
Ask HN: Who is building something that will change the world? - littlesamana
Who are the Apple&#x27;s of this generation? What is a young Wozniak or Jobs doing in the 21st century? Where can you find them?
======
Blakestr
I think I figured out how to transfer 'experience', functionally.

I'm building VR for public safety, (fire & EMS). I'm convinced we can train
doctors in 1/3 of the time, maybe even less. (And I'm just a paramedic) I've
been a lifelong gamer and in the fire service for over a decade. It wasn't
until I tried Google cardboard using a hack I found on Reddit to play Counter-
Strike, about 5 years ago, that I realized this could work. (My player
character had been killed and fell down and laid in the position of a gunshot
wound I had run and looked eerily similar, it was one of those "hmm, that's
interesting" moments.

Prehospital emergency medicine, to me, is one of the most challenging skills
to learn because it is so difficult to simulate the chaos of a patient as well
as addressing so many multifaceted, high level concepts in such a short period
of time. You don't have time, really, to look s __* up.

But I've paid very close attention to my mind over my career, to the 'before
and after' of a call that increased my experience level.

Long story short, I've spent a lot of time delving into this concept, of what
experience actually is and how would you replicate the process by which a
person becomes experienced.

Most of the time conceptual information is abstracted which adds significantly
to the time to learn something. For example, learning how to read a 12-lead
EKG, can actually be taught in much less time when the information is
presented in the correct format. (Step by step 3D model animated properly)

Instead, traditional learning models abstract information in walls of text and
this means that only people who are more intelligent (or more determined) are
able to parse out the reality from this abstraction. Even then, time to
comprehension and mastery is much longer than is necessary.

Comprehension is not a conscious act. Neither is recognition. You must build a
pattern of sensory information overlaid with and assimilated cognitive weight.

-orange and white and black on a large, striped animal means Tiger! And is dangerous, RUN"

It's been a long time because I haven't had any money to really pursue this,
and I can't afford to quit my day job. So I've had to learn the Unreal Engine
and I do not come from a technical background. But at some point I realized
I'd have to build this before I got any real traction.

I'm close now.

~~~
qmmmur
If you can actually bring down the training barrier for medical professionals
that will be great. Given the critical effect a doctor cna have I see why
training is how it is right now - hyper competitive to even get in, lots of
book learned stuff and long residencies. However, I've been to terrible
doctors so clearly there is room for improvement. I look forward to a show hn,
even if it's a work in progress.

~~~
Blakestr
It's years out but the slam duck proof of concept will be to take 1st year
residents who have just finished med school but have had very limited patient
contact and pit them against, honestly, whomever is willing. If you can
diagnose any illness faster or more accurately, without having real world
experience and you are doing better than a 20 year physician, to me, that puts
the concept of "practicing medicine" to a new light.

I've no qualms about the levels of complexity for this endeavor. I remember
sketching out my first algorithm for a "simple" heart attack and kept running
out of paper and nearly had an aneurysm.

------
buboard
The companies who create things around remote work. If we can get > 30% of
people working remotely, cities and countries will change. transportation will
change, lifestyles will change, the environment will be happy for it.

~~~
qnsi
People will be less happy though

~~~
bwb
I don't think there is any evidence to that effect if anything the 2 or 3 big
scientific surveys show the opposite effect, a slight increase in happiness.

~~~
qnsi
didn't know that. Sorry for spreading misinformation, I heard a lot that
remote workers are more lonely and thought that it means they are less happy

~~~
helij
Maybe for single people. For us with spouses and kids it's never lonely.

------
ralusek
VR. I thought it'd be cool but we weren't there yet. Tried an Oculus Quest
over the weekend...amazing. I thought I had a good idea of what to expect, but
the technology is _miles_ ahead of where I thought we were.

I had a truly transformative experience, too. I can't think of another
experience, with technology or without, that has made me be so deeply
impacted. VR is incredible.

~~~
buboard
try it for a few weekends and let us know if the enthusiasm is still there.
Imho, VR as a medium doesnt have long term potential

~~~
haxiomic
I’ve been using the Vive almost everyday since release in 2016. My enthusiasm
is very much still there! Although most VR apps out there don’t really have
enough content or quality to keep the medium exciting for long periods, some
apps like Beatsaber have changed my daily exercise routine

------
angleofrepose
I think the most interesting future work will be around communication.
Communication encapsulates all the places I want tech to have a positive
benefit in society and my life: education, thinking, invention, people.

(I don't mean connecting people, I am thoroughly unimpressed with that
directive)

In this space you have the onset of design systems/languages. Information
design and interface design. Education reform and restructuring. Programming
education reform.

Look at Bret Victor and other researchers through CDG, VPRI, Dynamicland. Rune
Madsen and other artist developers at NYU. John Maeda formerly at the MIT
Media Lab with Design by Numbers and Casey Reas and Ben Fry with Processing
and Lauren McCarthy with p5js. Mike Bostock with d3. Chris Granger with Eve.

