
Top Breakthroughs for 2019 Curated by Bill Gates - sytelus
https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2019/
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patall
A small comment on one of these technologies: cell-free DNA. A big problem in
innovating there is that THE big backbone technology player Illumina (for DNA
sequencing) has its own big research initiative (named grail) in the field. I
know from at least one start up that got into trouble regarding some new tech
with them as Illumina obviously does not want competitors to succeed and has
far too much knowledge about those to let them go freely. So being a big
"breakthrough" area can have disadvantages as it also attract monopoly
players.

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noel24
Bill Gates seems to have upped his media presence this year. I am seeing a
Gates article in some stream or the other almost on a daily basis.

~~~
elektor
I have two hypotheses as to why that is.

Bill Gates is financially involved in a large number of startups mentioned in
the article. Good PR = more sales = Gates' portfolio is better off.

The other reason is a little more conspiratorial. There is a growing trend of
financial populism where politicians are clamoring for higher taxes on the
rich (70% on $10+ mil). I think Gates is trying to mitigate this movement by
showcasing how he uses his wealth for the greater good.

~~~
jacoblambda
Considering that Gates has publicly said that he wants the government to tax
him more(He said it most recently during the AMA not to long ago) I would
disagree.

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dtornabene
yeah, sort of. He isn't clamoring to be taxed quite yet.
[https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1087749307380523008?l...](https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1087749307380523008?lang=en)

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danhon
I wrote the story about ECGs on your wrist!
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612929/wristwatch-
heart-m...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612929/wristwatch-heart-
monitors-might-save-your-lifeand-change-medicine-too/)

~~~
komali2
I'm hoping the ECG thing catches up to where you don't need an iPhone for it
to work - the first step, in my mind, in making it widely available. Last I
checked, 80% of owned smartphones were running Android.

~~~
drdave01
Buy a Kardia Mobile - only $99. Works with Android and iOS.

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SirLuxuryYacht
>> In China, consumers are getting used to Alibaba’s AliMe, which coordinates
package deliveries over the phone and haggles about the price of goods over
chat.

I'm surprised by this. Seems like there is a lot going on in real brains when
negotiating, much less a computer running some probabilistic algorithm. I'd be
interested to see the specifics of how "consumers are getting used to" having
a computer talk the price down with a real human seller.

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arjan_sch
Interesting that blockchain is not mentioned at all. Is it past its hype
cycle?

~~~
threeseed
Blockchain is a net negative for the world.

The emissions it enables through the reckless waste of power does not outweigh
the currently limited benefits.

~~~
mirekrusin
Very much like ITER's fusion reactor, not worth it, right?

~~~
threeseed
What a bizarre comment.

If ITER is successful then it will be the saving grace of humanity. Being able
to have a limitless, emission free source of power will bring hundreds of
millions out of poverty and help prevent climate change.

What humanity sized problem is Blockchain solving ? It's maybe a better
payment system, maybe a better data storage approach, maybe a better contract
mechanism. That's all. Not guaranteed. Just maybe.

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RickJWagner
I have to admit I was never a fan of Bill Gates when he was heading Microsoft.

But he's turning out to be an ideal billionaire. I think he's really making a
difference.

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yters
Tech breakthroughs these days don't seem on the level of things like
airplanes, the computer, the internet, nuclear power, space flight,
satellites, etc. I wonder what is different now.

~~~
SirLuxuryYacht
It seems the difference is that developing a new toilet doesn't require the
manpower that developing nuclear power or spaceflight does. This is just the
list for 2019, not the 20th century.

~~~
yters
It's representative of recent breakthroughs.

For example if we looked back in time to the invents I mentioned, the year's
breakthroughs would have surrounded these much bigger breakthroughs.

The theme of current breakthroughs seems much smaller scope. For some reason
our vision is smaller. I don't know why. We are either focused on very large
things that appear unlikely to happen, like AGI, or on very small, speculative
or trivial things like social networking or blockchain. None of the middle
ground which are large, clearly important and have traction.

I guess a lot of the big tech I mentioned was generated by the necessities of
fighting a global war.

