Where Are The Edges Of Today's Technology World?

Veeru writes "As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago. Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'. The secretive Wright Brothers allowed Amos to publish the article in his own Gleanings Bee magazine instead. Because of his objective account, other experimenters may not have received the credit they deserved. I recently realized that Amos was intent on investigating the highest tech advances of the day and that the airplane was the most advanced phenomenon he could find. If Amos were alive today, what obscure technology would he be pursuing?"

Comments

Is obscurity still possible?

[kautilya]

We are living in an age quite different from 100 years ago. Information travels pretty fast. It is difficult for something that important to remain obscure so long today. Further, people more or less stopped noticing technological advances and taking them for granted. If any individual inventor/scientist gets some success he would want to approach venture capitalists, news papers, journals before he/she turns it into something great and useful. So, in my opinion it is difficult to find something obscure which is great. Yes, it is certainly possible that things people earlier thought wouldn't work becoming something great.

Sage Words

[Caveman Og]

The article ends thus:

"No drinking man should ever be allowed to undertake to run a flying-machine."

This may seem obvious to us today, but in 1905, many a carriage would be driven by a drunkard whose horses "knew the way home".

Anti Wireless Technology

[the eric conspiracy]

Wireless technologies provide endless ways to invade privacy - RFID, Credit Cards, Cell Phones, EZPass, PDA, GPS, subcutaneous transponders implanted when you walk through a mall entrance, Microsoft License activation, whatever.

Clearly the most important technology of the future will be the development of personal jammers to silence the RF nattering of the post-PC era world of gizmos carried about one's person, implanted under skin (overtly or surreptitiously) or attached into clothing. Everyone will be looking for RF cones of silence, ways to use a taser like device to EMP a wireless spybot picked up by walking into a movie theatre (or implanted by the Selective Service) or shielded pouches to prevent RF attacks on credit cards or other payment/identification devices.

If I was looking to report on bleeding edge tech, this is where I would look.

You think spyware like Gator is bad? You haven't seen nothing yet.

Re:Promises...

[carambola5]

current nanotechnology and genetic solutions

Please, can we stop calling it "nanotechnology" and start calling it what it really is?

CHEMISTRY!

I'm not trying to be funny. That new stain-defender stuff in pants? Apparently it's called nanotechnology. No! Chemistry! It's just chemistry! Stop subjecting your minds to buzzwords.