Ask HN: What up and coming technology has you most excited? - varrock
======
WhompingWindows
CRISPR-CAS9 for genome editing. Briefly, it allows us to identify particular
bits of DNA and modify one or more bases. It's a very new biotechnology
(research essentially began within the last 10 years) which applies to
essentially all species we've tested it on. It is cheap and so easy to perform
that I could probably teach 99% of HN to do it in a week's training or less.

It's still not as accurate as we need it to be, but that won't stop biologists
from modifying plants for improved performance as crops, bugs for less disease
spreading, or other mammals to increase the pace of biological discovery. In
time (and in China first, most likely), we will see the use of this genome-
editing technology on humans flourish.

Thinking specifically of humans, it will allow us to eradicate inherited
genetic diseases like sickle-cell anemia, to target cancer cells very
specifically, and will hopefully revolutionize treatment in many sorts of
diseases. Now, when it comes to enhancing humans and their germ-line
(eggs/sperm), which allows enhancement on down the generations. this is the
most controversial point. It will probably be done on the black market if we
try to regulate it, and it would probably be immoral to disallow people from
giving their children all the advantages possible.

But where does that stop? Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with
blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? Will
that occur? Who's to say. Either way, utopian or dystopian or somewhere in
between, I think genome editing is the most influential class of technologies
on the horizon.

~~~
KeitIG
I am not sure that human genome edition is something I would consider
"exciting". It adds a lot of ethical questions, I am thinking about the kind
of uses "I want my child to have blue eyes" in particular.

~~~
sigi45
We already play god.

People are just having sex without thinking twice.

I'm married and in the appropriate age and i have thought about having kids a
ton.

I'm not sure if i'm even allowed to create a new thinking human being only for
the motivation of having a kid.

The crispr thing takes all our medical advantages just an additional level up.

You see people argue about if you should do a gen test for down syndrome
(don't get me wrong here! A human being is a human being. But yes there is a
consensus in our society that you become a human after a period of 3 month, at
least in germany) and other complications but would never think about denying
a doctor to use a incubator for a baby which would never ever be alive today
without the medical advances.

There is an unbelievable huge hypocritical thinking in this. Yes tons of human
beings would not be alive today without medicine but on the other hand the
responsibility coming from all this knowledge doesn't matter?

I believe that in a moral/ethical right way you would need to do your BEST for
your kid and this means making sure that by using crispr you do that.

I have no idea where this journey will bring us and yes there is tons of
things to figure out but we will be able to overtake natures randomness for
future live. And we have to.

~~~
crote
Randomness already has nothing to do with (western) society. Modern healthcare
and society in general allow for the survival and reproduction of individuals
who would have simply died a few thousand years ago. The whole concept of
"survival of the fittest" no longer applies to our species.

There is nothing wrong with this - as you said, everyone wants the best for
their child. The big question is, what exactly _is_ the best? From my point of
view, it seems that if designer babies were to become easily available, the
average parent would just look on Facebook as to what the latest "influencers"
fancy this week - and that would make the world an awful lot worse.

------
abhinavkulkarni
Robotics. Not humanoids necessarily (I find them creepy to tell you the
truth), but the ones that will act in the background making mundane and
repetitive tasks easier - garbage collection, cleaning, watering plants,
restocking grocery store aisles, further automating industrial tasks, etc.

~~~
wwkeyboard
Anyone interested in the psychology of why nearly-but-not-quite humanoid
machines are creepy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)
is a good place to start reading.

------
Razengan
I'm at a point in life where technology doesn't concern me so much as human
behavior and where we're collectively headed as a unique species in the
cosmos.

Regarding convenience, comfort and entertainment, we are good enough — A
person can get all sorts of luxury and services without ever leaving one's
home — but technology that encourages us to treat each other better, feel
better about ourselves, and removes barriers to physical and social mobility,
is what really excites me anymore.

~~~
himom
Tech is a lifestyle decoration. We have political and environmental
existential threats where we might obliterate ourselves.

------
Dangeranger
1\. Secure Scuttlebutt and the future of online social interaction. [0]

2\. IPFS and the distributed offline web [1]

3\. WebAssembly and the coming revolution of web applications. [2]

[0] [https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork](https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork)

[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5bgFYiZ1/its-
time-for-the-permanent-web.html)

[2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/WebAssembly/Concept...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/WebAssembly/Concepts)

------
adamnemecek
Ipfs, photonic computing and photonic everything (like displays). It might be
still kinda far out but it’s a lot closer than people think.

Also most languages built on top of llvm.