~~~
SirLuxuryYacht
Yes, the drive to kill something before it kills you is a very strong driver
of innovation. All of these breakthroughs cater to precisely the opposite
target: promoting human health either directly, or by improving our
environment. This makes sense since this is the primary focus of the Gates
Foundation, in 2019. That's a small scope if you ask me. You'd better believe
that humans returning to space would be on this list if Gates had a horse in
that race. I personally admire Gates' commitment to humans rather than stuff
'n things.

Also, I don't think its fair to call blockchain or social networking trivial.
But thats neither here nor there given this listicle.

~~~
yters
Gates is a billionaire thanks to a lot of wartime technology.

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tomp
Some thoughts:

\- _custom cancer vaccines_ \- the idea being that _the vaccine, which
triggers a person’s immune system to identify a tumor by its unique mutations,
could effectively shut down many types of cancers_ , but this could also
easily be retargeted and used to shut down the _whole body_ (or just a vitally
important part). It's still a question of delivery, the toxin would need to be
delivered to the body in an undetectable way to be really dangerous... This is
explored in an episode of The Expanse [0].

\- _carbon dioxide catcher_ \- I wondered before to what extent does
_production of [...] synthetic fuels, using the captured carbon dioxide as a
key ingredient_ even make sense - more energy is spent (likely from carbon) to
produce the fuel than is released by burning the fuel, so this really only
makes sense if we have enough clean energy to power the whole world (e.g.
solar), but not enough batteries to run the economy (cars don't just need
energy, they need energy in a convenient portable form). The CO2 -> fuel
processes could enable us to go to zero-net-CO2 energy cycle, while keeping
current infrastructure (fuel-burning cars, planes, ships).

\- _an ECG on your wrist_ \- how about an ECG _in_ your wrist - a chip
implanted into your body that would be able to not just measure the heartbeat,
but also continuously monitor various blood markers - glucose, cholesterol,
stress hormones, ... Is anyone aware of any company working on this? Are such
sensors even possible from a medical-technology perspective (disregarding
energy, data transfer and privacy issues)?

\- _sanitation without sewers_ \- a similar technology (full dirty feces ->
clean carbon & water process) will need to be developed for space habitats...

\- _smooth-talking AI assistants_ \- this almost seems like a solution in
search of a problem. Do we _actually_ want to haggle _with an AI_
(hyperoptimised and hyperexperiences and almost certain to beat us while
giving us the impression that we're getting a great deal!), don't we just want
to get a fair price (in the free market sense, i.e. with most profit competed
away)? I wonder what are some problems that can/should be automated at scale,
but that _cannot_ be automated via other means (e.g. buying plane tickets
online)... I'm guessing Google's application of an AI booking appointments
(with people) is one of the best applications, as it treats speech as a kind
of a _universal interface_ (originally developed for humans)...

[0]
[https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monster_and_the_Rocket](https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monster_and_the_Rocket)

~~~
joe_the_user
All these seem like more or less products that are variations and extensions
of things already existing. Indeed, a lot of them are solutions in search of a
problem. Robot dexterity has indeed been increasing for a long time but has
been held back back by computational complexity of interacting with the world.
Cancer treatments relying on the immune system have been tried over and over
again and have failed for a similarly period, undone by the complexity of
cancers. Carbon sequestering in various forms is often talked about but none
of them make much sense compared simply stopping profligate carbon release
(sure, once that stops and things are still bad, then this maybe but stopping
release is always going to be the most cost effective until we some serious
reduction).

So either the complexity of modern society means world-change innovation has
become vanishingly small or Gates is pushing products of some pals rather than
taking a serious look at possibilities.

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joe_the_user
Behind paywall apparently

~~~
komali2
That confused me as well - there's the line

> But what exactly is the purpose of a plow?

After a paragraph about it, but then the article just jumps right into the
"Top Breakthrough Techs" no big deal? I couldn't tell what was going on, I'm
not even sure I read the "actual" article.

