Scientific American magazine published its annual ‘top 10 technologies to change the future’ – ideas that are poised to transform society! Mariner remembers when Neil deGrasse Tyson had his first series on the Universe; He spoke fondly of that moment when the Earth becomes Planet One – a world of peace and unity. It is the vision of the magazine and Neil and other scientists as well that science and technology will solve our human problems. These moments are pleasant to read or envision. Full of hope and absolute belief, it seems our walk into the sublime is a short one on a sunny day.

Just last night mariner watched Frontline on PBS. It was about the 1 in 5 children in the United States who live below the poverty line. It was difficult to watch perfectly normal and bright children be crushed by the brutality of our dollar-hungry society. Must we wait for Planet One before children who live in rented slum motels can register to go to school? They have no permanent address so the children can’t register. Tragically, these children know their plight, its unfairness, its wall that cages them in nothingness.

Hasn’t science and technology provided the capabilities today to allow every child born to experience a normal childhood? Yes, they have. Then what is wrong? What is wrong is science has little to do with issues of sociology, racism, class brutality, not enough to eat not because science hasn’t provided better crops but because human abuse doesn’t feel responsible to see to it that everyone has an equal chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Isn’t that idea part of the Declaration of Independence?

As we marvel at the potential of our future through science, remember that our main problem is us, not scientific inadequacy. No amount of engineering or visionary capability will alter the human condition.

Perhaps it is better to succumb to the intelligence and mental control of artificial intelligence rather than to sustain our own inadequacies.

However and nevertheless, let us admire the future in which we will live. Remain lighthearted and appreciative. Here are the ten technologies that will transform our society:

• No one need be thirsty anymore even if one lives in a desert. Sunlight powers a water collector that produces enough water to sustain human life on a daily basis. Using Zirconium Fumarate, water is drawn from the air and collected for use.
• Scientists will soon manufacture an artificial leaf that works exactly like a true plant leaf. The advantage will be the same as it is for a plant – Carbon Dioxide will be converted to hydrocarbons to produce energy. This means that fossil fuels will not be needed.
• Artificial Intelligence soon will ‘see’ exactly the same as humans. This has significant advantages for security and precise viewing in the areas of medicine and other professions which require precise viewing of texture and color. Combined with convolutional neural network (CNN) technology, miniscule differences in faces, animals, or texture can be learned by the device without teaching it.
• Traditional farming manages whole fields of crops. A new metering system manages crops plant by plant combining sensors, robots, GPS, mapping tools and high density data-analytics to provide optimum care and feeding to each plant individually – with no increase in human labor.
• A ‘human cell atlas’ is under development which would map every cell in the body. This will enable researchers to track developing disease and other transformations such as aging or mental variations.
• ‘Liquid biopsies’ will be more precise in identifying the presence of cancer and other defects in human chemistry. Today’s blood sample will be improved in sensitivity many times over to provide far more detailed data.
• Improvements in catalytic converters will assure that every vehicle can run on Hydrogen gas. Fossil fuels will not be needed for any type of vehicle.
• Vaccines will include DNA and RNA to more accurately control infectious diseases.
• The new movement of building houses designed to grow gardens and otherwise have a ‘greening effect’ has moved to building whole blocks and streets with integrated growing areas more or less providing whole acreages for crops and atmospheric quality. One of the associated ideas is self-sustaining neighborhoods.
• The biggie is quantum computing. Quantum computing is founded on quantum mechanics which does not search one solution at a time like current computer processing. Rather, it assembles all possible solutions at the ready and searches for the right answer along several paths at once. The intense processing requires cooling 100 times as powerful as super computers today. Obviously, the complexity of variables and other relationships in very abstruse problems will be solvable. The primary advantage is optimization beyond normal abilities even for super computers.

In the Frontline piece about children in poverty, mariner doesn’t see any solutions that will prevent an 8 year old girl from having to turn her pet dog over to a rescue center because she lost the house she lived in because they could not afford the rent.

Ancient Mariner