~~~
icebraining
Photonic computing is interesting; last year I attended a python meetup, and
two of the presenters were writing Python tooling for designing photonic chips
(called IPKISS). Seemed well suited for sensor data processing.

~~~
adamnemecek
Wow IPKISS looks like something I would want to use. Ive been trying to write
some of this myself and it's annoying. Thanks a bunch!

I'm working (like, on the side) on building a fully photonic computer. The
progress is very slow, however some things fall into place quite a bit. Most
photonic computing designs still use bits, mine would use signals which makes
the computer much more powerful.

------
lallysingh
Smarter conversational AI. More applications just being plugins connected to
your cloud AI instance. It's a revolution on user interfaces whose scope we're
not even close to understanding.

The biggest part: it'll make people better at asking sophisticated questions
and understanding how important that is.

I think it'll be as big a shift change as the Internet was.

~~~
sanxiyn
I doubt this. People don't even bother asking sophisticated query to search
engines.

~~~
croon
Only because no search engines understand them.

I would love to ask specific questions instead of translating everything into
multiple queries of "search engine speak".

Every time we find an edge case (or a noob question) that lands us on stack
exchange, we could just ask an AI directly to look up the relevant
documentation or scour through thousands of bug reports and workarounds.

Stage two describing the solution you want generated code for, or stage three
stating the problem, or stage 4 finding problems and solving them.

~~~
candiodari
I think wolframalpha is already pretty close to that. And, I must say, a lot
more trustworthy than even stackexchange. I mean, if it gives an answer, you
can generally trust it to simply be true.

And it never shows ads.

~~~
croon
wolframalpha is really great for a good set of questions, but it's not the AI
being envisioned.

~~~
candiodari
That's true, it's a 1960's style AI (an "expert system"). It's rule-based and,
frankly, really, really good.

------
JBReefer
I think we're at a standstill for most PC/mobile/the sort of tech most of us
work with.

Electric cars and the explosion of renewables are going to change
_everything_, faster than people think.

Doing a quarter mile in a Model S is fucking AWESOME.

~~~
k__
I think they will continue to pump PC tech into mobile devices until both
converge, still a few years to go for this.

~~~
ropeadopepope
The reason PC and Mobile hasn't converged is because of the lack of good
inputs that aren't mouse and keyboard. As long as there's no good way to input
text on mobile, there will never be a convergence of those two verticals.

~~~
k__
I already know many people who simply plug a mouse/keyboard combo on their
mobile device via USB/BT and it works like a charm.

------
murukesh_s
Programming without programming. Seriously we are doing too much now to just
perform glorified data entry.

------
greatestdana
Augmented reality. I really think it'll change how we spend our time
throughout the day (perhaps for the worse).

I think the change will be similar in magnitude to the invention of the
internet.

~~~
fnord123
It sounds cool... but I can't help but assume it will turn into a shit show
like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)

~~~
AquiGorka
It does look like a "shit show" but with the proper (a lot) adjustments it can
have its upsides

------
TACIXAT
3d printed houses and vertical farms. If these technologies get cheap enough,
they will cover two of people's basic needs.

~~~
JBReefer
According to State Farm, completely rebuilding my apartment is would be 1/7th
of what I paid for it, and that's with NYC union labor.

There's a reason that crackhouses in Vancouver cost $1 million, and it's not
because they're made of gold. You need to build density to reduce the share of
land cost per dwelling, anything else is a gimmick.

~~~
dllthomas
> You need to build density to reduce the share of land cost per dwelling

Or (meaningfully) make proximity less important.

------
ropeadopepope
Better energy storage will revolutionize everything from phones to electric
cars.

I can't wait for the e-ink patent to expire. We'll see an explosion of
research on color screens that don't need a backlight.

There's a lot of exciting things going on in DSP, OCR and automated
transcription these days. Being able to convert various sources of information
to text without having to do it manually is exciting.

------
Jagat
Self-driving RVs. Imagine traveling throughout the country, sleeping in one
national park campsite and waking up in another.

~~~
stillsut
Love this idea. On the subject, does anyone know the potential fuel (delta %
mpg's) savings of an optimally coordinated self-driving fleet that utilizes
drafting?

------
zwieback
Same thing as when I was a teenager in the 80's: clean energy. Solar cells are
now mainstream and maybe I'll live to see some advance with fusion reactors.

~~~
eddieschod
Net-positive fusion reactors still don't solve everything sadly; they're
likely to be really costly and because of those economics will only serve
really populous energy grids.

One thing I learned from someone wise is to not down-select technologies for a
solution (i.e., this is most dangerous when the government down-selects
technologies). Something might arise other than solar cells specifically that
accomplishes their goal.

------
eddieschod
[https://dynamicland.org/](https://dynamicland.org/)

~~~
Yoric
That looks pretty cool!