Ink and Switch is a research lab with a number of interesting developers
involved working on the future of power user design workflows.

If you want to find the interesting people you have to follow connections
around. Start with the one most interesting to you and go backwards through
their work, lookup every group they worked with and their members. Look at
GitHub stars and find small blogs to follow, read their history and the one
strange project they did which can lead you to the maintainer of some other
interesting project. Build a picture, learn the space.

Xerox parc is responsible for the GUI plus a ridiculous number of other
personal computing workflow essentials. There is no place with the breadth of
Xerox parc today, but there are labs with incredible focus. University of
Washington IDX. Stanford's HCI lab. CMU, UCSB, MIT. Transportation labs and
BOOM at Berkeley. Delft, Aarhus, University of Paris Sud.

The next big thing will be giving power to users through protocols, not
platforms. Through live environments and powerful conversation tools rather
than consumption tools.

Excuse the mobile formatting, thanks for the question.

------
thisisbig
I just found out about this last night: EnviroMission[1] is looking for
funding to build solar updraft towers that could radically change the world’s
reliance on fossil fuels. The design is very simple, and at scale could
generate massive amounts of power. They’ve been having trouble getting off the
ground, unfortunately, but the technology is so promising that it should not
be ignored. More info in [2].

1:
[http://www.enviromission.com.au/IRM/content/default.aspx](http://www.enviromission.com.au/IRM/content/default.aspx)

2:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower)

------
contingencies
We're creating a network of robotic service locations providing automated,
always-available, meaningfully personalized food prepared on demand directly
from fresh ingredients, which are automatically restocked by a transparent
supply chain.

Of course we want to make money, but we also feel this may (1) enhance
humanity's ability to confidently feed rising urban populations, all else
being the same (2) reduce food waste (3) reduce single use plastic packaging
(4) reduce needless road mileage for millions of grocery trips (5) provide an
adaptable distribution channel for seasonal and organic produce that typically
doesn't get the mass-distribution of generic mass-produce seen in supermarkets
due to non-homogeneity, reduced or non-guaranteed availability.

We could fail at half of these and still be happy. Optimism is part of the
game!

~~~
Blakestr
I think this is inevitable and not a bad thing but I wish we were able to talk
about this better as a society.

What you are describing is a "transition" to post-scarcity, as everything
becomes automated and jobs are eliminated.

And for marketing, you don't call them robots. Call them appliances. Automated
Appliances maybe. Robots go berserk and Skynet over the world; appliances just
cook your food :)

~~~
contingencies
Robot, n. _A machine that doesn 't work yet._ (Because if it worked you'd name
it after what it does, like a dishwasher or a vacuum cleaner).

... via
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

We call them 'service locations'.

------
numtel
Metal-organic frameworks that can pull water out of the air passively hold
promise to completely reshape our relationship to the land.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPSYzLZ7xKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPSYzLZ7xKU)

Irrigation without building canals, water generation at the point of use... If
this is as good as they hope, this is the solution to the most fundamental of
our political problems.

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/crystalline-nets-
har...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/crystalline-nets-harvest-
water-desert-air-turn-carbon-dioxide-liquid-fuel)

------
sova
We are developing Japanese Complete, a rapid fluency acquisition platform. Not
"change the world" as in put more stuff in it, but "change the world" by
allowing more humans to interact meaningfully in/through/about Japan/ese.
Check it out!
([https://japanesecomplete.com/overview](https://japanesecomplete.com/overview))

~~~
zb1plus
Hi Sova, Super cool! I'm presently learning Mandarin Chinese and prototyping
some series of language learning tools that try to use the user's surroundings
to deliver context-aware lessons. I'm very passionate about this space and
would love to connect!

~~~
sova
Right on! I've added my e-mail to my HN profile. Please contact me and let's
have a discussion! Mandarin is also a challenging language, and I'd love to
hear about your vision for teaching it.

~~~
zb1plus
Awesome! I'm not seeing your email on your profile, but feel free to drop me a
line at zphillipsgary8@gatech.edu if you're interesting in talking more.

------
ReD_CoDE
I'm in the Digital Built Environment industry, so I strongly believe that it's
one of the less developed industries and has a lot of potentials.

Construction technologies are outdated

Facility management and Real Estate technologies too

Also, there are some hot topics like Digital Twin(s) and Smart Cities which
everyone has her/his own understanding about them

So, we've chosen the Facility Management industry, with $1.5 trillion annually
TAM globally and are planning for the first step have one million users in our
B2B contract which will cause we become a unicorn with $3 billion value just
with one contract

------
CyberFonic
Brilliant people come from the most unexpected places. The one thing that
stands out about Jobs/Gates/Wozniak et al. is that they came from
unconventional (for the time) backgrounds with unique skills and talents.

It would seem that to change the world, you first need to be in a position of
"being outside the world" \- not literally but from a perspective point of
view. Those who are immersed in the status-quo or are imitating some personal
hero, are unlikely to ever come up with something truly radical and new.

