A Vegetarian's Nightmare

In 2013, something very interesting happened; Mark Post, a researcher from the Netherlands, assembled the first fully lab-grown burger form 20 000 strips of muscle tissue. Sadly, buying this burger would cost around the same as buying a new Ferrari.

Luckily, in only 2 years, the price has dropped from 325 000$ to only about 11$ for a lab-grown burger. Although that might seem like a huge drop, the burger is not commercially viable and we would have to wait at least another 20 years before tasting it. And, according to those who tried it, the labs still have a long way to go before creating something tasteful.

All of this to get to our main point: population is increasing, but the amount of land we have to raise animals and feed the population is staying the same. If we don't start expanding the land by creating farm buildings and building upwards, we are going to run into a problem: How do you feed a rapidly growing population with the same resources?

This is why this new technology is so interesting; the price dropped considerably. Today, it is much simpler, more economical, less destructive for the environment and morally good to recreate muscle tissues in the lab. If this process becomes simpler and simpler (as I'm sure it will), creating food for everyone will be a piece of cake.

So, is it happening? Well, not quite. The meat growing is not as efficient as it could be and there is a need for a new way to grow the cells that does not involve fetal calf blood. But innovations and new ways of doing things will solve these problems in due time. The price will also fall below the 65 to 70$ per kg of meat produced that Mark Post and his team of scientists have set.

From my point of view, the biggest problem with this new diet is this: how will they convince people to buy meat that has been produced in a lab? Of course, as it gets tastier and tastier, we won't have any way of telling it apart from the real thing, And because it is such an efficient way of producing meat, it might put conventional animal farms out of business. Also, this new meat may attract more people than the original kind as it seems vegetarians and vegans will want to eat this.

I found some interesting discussions on Reddit which I have posted in the reference links that talk about the reasons a vegetarian or a vegan would eat this new kind of meat. I think the main reasons people choose those diets is because of health, environmental, financial and moral issues. We talked about the greatly reduced environmental effects, the cost that is getting lower and lower (lab grown meat might even become cheaper than normal meat) and the fact that the animals are not harmed or killed in any way. This takes care of everything except the health issues. For that, it is worth mentioning that because the meat is grown in the lab, the nutriments, microbes and vitamins it contains are very well controlled and inspected.

For all these reasons, I don't see why this new kind of meat would not be accepted by the vegan and vegetarian community, as well as by the other types of diets out there. Who knows, it might even replace normal meat someday. Lab-grow meat is therefore an important part of the future of our diets and, along with building-integrated agriculture, might solve the big food problem of tomorrow.  

For a bit more drops of future, visit:

- http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/the-main-obstacle-for-lab-grown-meat-could-soon-disappear
- http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jrupo/vegans_of_reddit_would_meat_grown_in_a_lab_change/
- http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/i5i8d/vegansvegatarians_would_you_eat_lab_grown_meat/
- http://www.fastcoexist.com/3044572/the-325000-lab-grown-hamburger-now-costs-less-than-12

Rise of the Unreal Reality

As all major piece of engineering and innovative work that has gained popularity in the last few years, it all started on Kickstarter around mid-2012; an idea that would change our perception of reality and bring us a lot closer to what we saw in The Matrix.

I'm talking about the Oculus Rift. Yes. It's been almost 4 years and finally, the company is releasing a consumer version of its very famous headset.

Now, lets talk about the implications of this new-ish type of product. Companies such as Sony, Canon, HTC, etc. all have their own virtual reality headset. These are normally popularized as gaming platforms, but they are also used as training, engineering, medical or military tools.

The most sophisticated of these devices can easily track your head, eye and hand movements to recreate the environment around the user as accurately as possible.

All of this comes from the need people have of deforming the reality that surrounds them. The dream is a lot older than technology itself. People love to dream. Everyone would love to build, do or create anything they like and these godly powers are obtainable when using a virtual reality headset. Do you dream of flying? Of living in the biggest mansion ever built? Of running on the Everest? Of visiting places you see in movies? Of being inside a video game? Look no further. 