------
JonnyNova
Self driving cars. The amount of time saved for humanity will be absolutely
staggering and free up people to spend more time accomplishing more things.

~~~
mtmail
Combined with cars that reside in remote places to pick you up on demand. Then
our cities will have more spaces that is currently occupied by parking.

~~~
JBReefer
I think this is the biggest part, and less the "sleep in your car while you
commute for 5 hours each way!" which sounds fucking terrible.

Imagine the amount of space and time saved by having 1 enormous lot on the
outskirt of town, like an airport. You walk around your dense urban area, call
your car, 10 minutes it's there, it drops you off, and parks itself. No
circling the block, no terrible big box concrete hellscapes, just Park Slope
without the frustration.

Cheap, too. Building parking in NYC costs ~$100k a spot
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12parking.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12parking.html)

~~~
ropeadopepope
> I think this is the biggest part, and less the "sleep in your car while you
> commute for 5 hours each way!" which sounds fucking terrible.

I'm actually looking forward to that. It gives a whole new meaning to the
phrase "dying in your sleep."

------
yyt_x
Next-Generation variable-buoyancy airships, without a doubt. Primarily because
of the ways it will impact construction. Once we 'build the machine that
builds the buildings' we can then simply lift them into place. Cities could
become vastly more flexible (modular) and livable as a result. But even
agriculture and logging could become vastly less environmentally destructive.

------
mindcrime
Brain-computer-interface, semantic web, artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology

------
lifeisstillgood
Can we remember to run this question every 6-12 months aka whoishiring?

------
orliesaurus
Smaller, more efficient, long lasting batteries

------
sunstone
Elon Musk's space based Internet service is near the top of my list. 1gps from
my sailboat in the middle of the Pacific while we collectively thumb our nose
at the crappy ISP's we have now.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Will that be bi-directional? I always thought satellite internet was only one
way, then you had to use a phone or dsl for the uplink.. Does musk's system
change that?

~~~
sunstone
Yes it does. Here's a pretty in depth analysis of it. (Take the hyperbole with
a pinch of salt but the tech is correct.)

[https://www.cringely.com/2018/04/06/the-space-race-is-
over-a...](https://www.cringely.com/2018/04/06/the-space-race-is-over-and-
spacex-won/)

------
pilom
CRISPR. The ability to edit DNA in living animals (especially in the germ
line) will cure genetic diseases, make us live longer, and increase our
ability to feed the third world.

~~~
bpicolo
As someone not in biotech at all, biotech is so cool to me in general.
Definitely a the sexiest field as an outsider for me.

------
ASipos
VR/AR, 3D printers, self-driving cars, the DragonBox Pyra.

------
jacknews
OK, just an incremental improvement over lcd, oled, e-paper etc, but the
characteristics enable deployment in many new situations. Plus it's a "why
didn't I think of that?" technology.
[https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/technology](https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/technology)

~~~
justinclift
Seems offline atm. The archive.org version renders ok though:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20171029180947/http://www.cleari...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171029180947/http://www.clearinkdisplays.com/technology)

------
abledon
Earthing Mats & the research into our bioelectric chemistry. Where you work at
a standup desk but stand on a mat that is grounded to the earth.

Also E-ink HDMI screens with fast refresh rate.

Edit: These downvotes remind me of how the greeks drowned Hipassus for talking
about the existence of irrational numbers lol.

------
Mrtierne
Quantum computing as it relates to chemistry and materials development.

------
admyral
Unpopular opinion around here, but Bitcoin. The idea that we have technology
now which can help address global wealth inequality just makes me happy.

~~~
grivescorbett
Genuinely curious... how can Bitcoin help address global wealth inequality?

~~~
admyral
Initially I think due to disruption to banking and government monopolies.
Outrageous fees, pitiful interest rates, and financial services only
accessible Monday through Friday 9-5 and sometimes on Saturday seem pretty
archaic today. People who never had access to a bank can send money to anyone
peer-to-peer like cash. Millenials largely prefer to invest their money into
cryptocurrencies over traditional assets, which I believe has largely been
monopolized by a firmly established few.

~~~
dsr_
Outrageous fees: are you sure we're talking about BitCoin, here?

Financial services M-F 9-5: while you generally need to go into a bank to set
up an account, that's not always the case. Afterwards, most banking can be via
direct deposit, mobile cameras for check deposits, ATMs, and web services.

People who don't have access to banks -- Kenya appears to have solved this
without blockchains.

"Millenials largely prefer to invest their money into cryptocurrencies over
traditional assets" \-- do you have statistics on this?

