They may be weird but they’re also awesome. Say hello to the weirdest ideas of 2020:
Dormio: It may soon be possible to hack our dreams, to boost our creativity and make us smarter, thanks to a new device from M.I.T. that prolongs the time we spend in Hypnagogia, that weird state between being fully asleep and being fully awake.
Mining Cryptocurrency Using Brainwaves: How’d you like to get paid to do nothing? Thanks to a Microsoft’s desire to use your idle brainwaves to mine cryptocurrency you soon can.
Popular Mechanics explains how this amazing concept would work:
“As the company describes in the patent application, while a person watches an advertisement or conducts some other simple internet task, sensors can monitor their brain activity. Because these actions are largely unconscious work, they aren’t massively draining to the person.
Each cognitive task would be assigned a pattern of numbers, depending on how much effort was put in. If that string matches the target, it’s considered a proof-of-work, and the transaction may be completed. Using the brainwaves as a stand-in would take some light effort on the part of the human involved, but would save massively on electricity.”
The Norimaki Synthesizer: This new invention from Japan is capable of synthesizing the taste of any food, letting you fulfill cravings or try new foods without any added calories or risk.
NEON: Sumsung has found a way to create “artificial humans” i.e. computer generated “people” who would visually appear to be indistinguishable from their real world counterparts when viewed on screen. These fake people, presumably based on someone real such as a paid actor, would then be able to fully interact with you as a virtual personal assistant. They may even serve as broadcasters that deliver the news to us.
Xenobots: Say hello to the world’s first ever living robots! These remarkable organisms are both alive (made of living cells) and entirely programmable by researchers. Giving them the ability to do tasks that no one/nothing else is capable of.
Hand-Holding Robot: Feeling lonely during quarantine? Japan’s got your covered thanks to a robotic accessory that mimics what it feels like to be holding someone’s hand.
MeowTalk: The dog translator collar from the Pixar movie Up may be a step closer to becoming a reality. At least for cats. Thanks to a newly designed, AI infused app that may be capable of translating a cat’s thoughts into human language.
Storing Energy in Fruit: Fruit is great. It’s juicy and refreshing, the perfect tonic on a warm summer day. Personally, I’m partial to strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes, apples, oranges, bananas, nectarines, and peaches. But soon fruit will serve another purpose other than just refreshing us. It’ll also store energy and recharge our phones.
Cauliflower Linguini: We all know that certain foods are better for us than others. And soon that will be an even truer statement for we are now capable of producing pasta made from cauliflower that will still taste like real pasta yet contain 2.5 servings of vegetables!
Cleansebot: Are you a germophobe? Or at least someone who does a double take when they enter a hotel room, concerned about what might be lurking underneath the covers? Will then you need to get yourself Cleansebot. The world’s first disinfecting robot. Think of it like a Roomba for your bed.
No More Periods: I like to think that I know a little bit about everything. You kind of have to if you want to write about so many disparate topics and do so in a concise easily digestible format that a lay person could understand. But there’s one topic that I admittedly know nothing about: a woman’s body. But even I can appreciate the significance of this next idea. For it may soon be possible to make it so that a woman never has to have a period again. If she was so inclined.
Shape-Shifting Wool: We could soon be wearing futuristic clothing made out of shape-shifting wool that can returned to its original position thanks to a new smart textile that researchers at Harvard University have created.
Dopamine Hacking: To achieve optimal performance some people have resorted to “hacking” their body’s ability to produce dopamine. In theory, it makes sense. In practice, it seems a little bit odd.
As Science Alert puts it, “It’s the latest fad in Silicon Valley. By reducing the brain’s feel-good chemical known as dopamine – cutting back on things like food, sex, alcohol, social media and technology – followers believe that they can ‘reset’ the brain to be more effective and appreciate simple things more easily.
Some even go so far as avoiding all social activities, and even eye contact.”
Silicon Valley seems to have a lot of fads. Micro-dosing LSD. Injecting yourself with the blood of a younger person to stave off the effects of aging. Various diet crazes. But Dopamine Fasting, an attempt to literally hack your brain has got to take the cake.
Morality Pills: Right now most people are not making good decisions. They don’t want to wear masks, remain socially distant, or even get vaccinated. What we need is a way to make people more moral. And there soon may be a way to do just that by giving them a psychoactive pill that would make them more cooperative.
SkinMarks: Not all of Google’s x10 moonshots have worked out. In fact, we’ll probably never even find out about everything that they’ve worked on inside their secretive Google [X] lab. But that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to think outside the box. As witnessed by their latest endeavor, a desire to turn the human body itself into a giant touch pad.
The DNA of Things: Forget about the Internet of Things. The next thing may be the DNA of Things, the ability to embed 3-D printed objects with DNA to store information in them or have them carry around their own printing instructions for future replication. Which is why there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the bunny pictured below.
Recharging our eyesight: As we get older it’s inevitable that our eyesight is going to start to deteriorate forcing us to start using reading glasses or undergo more invasive procedures to fix our vision. But soon there may be a far easier way to improve our eyesight on the fly. All we’d have to do is stare into a special red light flashlight!
Hapbee: Does COVID-19 have you feeling depressed? Lonely? Filled with a sense of impending doom? Like most people are you having trouble sleeping? Staying focused at work? Yea. Me too. But what if there was a way to change your emotional state? To feel differently at a moment’s notice? To feel better whenever you wanted? With the push of a button?
Well, that reality may be closer than you think thanks to a new wearable device called Hapbee that lets you manipulate electromagnetic frequencies to alter your mood.
Impossible Milk: Plant based meat that tastes like the real thing? That’s impossible! And yet thanks to Impossible Burgers that’s exactly what we have providing the world with a healthy and climate friendly alternative to eating meat. And now we can add one more product to the Impossible lineup, the yet to formally announced Impossible Milk, a forthcoming plant based alternative to cow’s milk.
Gut Credit Score: I haven’t been feeling good lately. Do I have cancer? Am I coming down with COVID? Or experiencing something else entirely? I’m not sure. And to be honest there might not be anything wrong with me at all. I could just be anxious or stressed out. The problem is I don’t really know how healthy I am at any given moment. Which, ironically, could be what’s contributing to my anxiety and making me feel even worse!
But perhaps in the near future I’ll be able to know exactly what’s going with me. Thanks to a newly developed gut based “credit score”, capable of monitoring your health or at least indicating if you’re heading in the right direction or not.
Self-Aware AirPods: We already have smart devices capable of tracking our every move and providing us with useful feedback and information. But what if we took things one step further? What if we had devices that were so smart, they could even change their behavior on their own?! Well, thanks to Apple and their self-aware AirPods that’s a future that we may be headed towards as the earbuds would be capable of analyzing their surroundings and adjusting the volume of the audio accordingly.
Body Swapping: Technically, it may be possible to swap bodies with somebody. No, I’m not talking about head transplants or some Freaky Friday type shit. Rather, I’m talking about an experiment that lets you experience the perspective of a friend with profound results that call into question one’s true nature.
Sobering Up Device: If you didn’t drink before 2020 has probably driven you to start. Thankfully, if you do start to imbibe there is now a scientifically proven way to sober you up on the fly. Thanks to a new device that literally sucks the alcohol out of you.
Mind-Reading Dress: When it comes to fashion you want to turn heads not turn your head into a controller for your dress! And yet here we are. On the precipice of having dresses that are synced up to our brainwaves, capable of reading our minds and shifting their appearance and shape in accordance with our ever-changing moods.
Leave a comment