BUT, we still have a good way to go before things are perfectly the way you imagine it. The headsets are not perfect, and people still get motion sickness, lag or not so good synchronization but that will go away eventually. 

In addition to the headset, new gear is being developed to add to the experience. For example, full body virtual reality suits will let you feel the game and better control a character or an avatar. The suit allows the user to feel the atmosphere around him or her and will produce sensations using electrical nodes.

The rest already exists. You want to play a shooting game? Here is the headset that will recreate the reality of the game. Here is a pad of which you can run without really covering distance. Here is a gun that is connected to the virtual reality and here is a suit that helps the avatar mimic your movements and shows you where you get injured. What else could you want?

As much as this sounds exciting, it might be tempting to embrace virtual reality and completely forget about the real world around you. That is the problem when you can be God in a virtual world that happens inside a world where you are only human.

I introduced this topic by mentioning The Matrix. And, in a way, we are getting closer and closer to mimicking our reality perfectly. When that happens, let's hope that robots won't be controlling the headsets and that we will still be able to recognize the Real from the Unreal.

For a bit more drops of future, visit:

- http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/hands-on-with-the-htc-vive-virtual-reality-just-got-real-11363981379328

- http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/virtual-reality-suit-to-be-on-the-market-this-year/

- http://www.wired.com/2014/12/oculus-doesnt-need-killer-app/

Forced Inclination towards Automation

OK, enough with the small technologies that solve problems that have been around for decades. The pressing matter at hand is finding possible solutions to an even bigger problem that is not very apparent to the majority of the population.

In 1996 and 1997, 2 six-game chess matches took place between Chess Champion Gary Kasparov and the IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue. The 1997 match was the first defeat of a reigning world chess champion to a computer under tournament conditions. Sadly, this defeat anticipated a problem that no one thought of at that time.

I need to recommend the video "Humans need not apply" (First link inserted at the end) that clearly describes the growing problem that has almost every person that reads the news worried. 

Here is a quick summary of the video and the problem it explains: As we stopped using horses because cars were better, employers will stop using humans because robots will get better. Here are some jobs that can be replaced with their respective Automation Counterpart: 

• Taxi, truck and airplane drivers - Self-driving cars or airplanes
• Baristas, servers, bartenders - Baxter and Robot Chef
• Lawyers, Researchers or doctors - Paperwork bots and Watson
• Artists and Creative jobs - Emily Howell, Watercolor Bot

If you think your job is safe from automation, there is probably an in-development bot out there that is coming for you too. Robots are cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and much more efficient than human can ever be. Seeing how technology advances today, we should bump into problems by 2025.

So, problems will arise. Now, what can we do to help protect our income? One interesting idea is to simply forget about work, focus on what we should do with our free time and follow the Basic Income Movement. This movement wants the government to give every person money so they can satisfy their basic necessities and focus on what they want.

This brings up a problem as everyone will only have the strict minimum if they become jobless. Although this can be a problem, this will give them the opportunity to learn about new things that could bring them more money and that has not been taken over by robots.

Here is another idea that may work: To stop the growing unemployment rates that these new technologies will bring, it is essential to prevent companies from owning all the robots and acquiring all the profits. People who lose their jobs to robots should own the robot that replaces them and earn money from that robot's work. With that income, it is then possible to buy/sell other robots to keep growing but there has to be a law where each person that has lost his/her job to a robot has to own at least one robot. This idea is an interesting way of indirectly giving jobs to people who lost their.

"Imagine if nobody had to work for living, how many would do useful things for others, how many would create something amazing." Federico Pistono

We are accelerating toward a Machine Revolution, that, like its younger sister The industrial Revolution, will change things for the better or for the worst of humanity. Remember The Matrix? Even if we learn how to deal with this problem in the next decades, who knows what the increasing intelligence of robots will mean for us. As Steven Hawkins has put it: 

"Artificial Intelligence could spell the end of the human race" - Stephen Hawkins

For a bit more drops of future, visit:

- Humans need not apply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- http://www.businessinsider.com/experts-predict-that-one-third-of-jobs-will-be-replaced-by-robots-2015-5
- http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/what-if-everybody-didnt-have-to-work-to-get-paid/393428/
- http://mic.com/articles/119896/after-robots-take-our-jobs-basic-income-is-the-best-solution

Turbines without the twist

Even if the first wind turbine is older than you think (the first electrical turbine was created in 1888 by a Scottish academic named James Blyth), there is always space for innovation and new ideas on the market. 