~~~
admyral
I'd personally much rather pay higher fees when there is a high network volume
than constantly paying fees for the privilege of using an ATM, or servicing my
online account, or processing a wire transfer, or reissuing me a debit card or
checkbook, etc. For merchants, fees are outrageous indefinitely.

Here are a few recent articles on millenial interest in crypto [1] [2].

[1] [https://www.finder.com/why-people-arent-buying-
cryptocurrenc...](https://www.finder.com/why-people-arent-buying-
cryptocurrency) [2] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millennials-are-afraid-
sto...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millennials-are-afraid-stocks-are-
too-risky-so-theyre-investing-in-bitcoin-2018-02-06)

~~~
dsr_
Your personal preferences don't enter into it. The fact of the matter is that
bitcoin transaction fees will always be high.

The first of your references is from a cryptocoin hype site, and the second
one says that "12%" of millenials would put a substantial amount of a windfall
into crypto, which strikes me as not being "largely prefer".

------
sanxiyn
Various AI accelerator hardwares. It seems to me deep learning advance is
currently limited by computing hardware resources.

------
purplezooey
Self driving cars. Would love to just take a nap in the back, that's all.

------
arkad
Hydrogen cars. A long way to go yet.

------
hguhghuff
Esp32 cpu

~~~
purplezooey
Esp32 already out, right?

------
Dowwie
An HIV vaccine seems to be on the horizon. That will be a great achievement.

------
GW150914
Electric vehicles, especially as the range increases and price and charging
times drop. I hope that an ancillary benefit will be reexamination of how we
generate grid power with a focus on renewables and nuclear.

------
Numberwang
That future tech that everyone knows is coming, that other future tech that
everyone knows is coming, that obscure tech that I have a vested interest in
that no one has heard of.

------
logicallee
Note: Below are just my opinions. I don't think downvoting is justified. I'm
completely right and downvoters are wrong, but anyway this thread asks for
what _we_ think.

\----------

My opinion: (100.000000% guaranteed to be right in this case.)

It's obvious that general artificial intelligence will be a reality and
surpass human cognition in every way, because our brains are a couple of
pounds of meat running on less than a hundred watts, using biochemical
pathways: no light-speed switching, about a six orders of magnitude slower.
Meanwhile, our datacenters run in the gigahertz domain. (There are, however,
about a hundred billion neurons in the human brain.)

Some people think a computer will never be able to do general cognition.
They're idiots. It is like saying that nothing but a sack of meat will ever
fly (i.e. that only a bird can, no human-made engine can) -- at a time when we
have engines that are 1,000,000 times more powerful than birds' muscles. (I
mean at the time that Lord Kelvin famously stated that heavier-than-air flight
is impossible.)

Any task of human cognition that the sack of meat in a skull can do, a digital
algorithm will be able to do, because the former is just slow, slow analog
meat.

Granted the emotional part is a point of difficulty but higher mental
functions seem pretty unrelated to emotions.

AI is like when people were saying heavier than air flight is impossible.
Obviously it's possible. And it will rock and change the world. (Anyone who
doesn't see it this way is stupid and wrong. They're just on the wrong side of
history. They have zero vision for things that are completely obvious. It's
not even debatable. It's a sack of meat in a skull doing slow analog
operations 24/7 for 3 years before it can even read. The bar is not as high as
people think.)

~~~
icebraining
You're missing another alternative: what if AI is totally possible, but our
sacks of meat in skulls are not able to achieve it?

I don't have to disbelieve the possibility of the existence of humans to doubt
that flies could create a human.

~~~
logicallee
You raise a good and apt point.

I would say firstly, we don't have to know how to achieve it exactly, since
once we have the hardware we can just experiment. The human source code is
about seven hundred megabytes (fairly precisely, DNA is almost precisely 2
bits per base pair) so somewhere in that is the encoding for human
intelligence, since humans inherit it. So we know that there is some < 700 MB
program. Now 700 MB is a ton of source code, but it's not an unimaginable
amount. We know some of the compiled results, as we can see how human brains
are built actually. So there's lots of indications that we will be able to get
similar results once we have the hardware for it - which we do.

Secondly I would point to many of the specific advances reached using machine
learning as excellent indications that we are quite near the kind of
algorithmic breakthroughs that are necessary. Since the topology of these
algorithms is in many cases closely inspired by human neural topology, and
many algorithms achieve many similar results, it seems quite likely that we
would be able to reproduce some of these effects experimentally.

More than "likely", in many domains the computers have done just that.

