What’s New? 22 Promising Technologies

By Shlomo Maital

  Here is The Economist’s take on 22 promising new technologies, that will impact our lives — by the Science and technology correspondents of The Economist:  (warning:  1,120 word blog!)

*   Solar geoengineering:  If the world is getting too hot, why not offer it some shade?   Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 cooled the Earth by as much as 0.5°C for four years. Solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management, would do the same thing deliberately.

* Heat pumps” Keeping buildings warm in winter accounts for about a quarter of global energy consumption. Most heating relies on burning coal, gas or oil. If the world is to meet its climate-change targets, that will have to change. The most promising alternative is to use heat pumps—essentially, refrigerators that run in reverse.

 *  Hydrogen-powered planes:  Might electricity from hydrogen fuel cells, which excrete only water, do the trick? Passenger planes due to be test-flown with hydrogen fuel cells in 2022 include a two-seater being built at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.  

* Direct air capture:  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes global warming. So why not suck it out using machines? Several startups are pursuing direct air capture (dac), a technology that does just that. In 2022  

* Vertical farming: A new type of agriculture is growing. Vertical farms grow plants on trays stacked in a closed, controlled environment. Efficient led lighting has made the process cheaper. Water use is minimized and bugs are kept out, so no pesticides are needed.

* Container ships with sails: Ships produce 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions. Burning maritime bunker fuel, a dirty diesel sludge, also contributes to acid rain. None of this was a problem in the age of sail—which is why sails are making a comeback, in high-tech form, to cut costs and emissions. In 2022 Michelin of France will equip a freighter with an inflatable sail that is expected to reduce fuel consumption by 20%.   

* VR workouts: Most people do not do enough exercise. Many would like to, but lack motivation. Virtual reality (vr) headsets let people play games and burn calories in the process, as they punch or slice oncoming shapes, or squat and shimmy to dodge obstacles.  

* Vaccines for HIV and malaria: The impressive success of coronavirus vaccines based on messenger rna (mrna) heralds a golden era of vaccine development. Moderna is developing an hiv vaccine based on the same mrna technology used in its highly effective coronavirus vaccine.   BioNTech, joint-developer of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, is working on an mrna vaccine for malaria, with clinical trials expected to start in 2022.  

* 3D-printed bone implants: For years, researchers have been developing techniques to create artificial organs using 3d printing of biological materials. The ultimate goal is to take a few cells from a patient and create fully functional organs for transplantation, thus doing away with long waiting-lists, testing for matches and the risk of rejection. That goal is still some way off for fleshy organs. But bones are less tricky. Two startups, Particle3d and adam, hope to have 3d-printed bones available for human implantation in 2022.  

* Flying electric taxis: Long seen as something of a fantasy, flying taxis, or electric vertical take-off and landing (evtol) aircraft, as the fledgling industry calls them, are getting serious. Several firms around the world will step up test flights in 2022 with the aim of getting their aircraft certified for commercial use in the following year or two.  

* Space tourism: After a stand-out year for space tourism in 2021, as a succession of billionaire-backed efforts shot civilians into the skies, hopes are high for 2022. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic just beat Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to the edge of space in July, with both billionaires riding in their own spacecraft on suborbital trips.   SpaceX has done a deal to send tourists to the International Space Station. Next up? The Moon.

* Delivery drones:  New rules, which came into effect in 2021, will help drone deliveries gain altitude in 2022. Manna, an Irish startup which has been delivering books, meals and medicine in County Galway, plans to expand its service in Ireland and into Britain.   The question is: will the pace of drone deliveries pick up—or drop off?

* Quieter supersonic aircraft: For half a century, scientists have wondered whether changes to the shape of a supersonic aircraft could reduce the intensity of its sonic boom. Only recently have computers become powerful enough to run the simulations needed to turn those noise-reduction theories into practice.  In 2022 nasa’s x-59 Quesst (short for “Quiet Supersonic Technology”) will make its first test flight. Crucially, that test will take place over land—specifically, Edwards Air Force Base in California.  

* 3D-printed houses: Architects often use 3d printing to create scale models of buildings. But the technology can be scaled up and used to build the real thing. Materials are squirted out of a nozzle as a foam that then hardens. Layer by layer, a house is printed—either on site, or as several pieces in a factory that are transported and assembled.

* Sleep tech: It’s become a craze in Silicon Valley. Not content with maximising their productivity and performance during their waking hours, geeks are now optimizing their sleep, too, using an array of technologies. These include rings and headbands that record and track sleep quality, soothing sound machines, devices to heat and cool mattresses, and smart alarm clocks to wake you at the perfect moment.  

* Personalised nutrition: Diets don’t work. Evidence is growing that each person’s metabolism is unique, and food choices should be, too. Enter personalised nutrition: apps that tell you what to eat and when, using machine-learning algorithms, tests of your blood and gut microbiome, data on lifestyle factors such as exercise, and real-time tracking of blood-sugar levels using coin-sized devices attached to the skin.  

* Wearable health trackers: Remote medical consultations have become commonplace. That could transform the prospects for wearable health trackers such as the Fitbit or Apple Watch.  

* The metaverse: Coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crash”, the word “metaverse” referred to a persistent virtual world, accessible via special goggles, where people could meet, flirt, play games, buy and sell things, and much more besides. In 2022 it refers to the fusion of video games, social networking and entertainment to create new, immersive experiences, like swimming inside your favourite song at an online concert. Games such as Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite are all stepping-stones to an emerging new medium. Facebook has renamed itself Meta to capitalise on the opportunity—and distract from its other woes.

* Quantum computing: An idea that existed only on blackboards in the 1990s has grown into a multi-billion dollar contest between governments, tech giants and startups: harnessing the counter-intuitive properties of quantum physics to build a new kind of computer.  

* Virtual influencers: Unlike a human influencer, a virtual influencer will never be late to a photoshoot, get drunk at a party or get old. That is because virtual influencers are computer-generated characters who plug products on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

* Brain interfaces: In April 2021 the irrepressible entrepreneur Elon Musk excitedly tweeted that a macaque monkey was “literally playing a video game telepathically using a brain chip”. His company, Neuralink, had implanted two tiny sets of electrodes into the monkey’s brain. Signals from these electrodes, transmitted wirelessly and then decoded by a nearby computer, enabled the monkey to move the on-screen paddle in a game of Pong using thought alone.

*  Artificial meat and fish: Winston Churchill once mused about “the absurdity of growing a whole chicken to eat the breast or wing”. Nearly a century later, around 70 companies are “cultivating” meats in bioreactors.