Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) ---Doris Day

On New Year’s Eve, I thought of my mother who loved to sing that old 1950’s ditty about “the future’s not ours to see.”   Now, some 60 years later, the future really is ours to see.  Following the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions we are now in the midst of an Informational or “E” Revolution. It is the most kinetic and dramatic rate of sustained technical progress ever known. Computers enable us to create new ways to live, work and dream.  Yeah, the future can still be a crap shoot, given the nasty problems we are all too familiar with (climate change, seemingly endless wars, a fading middle class, corrupt politicians, etc.).  But for now, let us take some time to consider some of the wonderful changes occurring soon, to wit: 

Drinkable water has been difficult to get for much of the world for centuries.  Now we have something called The Drinkable Book.  It’s a manual that provides safe water. The book educates the user and provides filters (wood pulp pages) which eliminate bacteria and waterborne diseases from drinking water with the use of low levels of silver nano-particles.  One filter page can clean up to 26 gallons of clean, drinkable water and each book (it looks to be about 8 inches thick with overall dimensions of 8 by 11 inches) can provide a user with up to four years of clean water! The silver particles cost pennies.  Global distribution is set for mid-2016.  Contact info@waterislife.com for more.

Move over Wi-Fi.  Li-Fi is here.  According to a recent article by Pavlos Manousiadis et al from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews appearing in ScienceAlert “…your future Internet could come through your lightbulb.”  Li-Fi is visible light communications (VLC) which rapidly modulates the intensity of a light to encode data as binary zeroes and ones.  It is a form of wireless technology that transmits much faster than Wi-Fi.  How fast?  According to the article, in 2014 scientists in a number of industrial locations in Tallinn, Estonia were able to transmit data at 1 GB per second-- about 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.  Yes—100 times faster.

According to ScienceAlert, “Li-Fi was invented by Harald Hass at the University of Edinburgh in 2010.  He demonstrated that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit more data than a cellular tower.”   He also noted that because light can’t pass through walls, Li-Fi is much more secure than Wi-Fi and “also means there’s less interference between devices.”  Further, it can use existing power lines as LED lighting so no new infrastructure is needed.

Numerous wireless tech sources have pointed out that in approximately 5 years, due to the mind-boggling growth of mobile devices as well as the oft-ballyhooed The Internet of Things (computerized fridges, stoves, beds, toilets, etc.), Wi-Fi will be overwhelmed. Radio and microwave frequencies simply cannot provide the additional space required for exponential growth.  In addition, Wi-Fi also struggles with electromagnetic interference.  All those wandering souls trying to find their city connection will easily find another wireless source--LiFi.

      

This writer cannot predict how soon Li-Fi will be widely available but several companies (including PureLiFi in Scotland and Oledcomm from France) are already offering VLC products. Of course Wi-Fi infrastructure is huge. Removing it will not  happen rapidly.  However, based on an admittedly early and cursory glance at the data, it is this writer’s bet that it will be largely available by 2025 or less.

Haas said it best: “In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fi's deployed for a cleaner, greater and even brighter future.”

Arguably, the most important meeting of humans ever convened will begin on February 11-12, 2016 in Washington D.C.   It will be an international summit sponsored by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to determine “…the potential use of human gene-editing technologies, their use in bio-medical research and medicine-including human germ line editing – and the clinical, ethical, legal and social implications of their use.”   Research on the nature of all life has seen exponential growth since the cloning of the first sheep (Dolly) and the successful mapping of DNA some 30 years ago.  Some call this new era The Age of the Red Pen—a reference to the ability to remove or introduce individual genes.  It is now easy to edit the genomes of plants, animals and humans.

Nature magazine reported in December about the first non-genetically modified (non-GM) crop of oil-seed rape that is herbicide resistant; no gene was taken from a different kind of organism or plant. This is an example of mutagenesis (using some of the plant’s own genes) and may be a means to escape the long and expensive efforts to meet current GM regulations.  Mutagenesis is also much more precise in gene selection than earlier modification efforts.  By 2050, the UN predicts that we will have a net increase of 2 billion people to feed and a new breed of plant editing may well be crucial.  So will increasing the availability of animal protein.  Pig farmers are awaiting the potential eradication of African swine fever by using the selective immunity provided by the genes of warthogs (same family).

According to Wikipedia, the advent of CRISPR (clustered, regularly interspersed-short palindromic repeats) in 2012 allowed researchers to quickly change the DNA of nearly any organism, including humans.  Research with mice, rats and monkeys have shown some success correcting cataract mutations, and correcting a defect with cystic fibrosis.  Money is flowing. click here The MIT Technological Review noted that in November a company named Editas raised $43 million in venture capital to use CRISPR technologies against a broad range of diseases.  Wonderful.  But there is a raging worldwide argument about editing the human germ line. It is one thing to prevent diseases from being passed on, but do we really want to have the ability to choose those genes that will insure the arrival of designer babies? Or alter the genomes of healthy embryos?   ARE WE GOING TO PLAY AT BEING GOD?