I'm talking about a new Bladeless Turbine that, instead of transforming rotational movement in energy, uses vibrations and electromagnetic induction to create electricity. It basically uses friction as a more effective way of producing energy.

What is interesting about these new turbines, is that, for the same amount of produced energy, when compared with the old ones, they cost 40% less  to set up and maintain and they obviously us a lot less space. Sadly, they capture 30% less energy than normal turbines (for now), but they are completely silent. So why am I wondering if this is a good idea or not?

Well, first of all, they honestly look awful compared to the old wind turbines. Maybe its just me, but I'm picturing a field of these odd looking, vibrating structures where they are all very close together due to the fact that they use much less space than a normal turbine and its not very pretty...

Remember driving down a field of massively tall wind turbines that turn slowly and look very majestic? Now, replace all of those turbines with this new one and bring them all a lot closer together; they look futuristic, but they also just look like a social grouping of industrial chimneys.

And then there is the question of wind energy vs solar energy. Which one should we invest in? Well, from what the market looks like today, and from what is expected in the next 25 years, we can easily see that solar energy is going to generate more than our turbines. This is primarily due to the numerous innovations and the demands in the fields of energy storage and solar panels.

Electrical energy is set to grow fast due to new, high-performance and cheap batteries that will be accessible to everyone. For wind electricity, innovation seems slow, and all we can do for now is plant more and more turbines.

But don't get me wrong, I can't imagine the future without wind turbines and I think that a good electrical economy needs both Wind and Solar Energy to get the most out of what we can harvest. It simply seems to me that Solar Energy has a brighter future ahead.

For a bit more drops of future, visit: 

- http://techdrive.co/Bladeless-Turbine
- http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/16/8615089/vortex-bladeless-wind-turbines-shake-to-generate-     electricity 
- http://www.vortexbladeless.com/home.php 

The Dawn of the Powerwall

I've been wanting to write about this for a while now because it generated a lot of excitement in the futurology community. 

The Tesla PowerWall may look like the perfect new thing to stop global warming and revolutionize the future of power usage by making it completely dependent on electricity.

Hey, that looks like an awesome idea; but is it going to work?

Tesla seems to follow in the footsteps of the great Nikola Tesla (famous person that obviously inspired the name of the company) by imagining a world that relies only on electrical energy to function properly.

Tesla's dream was to provide the world with free electricity. He was, of course, well ahead of his time and that caused his ideas to get rejected because they could not generate profit.

And here we are, more than a century later, with this new product that seems to completely predict the future of humanity as to its energy usage. But is it anything new?

The PowerWall is simply a battery that is installed inside a house and that, being connected to the solar panels, stores energy for when the occupants really need it (at night or in the morning). So far, nothing new. But the thing with the PowerWall is that, following the constantly lowering prices of solar panels and innovative batteries, this technology is extremely affordable. It costs around 3000$ for the cheapest model and combined with the option of having solar panels, they are extremely efficient and can lower your electricity bill to 0$ if you are not careful.

The idea behind this is simple: by making the PowerWall affordable, Tesla hopes to transform every house into a solar panel energy user. And this may come as a surprise, but do you know how many solar panels are needed to power the entire world?

That small red square is the amount of solar panels needed to power the world today.

If we are going to leave fossil fuels behind (and I think we must, as soon as possible), then solar energy seems to be the best alternative and by making it affordable, Tesla has taken us a step closer to this noble goal. Nikola Tesla would be proud.

For a bit more drops of future, visit: 

- http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/06/tesla-powerwall-earnings/

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKORsrlN-2k&feature=youtu.be

- http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall