The Times' Crystal Ball, Set To 2010

Lotek writes: "The NYT is running a cool 'Special section' from the NYT magazine [free reg. req. tl] this weekend showing off stuff they say we will be using in 2010. They discuss stuff like digital books, Nanotech anti-heart attack prevention, and regeneration. Way cool stuff." The article lists a total of 32 items, and talks about the current state-of-the art as well as potential applications. Pretty cool, but 10 years seems awfully optimistic for some of them.

Comments

"The Makeup that changes your identity"

[wowbagger]

One of the stories linked from the article is about tanning compounds:

Hadley and his research colleagues engineered a synthetic molecule that is a thousand times more powerful than M.S.H., and in 1984 Hadley thought it was ready for trials on humans. So he injected himself with it one afternoon. Three weeks later he looked in his bathroom mirror, and staring back at him was this other Hadley with, yes, beach-ready brown skin. Unfortunately, this other Hadley was also 10 pounds lighter and had a very un-beach-ready case of priapism -- the dread perpetual erection.

Lesse: a drug that

Makes you look better

makes you lose weight

Keeps you "up"

Sounds good, ship it!