
Imperial College London's table of disruptive tech - jonbaer
https://www.businessinsider.com/imperial-college-london-table-of-disruptive-tech-will-blow-your-mind-2018-7
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KineticLensman
> The table was created by Richard Watson and Anna Cupani after reading a dry
> list of emerging technologies on Wikipedia. They spoke to experts to shape
> the table and produced a number of drafts using Post-it notes for each
> element before agreeing on a final version...

This methodology has put Smart Nappies, Wireless Energy Transfer and
Autonomous Vehicles into the same 'happening now' category. Compared with
them, Peer-to-peer energy trading & transmission and Automated knowledge
discovery are considered 'experimental'. I'm not convinced the results are
robust and they certainly don't indicate the degree of disruption that we
should be expecting.

> Maria Jeansson, who worked on the project, said it was designed as a visual
> conversation starter.

I don't think it will be a very long conversation.

~~~
rasz
Results were never meant to be robust, just clickbaity, one of the main
authors is a "Stakeholder Engagement Manager" whatever that means.

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joelschw
The direct link:

[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/administra...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/administration-and-support-services/enterprise-office/public/Table-of-
Disruptive-Technologies.pdf)

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slivym
58 Nm - New Materials. 20 Years Hence. Citation: Vanta Black by Surrey
Nanosystems.

So it's going to be 20 YEARS before we have any new materials. And when we
have those new materials they're going to be a material that a company in
Surrey is already selling today. Wat.

Imperial is my Alma Mater and frankly it's embarrassing when they do stupid
publicity stunts like this.

~~~
monkpit
> 58 Nm

* 48 Nm

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abainbridge
I like how "Self writing software" is very soon and only medium impact. Once
we have self writing software, everything else on the grid comes for free!
Step one would be to automatically write a better automatic software writer.

~~~
nannal
Pipe a quine into a compiler, run the output.

Bow before my might simple mortals.

\--

For fun a while back I was playing with the concept of self modifying bash.

A bash script that duplicates and modifies a random character/ adds a
character in a random location, or deletes a character.

Then running the output and the original file.

Obviously I got a lot of broken scripts, my point is self writing software is
possible, automated, well thought out edits are a long way off.

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rhn_mk1
Placing asteroid mining in the farthest category seems a bit misplaced to me.
If even politicians started to lay down law for space ownership, it can't be
that uncertain or far fetched.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
It doesn't seem economical in any reasonable time frame given the relative
cheapness of mining what's already on earth.

~~~
CM30
Wonder if the economics may change if stricter laws were implemented to help
with climate change. It's crazy I know, but maybe in future that could end up
forcing heavy industry off Earth and onto places/planets/asteroids/whatever
where no one needs to care about the environment.

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ModernMech
"Balloon powered internet"

I know this one is referring to Google's Project Loon, which uses balloons as
relays to bring internet to remote areas, but I'd really like to see an
Internet actually running on balloon power.

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Jemm
If Smart Nappies were not on the list, I might take this more seriously.

~~~
SuperGent
Also Telepathy, although they cite organisations that are researching these
'wonderful, weird (and possibly worrying) ways the world might change in the
foreseeable future', which is more worrying!

~~~
walterbell
Startup headed by an ex-Facebook/Oculus exec,
[https://www.cnet.com/news/telepathy-openwater-mary-lou-
jepse...](https://www.cnet.com/news/telepathy-openwater-mary-lou-jepsen-mri-
mind-reading-mri-wearable-facebook/)

 _" I think we're talking about less than a decade, probably eight years until
telepathy." The details of exactly how all this will work are a little murky,
and Openwater says it needs to file for patents before it will publish a peer
reviewed proof of feasibility and eventually launch a product. But Jepsen, who
has also spent time at Google X, MIT and Intel, says the basic idea is to
shrink down the huge MRI machines found in medical hospitals into flexible
LCDs that can be embedded in a ski hat and use infrared light to see what's
going on in your brain. "Literally a thinking cap," Jepsen explains."_

