing more than 100 encyclopedia-like entries drafted by a few amateurs and posted to a Web site. It seemed innocent enough. After all, how likely was it that a bunch of strangers, working for free, could someday produce an encyclopedia that would rival the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of depth, breadth, and accuracy. It sounded about as plausible as a few molecules in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean turning into a Category 5 hurricane.
Yet in late 2005 Wikipedia smashed into the Encyclopedia Britannica. That year the prestigious scientific journal Nature announced after a comprehensive study that the average entry in Wikipedia was nearly as accurate as the typical Encyclopedia Britannica entry.
The advantage is still in Encyclopedia Britannica’s favor, but how much longer will it be able to withstand the gale force winds? The answer: not much. That is because we are now living in a world of exponential advances, and the scales are tipped in Wikipedia’s favor.
To begin, the very subject matter of the encyclopedia, which is to say knowledge itself, is growing exponentially. It has been said that human knowledge is doubling roughly every seven years. This leads to the almost ridiculously sounding (but mathematically verifiable) conclusion that by 2050 everything we know today will represent less than 1 percent of the sum total of the world’s knowledge.
Even if one disagrees with this statement, it is difficult not to acknowledge that radical advances in medicine, physics, chemistry, and biotechnology are changing both the content and value of the material in encyclopedias and that the old print-and-publish method of storing and displaying such information is, if not obsolete, at least impractical.
Neither a printed encyclopedia nor even a CD-ROM can react to this volume of change. Only Wikipedia, by posting information directly to the Internet, can respond in a timely fashion.
Wikipedia also has the advantage in terms of human horsepower. Advances are happening so fast, in so many different fields, that it is virtually impossible for the staff at Encyclopedia Britannica to keep pace. The challenge is not nearly so great for Wikipedia because it doesn’t have a staff. Instead it relies on a self-selected universe of experts and enthusiasts to keep track of all of these developments. (To this end, Wikipedia now has over 7 million entries in 200 different languages.)
Third, Wikipedia has a distinct economic advantage. Not only does it not need to print its material in either book or even CD-ROM format, it doesn’t need to pay an army of researchers and writers or underwrite the cost of housing any physical resources or employees.
The final kicker is this: Even if the Encyclopedia Britannica decides to put all of its content online for free, most people will still go to Wikipedia because its content consistently shows up near the top of most search engines.
What Encyclopedia Britannica is facing is a severe reaction to the exponential economy, but it is not alone. In fact, if history is any guide, a number of other companies, institutions, and organizations will soon be facing a comparable amount of change in the not-too-distant future.
What this means is that in order to survive in the Expoential Economy, we should all heed the words of Kurt Yeager, who once offered this sage advice: ”In periods of profound change, the most dangerous thing is to incrementalize yourself into the future.”
Related Posts
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A Useful Analogy for Thinking About the Future
Think 10X, Not 10%
Einstein, Intel and All the Rice in China
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How to Turn 2 Cents into $5.36 Million
Embracing Change
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Our Accelerating Future
The other day I explained why society doesn’t always absorb new technologies as fast as early advocates often believe will happen. As with almost every issue, there is another side to the story and I’d now like to argue why emerging technologies will be adopted at an ever accelerating rate.
Ray Kurzweil addressed this issue in his outstanding book, The Singularity is Near, when he noted that the rate of “paradigm shift” is doubling every decade. As a historical analogy, he noted that it took 35 years before 25% of the population adopted the telephone. The radio took about 31 years; the television 26 years; the personal computer 16 years; the mobile phone 12 years; and the World Wide Web only 10 years.
Since then Google, Wikipedia and a number of other social networking applications have been adopted in an even shorter amount of time. This acceleration, however, has not been limited to only communication-related devices. Robotics are being adopted at an accelerating rate. In 2005, only 1% of all prostatectomies were performed by robots. Today, over 50% of all such operations are performed using a da Vinci surgical robot.
The fields of rapid prototype manufacturing and systems biology are also experiencing acceleration. To this end, I encourage you to watch the short two-minute video on the fab@home project (an open source rapid prototype manufacturing platform) as well as read this excellent interview with biotechnology guru and system biology advocate LeRoy Hood.
