3 things direct from the future

Edition 66

Once every 2 weeks I will deliver “3 things direct from the future”. A 2 minute read that will always give you:

  • one thing that can help,
  • one thing to be wary of, and
  • one thing to amaze.

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1. One thing that helps

Spider-Man Cling Film

Why would you wrap your food in cling film when you could use “focused rotary jet spinning” to coat it? Using a hair-dryer like device you can shoot biopolymer-based fibers around your leftover dinner for a fresh lunch tomorrow.

Plastics are still our default packaging as they’re cheap and convenient, but usually one-time use only. The result is global plastic pollution with microplastics ending up in the food and water that we consume. To help get rid of our dependence on plastics, a team headed by Philip Demokritou of Rutgers University developed a new type of biodegradable packaging.

The wrap degrades in 3 days, compared to plastic’s 20 to 500 year lifespan in the environment. Also the biodegradable wrap can protect fresh produce like fruits and vegetables from bruising and extend their shelf life by up to 50%. Not just that but the fibers of the material include natural antimicrobial ingredients which, amazingly, can be programmed as sensors to destroy bacterial strains – ensuring safe food. 

There doesn’t seem to be too many downsides to this so lets hope we’ll all be hair-dryer wrapping our food in the near future.

 

2. One to be wary of

Autonomous Traffickers

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are here and they’re increasingly being used for transportation of both people and goods. Businesses will take advantage of the lower operation costs that fully autonomous vehicles provide and the removal of those pesky humans at the wheel. Unsurprisingly though, law-makers and law-enforcers are remaining slow to react to the potential misuse of this innovation. 

Right now, there is little to no legislation around who is liable for contraband inside AVs. This presents a problem to law enforcers, and an opportunity for illegal traffickers of both drugs and people. Currently, enforcers can check drivers for red flags such as improper documentation or traffic violations during shipment. But an AV would remove the requirement for any kind of human to be present in transit and make it harder both to detect illegal shipments and find who is responsible.

A number of options are being put forward. Some suggest giving law enforcers the ability to take control of AVs if they have reason to suspect it. This is pretty extreme and fraught with privacy and safety issues. Others suggest that a log of location history be provided to police. Whilst a test program between Waymo and the Arizona police is providing a kill-switch that shuts down a rogue AV.

This presents yet another a large technology-driven challenge for the slow-moving government peeps – they need to consider the safety of the community. And as always, a balance between human rights and law enforcement must be made. This is a tough one.

 

3. One to amaze

Metasurface Telepathy

Can we crush a Coke can with our minds? Maybe soon using metasurface technology.

What are metasurfaces? Picture a gold bar: it shines yellowish, right? But if we make modifications to its surface nanostructures we change how light interacts with it. The gold bar can now give off a blue radiance. We did not change the chemical property but we changed the surface and gave the material new properties.

Why do we care? Metasurfaces interact differently with electromagnetic waves like visible light, infrared and even radio waves. Our brainwaves generate electromagnetic waves that are different, dependent on if we are relaxed or concentrating. A team of scientists have created a process of extracting our brainwaves (using Bluetooth no-less!) so we can use our brain to scatter light in different ways and change a metasurface that interacts with brainwaves.  Mind. Blown!  

This interaction between the brainwaves and the metasurface was also tested to see if it could be used to send actual messages. Two volunteers were hooked up into the device. One, the sender, thinks of a message to write. The device captures the brainwaves, codes them into zeroes and ones, and then modifies the metasurface linked to it. The resulting changes to the metasurface are then reinterpreted as texts to the receiver. It’s rather slow to decode but messages like “hello world” and “BCI metasurface” were successfully transmitted.

Given this technology is still in it’s infancy my optimism may be misplaced, but I can see Jedi-like powers and hoverboards in my near future!

Have a great week.

Daniel J McKinnon

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