Science

Bridges to Tomorrow

Limitations fade as boundaries are broken. If we collectively avoid extinction and continue building bridges to tomorrow, our relationship with time, nature, technology, and each other will uncork unknowns and light a path to our neon future.

Robotics

With AI in the brain and emotions that curate a personality, robots are advancing to go beyond isolated tasks. Cyborgs will turn knobs at work, while humanoids complete chores at home. With the mundane covered, the role of humans can shift toward leading whenever ingenuity is required. With full access to robotic efficiencies, economies will shift and the human touch will be even more luxurious. Leaders who welcome technology but never lose touch with the soul of their art, will be the hybrids who prevail.

Biotech

As technology interfaces with human biology, a bionic age will alter the laws of nature. When the electrical impulse from a thought is all that’s required to prompt action, the speed at which data can move is unfathomable. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and other forms of neurotech are already treating disease and restoring movement by reconnecting the nervous systems. Most people don’t want to be first, but when might a routine doctor visit include individualized diagnostics and software updates to the nanotechnologies inside your body? When every cell in the body has a microscopic computer connected to it, the resource consumption is diffused by concepts like DNA computing and the mysteries of health care are solved.

Material Science

The atomic levels of technology have already connected intelligence to things we interact with every day. We’ve seen how the Internet of Things (IoT) adds digital depth to our physical world. As the cost and size of technology continues to shrink, the periodic table becomes a playground. For example, we have materials used in the construction of roads that transfer the force of vehicles to batteries. The stored electrical energy is then transferred to streetlights that illuminate the road at night. This type of elemental exploration and creative recycling is only a flicker of the flame for alternative energies and improved storage methods that can quench our planet’s thirst for energy while eliminating a dangerous dependency on limited resources. The universe provides everything we need. It’s up to us to squeeze improvements from elements that are waiting to arrive at their full potential.

Quantum Computing

When “or” becomes “and,” a bizarre world of duality is unveiled. The computing aspect within quantum mechanics uses quantum bits, or qubits, to solve complex problems with measured superpositions, entanglement, and interference. Dig in to learn more, but the superpositions found in quantum computing mimic complexity, with simulations that include all possible solutions at once. This is not a more powerful, number-crunching supercomputer. Quantum computers represent a whole new approach to harnessing the atomic and subatomic levels of physics. A scientific asset that eliminates secrets presents a mixed blessing. With the chemistry of life mapped by machine learning, medicine will solve diseases and the potential of material science will be realized.

At the same time, current cryptography and the encryption that provides security online is at risk. Increased checkpoints, biometric confirmation, photon distribution keys, and other post-quantum encryption standards are being tested to ensure the world is ready for hardware to keep qubits cold enough to unlock a world-changing partnership between classical and quantum computing.

Life Extension

Quantifying the cosmic depths of our own kind will give us ways to experience time in more profound ways. Instead of hoping to reverse the effects of aging with treatments, food, and medicine, augmented activities will engrain longevity from start to finish. Although the human body may not hold up forever, living more than 100 years will be normalized. As we live longer, how might agriculture, infrastructure, education, healthcare, economies, and our global climate adapt? Many who plan for this longevity will be primed to meet new demands in existing industries. The quixotic leaders will explore less obvious opportunities and convert unexpected challenges into new industries as well.

Outer Space

The cosmos makes us feel small, yet limitless wonder helps us think big. As bionic humans and quantum computing improves material science, a robot-supported species can be multi-planetary. The origins of astronomy are prehistoric, but off-planet exploration began when machines first visited space in the 1940s, and then humans in the 1960s. Scientific exploration led to a commercial space industry that has propelled an excursion throughout our solar system and beyond. Today, orbiting observatories are looking toward the origins of the universe, with life on Earth’s moon and Mars seemingly inevitable. As we interact further into the void, celestial frontiers can provide added stability for the human race and extend life on Earth. Cosmic resources, travel, communication, manufacturing, tourism, and security must all be addressed by leaders united by shared intentions on behalf of all humankind.

There are untold innovations yet to be conceptualized, but these bridges to tomorrow all signal progress. Widespread adoption is never straightforward, but listening suspends belief, and continuous steps forward can transcend invisible lines for us all to work as one.

Brewed From Within
#84 📖 Technology

By Ben McDougal, ago

Yin-Yang

Technologies constantly intersect. This impacts a technology’s life cycle (TLC), which already has its own phases of development and market adoption.

Technology life cycles follow an S-Curve. The shape of each technology’s S-Curve is unique, but generally, research and development requires an investment. With traction, the technology can ascend and become profitable. Over time, this ascension slows as a new normal is established. Market relevancy can be lasting, but eventually new technologies push existing technology toward a final decline phase. The further a new technology’s life cycle is from the current status quo, the faster one can push the other into history books. For example, when cell phones went mainstream, it did not take long for pagers to fall out of our pockets.