~~~
ThePhysicist
Steve Jobs grew up in San Francisco, one of the world's tech hotbeds, Bill
Gates grew up in a rich family and attended one of the world's most
prestigious universities before starting Microsoft. No offense but I wouldn't
call those "the most unexpected places".

------
ntnlabs
I think we can see from history that key ingredients for a push forward were
language, axe (as a tool) and wheel.

That's why I think evolution in these areas should be the the change that will
transform our world in big way. Transportation as in (Boring/SpaceX/Tesla),
tool as in (Boston Dynamic) and communication as in (VR/AR).

But like I said this is more of an evolution than revolution. There might be
something new that I cannot comprehend and that will radically change the
world. (AI?)

~~~
sova
Language, Axe, Wheel, Coffee, Beer, Printing Press, iPhone. Inventions or
discoveries that change the world have the common thread of usefulness and
suitability. Thinking historically is pretty, it's hard to weed out bad ideas
this way. AI is an idea like a "wood cutting implement" is an idea, but it's
still no axe.

------
faissaloo
There's a small community currently looking at the home fabrication of
semiconductors that I'm loosely associated with.

------
JohnFen
I honestly don't think it's possible to know in advance what will change the
world and what will not with any real degree of confidence.

The best that anybody can say is that what they're working on has _a chance_
of changing the world, and even that is pretty shaky. The world has been
changed by things that even their creators didn't think were that impactful at
the time.

------
quickthrower2
I think the next Wozniak opportunities will require a lot more funding so will
be controlled if you like by investors and corporates not two men in a garage.
Nowadays you’d need a lotto win to afford the SV garage. For example quantum
computing needs a lot of money. It’s not soldering chips anymore.

~~~
JohnFen
I disagree. I think the potential for a couple of people working in a garage
to do something with serious impact is as great, or greater, than it has ever
been.

There are, and always have been, things that are incredibly capital-intensive,
of course, but economics change and things that once required multiple
millions of dollars are now affordable by normal people. This was true in the
past as well -- those couple of guys working in a garage couldn't have done it
a decade or two earlier when the costs of such electronics were stratospheric.

Things that are costly now, such as quantum computing, will very likely follow
the exact same trajectory.

------
barbarbar
Someone who can make it possible to store the energy from windmills. Now the
windmills are taken out of the grid when producing more than what can be
consumed. Which is a complete waste. If this energy could be stored for a
while - then this switch of would not be needed.

------
throwaway29434
Just curious, why are you asking. I think the most exciting industry are the
old ones, there are some interesting projects out there, if you want just let
me know specifically what sector

------
bwb
Everywhere :), you are looking at the people a few rounds back who got lucky +
worked hard + played some hands. Look at startups all around!

Airbnb? Facebook? YC classes?

~~~
alexgmcm
How many of these startups actually change the world though?

It seems more and more like "The best minds of my generation are thinking
about how to make people click ads."

~~~
bwb
Well, I'd say two things:

1\. A lot of them are changing the world in small ways and some in big ways.
And, some are just getting started and it is going to take another 10 years to
see their impact. We like big narratives of x changed the world but I think it
is more likely change by a thousand cuts.

2\. Ads get a lot of attention but I'd say that is also hugely important to
change the world. Adwords is amazing in that it is has democratized
advertising significantly. Now small businesses can go buy ads without any
contracts huge spend or so on. I know for me 10+ years ago it was a game-
changer for getting one of my first businesses off the ground.

------
crb002
I'm building the equivalent of a Heroku for batch processing. Should save an
obscene amount of developer setup time, and megawatts of power with more data
locality.

------
tyzerdak
Imo nowadays most interesting stuff is solved, so in nearby future won't be
some great innovation. But in 10-20 years ai maybe will be capable to
translate text like human.

I think that people are ruining good stuff. They abuse openess and post shit
on fb, youtube, twitter, etc. And it's all happening because a lot of ppl has
internet. I mean bad ppl and retards post shit, for bigger reach. When not
many ppl has inet there was no point of shit posting.

So I expect more websites will allow ppl to post after some barriers. Not the
best days to surf internet.

~~~
kzzzznot
Ignoring the offensive language used, it should be noted that at every point
in humanity (without being able to see into the future) the argument that
“interesting stuff has been solved” could’ve been made.

I think we are actually at a very interesting time in history. World changing
things like robotics, AI, space exploration have made huge advances recently,
and there are still many industries that haven’t even invested in/been
disrupted by software.

~~~
DoreenMichele
"Everything that can be invented has been invented" \-- goes back to an 1899
joke about closing the patent office and has apparently been oft repeated.

[https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-
every...](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-
that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html)

