The 5 Most Fantastic Technical Advances Coming in Our Future of Abundance

[Geee]

PJMedia:

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think is exactly what anyone feeling pessimistic about the world should read. That’s because it’s hard to get down about the future when you read about stunning technological advances on the horizon that will soon change the planet for the better. Here, try it for yourself!

 

1) 3D Printing: Get ready to geek out because, yes, a rudimentary replicator exists. 3D printers can create everything from lampshades to prosthetic limbs out of steel, titanium, glass, and plastic among other materials. Inventor Behrokh Khoshnevis has even come up with a 3-D printer that uses concrete to build low-income housing for the third world. Granted, this isn’t as powerful or efficient as a Star Trek replicator, but when the technology improves enough to be mass produced and becomes cheap enough for most people to afford, it will be amazing. Picture it now: you’re shopping on Amazon and you see a TV you like. You then walk over to your 3D printer, hit a button, and thirty minutes later, you’re kicking back and watching House reruns. Granted, it won’t make a pork chop or materialize what you want out of thin air like a replicator, but it would represent an amazing leap forward.

 

2) Algae: Ethanol is the biofuel of choice in the United States and it should be considered an inefficient, over-priced failure that has driven up food costs and is being kept alive mainly because of politics. Algae, on the other hand, is an extraordinary biofuel on the horizon that’s so great that even Barack Obama’s endorsement won’t ruin it. That’s why Exxon, Shell, Boeing, Procter and Gamble, and Chevron are experimenting with algae. It can produce thirty times more energy than conventional biofuel and because it can be grown efficiently we could make enough of it to fuel all of America’s 250 million cars in an area about 17% the size of Nevada. Imagine being able to tell Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and the rest of the world’s spoiled oil brats that they can take a permanent hike because we’ve replaced them with pond scum.

[Pepper]

We are already 'ruled' by pond scum, so I suppose algae is a logic next step, @Geee.

[Geee]

We are already 'ruled' by pond scum, so I suppose algae is a logic next step, @Geee.

 

So your saying 'There's a Fungus Among Us' then?

[RandyM]

And you thought diesel was "stinky"!!

[Pepper]

How about other untapped resources, @RandyM?

 

Belly button lint

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Soylent Green is pond scum!

 

Also, don't forget flexible screens and e-paper.

[NCTexan]

It can produce thirty times more energy than conventional biofuel and because it can be grown efficiently we could make enough of it to fuel all of America’s 250 million cars in an area about 17% the size of Nevada.

 

Now that's an exacting description that everyone can understand.

 

Everyone knows that Nevada covers and an area of 110,569 square miles and is our 7th largest of our 50 states (excluding Obama's other seven mystery states).

 

Doing the math in our head.... we all know that 17% of Nevada is 18,796.73 square miles or more simply stated 28.6% of Wisconsin (both upper and lower).... or even more simply stated.... 9,097,264 football fields including the end zones.

 

In other words... that;s a heck of a lot of algae.

 

(I put as much stock in the writer's technology assumptions as in his ability to express himself.)

[Valin]

@Geee

 

Love this kind of stuff....but if I may quote the late great Yogi Berra...."It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." So "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.".

 

[clearvision]

With the way things are likely to go with the dollar and inflation over the next 10 years, it will be cheaper to just burn dollars as a fuel than gas or algae.