What I find interesting about the Fab@home project and Hood’s project is that they both are open-source initiatives. And of all the things that are enabling the accelerating adoption of technology—and there many: better tools, faster computers; new materials, improved bandwidth, etc.—the open source movement is the most powerful of them all. This is because brilliant and innovative minds from all over the world are now being given direct access to the information and the technology necessary to improve products.
This access, in turn, yields better and more information and technology. Essentially a “virtuous cycle” is created and it amounts to a process whereby evolutionary design is speeded up.
And, in order to survive in this new environment, people must adopt these new technologies at an accelerating rate. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not the strongest or the fastest that survive—it is those who can change and adapt the quickest. Therefore, I would argue, the accelerating adoption of new technology is nothing more than the manifestion of that most human of instincts: survival.
Related Posts
Don’t Incrementalize Yourself into the Future
Dangerous Curves Ahead
Exponential Evolution
A Useful Analogy for Thinking About the Future
Think 10X, Not 10%
Einstein, Intel and All the Rice in China
Do You Believe in the Tooth Fairy
How to Turn 2 Cents into $5.36 Million
Embracing Change
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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Enlarge Your Mind to an Idea that is Out of This World
(Editors Note: Earlier today, my colleague at Future Blogger, Dick Pellitier, had a thoughtful piece on the prospect of a space elevator. I would like to add my two cents to this debate. The following article was written this past fall and originally appeared on TechCentralStation).
In the fall of 1825, New York Governor DeWitt Clinton boarded the Seneca Chief and traveled 500 miles from Buffalo to New York City to mark the opening of the Erie Canal. It was the beginning of an enterprise of immense economic and political significance in that it expanded the reach of American commerce and established New York as one of the world’s leading financial centers.
It is easy, in retrospect, to think the canal’s success was ordained from the beginning. It wasn’t. In 1810, when DeWitt Clinton, then mayor of New York City, first proposed building the 363-mile, 83 lock canal, Gouverneur Morris, responded by saying “Our minds are not yet enlarged to the size of so great an object.” Another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, was more biting in his criticism, writing to Clinton, “It is a splendid project, and may be executed a century hence. It is little short of madness to think of it this day.”
Jefferson’s reasoning was solid. The project was budgeted to cost $6 million—a sum then equal to three-fourths of the federal government budget. In fact, the scale of the project was so massive that it was determined it would be the biggest public works project since the Great Pyramid and would consist of digging and removing over 11 million cubic yards of earth. It is no wonder that many decried it as “Clinton’s ditch.”
Fortunately, Clinton persisted and while he wasn’t able to persuade the federal government to support the idea, he did win over the citizens of New York and in 1817 the state legislature approved the funding for the project.
Amazingly, the canal was completed on October 26, 1825—two years ahead of schedule. More impressive still, the state’s debt off was paid-off in a decade’s time.
With this little bit of history in mind, let me now introduce you to a modern-day equivalent of the Erie Canal: the space elevator.
To many, the idea of constructing an elevator into geosynchronous orbit might be, to echo the words of Jefferson, a splendid project a century hence but little short of madness today. Nevertheless the idea is beginning to elicit consideration from a growing number of serious scientists.
In its simplest form, the elevator would consist of a ribbon of super-strong carbon nanotubes be tethered to a large platform located near the equator and attached to a space structure at the other. To get from earth to space a cab would climb the ribbon. (Further details can be found at http://www.spaceelevator.com)
Without question a great many obstacles must be overcome in order to achieve this vision, but they are just that: obstacles. They are not barriers. Ironically, as with the Erie Canal, the greatest barrier may not be technical in nature but rather political—namely, our leaders (and perhaps our country) have lost their ability to think big.
But like the Erie Canal, a space elevator would be more than just a testament to good old-fashion American ingenuity and know-how. It would have broad, practical economic and political ramifications. For instance, just as the Erie Canal lowered the cost of shipping a ton of flour from $120 to less than $6, a space elevator could similarly open up space by radically reducing the price of hauling the equipment and supplies into orbit. Today, it costs anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 to launch a single pound of material into space. With a space elevator, replacing and updating the communication and satellite infrastructure upon which modern society is now so dependent would be fast, inexpensive and easy.
Beyond this, if America is serious about establishing a permanent presence on the moon and, ultimately, Mars; this country will need a dramatically more efficient process for delivering cargo and personnel into a space. Our present system of using individual rockets is about as efficient as hauling flour by horseback.
It has been estimated that a space elevator can be built for $12 billion. It is a large amount of money to be sure, but so too was the Erie Canal. Thanks, however, to some farsighted and courageous leadership a profitable canal was built and, in the process, it turned the course of history. How fitting then if on October 26, 2025—the bicentennial of the opening of the Erie Canal—America could send a group of people into space on an elevator. It is possible but first we must enlarge our minds to “so great an object.”
Related Posts:
Let’s Debate the Future, Please
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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What Could Be Better Than Free Money? Try Exponential Growth.
As a result of my new book, I have been asked on a number of occasions to describe what I mean by the title: “jump the curve.”
It is a fair question and when answering it I like to recall the words of that old sage, Albert Einstein, who once said that if a person—especially a scientist or technologist—couldn’t explain what he or she was working on to an 8-year old child then that person was either a fraud or a charlatan.
It’s an excellent test and because I have both an 8 year-old daughter and a 6 year-old son, I decided to put the topic of my new book to this test. Liking a challenge, I decided to see if my youngest child could comprehend the idea of “jumping the curve.”
Without using an example in the book, I asked my son, who has yet to lose any of his teeth, whether he would rather receive a single dollar for every one of his 20 baby teeth or if he would instead prefer to receive a single cent for his first tooth and then have that penny double for the next 19 teeth?
Being fairly good at numbers and knowing that his dad often likes to trick him, my son selected the second option—the penny doubling.
“Smart boy,” I proudly said. “Now, what if the tooth fairy gave you $5 per tooth?” (I was careful to suggest that I was not implying that the tooth fairy would leave him $5.) He pondered his options for a moment and, after calculating his total would come to $100, he selected the $5 option.
I asked him if he was sure and he confidently shook his head in the affirmative. “Well, son,” I replied, “I’m afraid that you have lost out on over $10,000.”
The look on his face was one of incredulousness, and that is precisely why I told him that he had to learn to “jump the curve.” Here’s how the chart reads:
1st tooth: 1 cent
2nd tooth: 2 cents
3rd tooth: 4 cents
4th tooth: 8 cents
5th tooth: 16 cents
6th tooth: 32 cents
7th tooth: 64 cents
8th tooth: $1.28
9th tooth: $2.56
10th tooth: $5.12
11th tooth: $10.24
12th tooth: $20.48
13th tooth: $40.96
14th tooth: $81.92
15th tooth: $163.84
16th tooth: $327.68
17th tooth: $655.36
18th tooth: $1310.72
19th tooth: $2621.44
20th tooth: $5242.88
Total: $10,485.75 ... or more than $500 per tooth!
To explain the concept of “jumping the curve,” I then drew him a graph and said that before a person can profit from any exponential trend he must first understand where that trend. The skill, I noted, “could be as significant as the difference between getting only $5 for a tooth or receiving $500.”
My broader point, of course, was that exponential advances are occuring in a variety of fields, including information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, brain scanning and even knowledge itself; and if he wanted to position himself for the future he would be wise to internalize this lesson now. The lesson is so important, I’d argue, that it is almost better than free money.
Interested in some other implausible ideas about the future? Check some of these past posts by Jack:
Voiceless Communication: It’s Coming and It’ll Augment Human Intelligence
The Robot Will See You Now
Operate on Yourself
57 Years is Now 41 Days
Death’s Slow Death
Self-Driving Cars
Do the Impossible
Enlarge Our Minds to a Space Elevator
Pong & The Future of the President’s Brain
Could You Really Love a Robot?
Do the Impossible: A Case Study
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
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