When different technologies ascend around the same time, they each have their own TLC, but the shared timeline only has room for what the market and adoption curves allow. This initiates a game of scarcity versus abundance. If technologies remain isolated, scarcity wins and the ascension of one technology forces the other technology toward a decline. With a sense of abundance, different technologies find reasons to interact, interconnect, support, and perpetuate each other. Even if the relationship is not obvious at first, layered value broadens the impact and extends each technology’s life cycle.

This can be seen in the rise of web3 and AI technologies. At first, the hype was focused on blockchains and everything under the web3 umbrella. As blockchain networks were ascending past early adoption, Narrow AI learned to speak our language and quickly stole the spotlight. This lowered the volume around web3 as everything became about AI.

With volume lowered, it was easy to think web3 concepts were less relevant, but the interoperability of web3 technologies can transparently source, support, guide, and tame AI. When AI makes everything fake, blockchains make it real again. This symbiosis aligns two different technology life cycles. When balanced, AI is yin and web3 is yang. The yin of AI is exemplified by unpredictability and independence. The yang of web3 draws from decentralized dependency.

© BEN MCDOUGAL

AI is strongest when rooted in web3 concepts, which are strengthened by the capabilities and functionalities of AI. Together, these two seemingly unrelated technologies benefit in various ways. For example, ChatUX gave AI a voice, which can imitate anyone, but blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs can confirm identity. The chaos continues as compute speeds of machine learning make state management hard to uphold, while blockchains, smart contracts, and digital assets can track provenance and the present state of a digital system. If AI projects need financial capital, digital currencies and tokenomics can provide economies to scale. As the capabilities of Narrow AI move toward General AI and Super AI, generative data may struggle to preserve the source of truth, while web3 technologies add transparency to improve inputs and help avoid unsteadiness. Even at the infrastructure level, AI can benefit from decentralized training algorithms, and a growing thirst for electricity can be quenched by HPC data centers originally built for mining cryptocurrencies.

Extra Shot

Darkness lurks in the shadows, but the virtuous light of abundance bets on a shared, atomically exquisite existence.

This example highlights how mixing different concepts can extend technology life cycles. Such abundance also paves the way to more exotic technologies.

Brewed From Within
#83 📖 Technology

By Ben McDougal, ago

Goodnight Moon

Star parties assemble people who are curious about the cosmos. Let’s set the scene. Imagine a remote place with dark skies and very little light pollution. Each campsite includes 1–3 telescopes. The astronomy equipment ranges from homemade to expensive. There are scopes made for visual observations and others geared for astrophotography.

Extra Shot
Explore my cosmic creations.

Daylight is relaxing, but the heavenly show starts as the sun begins to set and the first observations kickoff an evening of exploration. Tonight, our first stop is our own setting moon. From there, we spin the scopes to target a transitory comet. Planets in our solar system are next, then we go deeper. Globular clusters form dimensional shapes, with distant galaxies that look like eraser marks on black paper. The Milky Way can be seen all night, as constellations help star gazers navigate the rotating sky.

Space is for everyone, and astronomy makes everything feel small. Star parties remind us how we are all weird. Not an alienating type of weird, a wonderful weird that bonds people who care about anything together.

Brewed From Within
#106 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

13.8 Billion

The universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. That’s enough time to ask a few cosmic questions…

  • What are educational paths to the space industry?
  • Can astronomy, cosmology, and religion co-exist?
  • Does digitized consciousness unlock time travel by leaving the limitations of a human body behind?
  • How long would it take to arrive at the closest black hole? Who’s going in first?
  • How will robotics, AI, quantum computing, and material science accelerate space exploration?
  • It seems impossible that extraterrestrial life does not exist. When we learn that aliens are real, how should first contact be carried out?
  • If life on Earth has endured less than 25% of the time our universe has existed, how many distant civilizations may have come and gone?
  • Is it not foolish to mindlessly feed on energy that uses finite resources? When might we run out?
  • How does our planet’s spatial position and cosmic direction change inside an infinite universe that is expanding at an ever-increasing rate?
  • Visiting, even colonizing Mars feels like an important interplanetary exercise, but could other planets be a place to store all the things we don’t want on Earth? Even better, how about asteroids we load up and send off into the dark matter?
  • Can subatomic nanotechnologies alter the input of an energy source to transform the output?
  • How will ownership be handled in space?
  • Does seeing deeper fuel urgency?

                        These are bizarre prompts, and cosmic conversations can quickly become theoretical. To find answers in the unknown, our imagination, scientific exploration, and continual learning are essential as we keep tackling the questions of our universe and the unsolved problems in astronomy and astrophysics.

                        Cosmic questions put life into perspective and make our existence feel fragile. Arguing becomes a lost cause when collaboration is vital for our species to survive.

                        Brewed From Within
                        #108 📖 Life & Happiness

                        By Ben McDougal, ago