Another year, another amazing collection of ideas that make you say, “wow, that’s cool!”
Real Life Wakanda: To honor Chadwick Boseman, Whoopi Goldberg proposed adding a Wakanda Theme Park to Disney World. But F that. Why settle for a small scale theme park when you can recreate the real thing in Africa!
That’s right. We could soon have a real world Wakanda, based in Senegal, thanks to a plan put in place by R&B singer Akon who has raised some of the $5 billion needed to pull off the project to go along with 2,000 acres of land that Senegal gifted to him, within a five minute drive of their new international airport.
Sky Diamonds: Diamonds are forever and so too is the long-term damage they impose on the environment. What really would be a girl’s best friend then would be diamonds that don’t harm the environment when they are produced. A feat of modern ingenuity that may actually be possible to pull off thanks to newly designed Sky Diamonds that get made by sucking carbon dioxide from the air. No mining required.
Thor’s Hammer: Using a laser based system we may soon be able to control lightning to reduce the risk of catastrophic forest fires.
Futurism explains:
“An international team of researchers says that small lasers could be used to guide lightning strikes — much like Thor’s legendary hammer Mjölnir…
The team says it’s already tested the concept in labs using devices known as hollow lasers, which in effect create a pipe of light. These lasers can short circuit storm clouds and trigger lightning strikes by heating micro-particles in the air.
‘We can imagine a future where this technology may induce electrical discharge from passing lightning, helping to guide it to safe targets and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires,’ co-researcher Vladlen Shvedov from the Australian National University told AFP.”
Parallel Reality: There are a lot of different versions of reality that technological progress has made possible. Augmented Reality. Virtual Reality. Mixed Reality. And now we can add one more to that list: Parallel Reality. The idea that multiple people can look at the same screen at the same time while all seeing different images. Giving them the ability to only see information or entertainment that is relevant to them. Perfect for navigating your way through a crowded airport.
Conduct-A-Bot: Admit it. You want to be a Jedi. I know I do. There’s just something inherently awesome about being able to connect directly with the underlying force guiding the Universe, control people with your mind and wield a light saber against the forces of evil all while resisting the temptation to join The Dark Side. So it should come as no surprise that I’m a big fan of a new innovation that lets people control drones with a wave of their hands. Jedi style.
Virtual Car Visor: Car visors are helpful for blocking out the sun when you don’t have access to sunglasses. But they also obscure some of the road. A virtual visor that you can’t see but that works just as effectively is the best of both worlds.
Selfie Type: Tired of your fat thumbs preventing you from typing effectively on your phone? Use an invisible keyboard instead!
AR Copy Paste: Keyboard are cool and all but you know what’s even better? Taking real world objects and putting them inside your computer! Which is exactly what AR Copy Paste lets you do after you take a picture of something.
Speechify: Thanks to this new AI infused app you can turn any text, literally any text at all, into an audiobook!
Electronic Paper: In the near future we may have interactive food packaging that alerts us to the freshness of its contents. All thanks to a new form of paper that can be computerized without even needing an external power source.
Transparent TV: We all enjoy having a TV in our homes. In fact, most of us can’t live without them. There’s just one problem: when we’re not using our television sets they can be a real eyesore, dominating the view in our living rooms. But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore. Thanks to a newly designed transparent TV that will enable you to see behind it when you’re not using it.
Frome: What is Frome?! Well, think of it like watching a movie on extreme flash forward. An entire film flashing before you in the blink of an eye. One second here. Gone the next. That blur of light that you would see? That unintelligible blur? That’s Frome. A combination of the words from and frame, it’s the idea that you can break a movie down, frame by frame, color by color, and come up with a visual representation of that movie in the form of a painted canvas that would capture its true essence.
Sign Language Gloves: How do you say, “2020 sucks” in sign language? I suppose I could Google it or ask Alexa but soon there will be a much cooler way to find out: communicating with a deaf person who would use specially designed sign language gloves capable of translating finger movements into speech to provide the answer.
Magnetic Field GPS: The Earth’s GPS system could be on the verge of getting replaced by something better: a new approach that would navigate via the Earth’s magnetic field instead. A method that would be a lot more secure from the U.S. military’s point of view, since it wouldn’t rely on a constellation of satellites that could be destroyed or jammed by enemy combatants.
Super White: Previously scientists had created Vantablack, the blackest black ever. Now they’ve created Super White, the whitest white ever and it could lead to free air conditioning thanks to its ability to reflect 95.5% of the light photons that reach it. Talk about a cool idea!
Camel Cooler: But that’s not the only literal cool idea. For MIT researchers have developed a new long lasting cooler, inspired by Camels, that works for eight days without a power source or even the need for ice!
Liquid Windows: I love hearing about new building materials with unique properties and capabilities which is why I was excited to hear about something that could revolutionize the way we heat and cool our homes: Liquid Windows.
According to Thomson Reuters:
“A newly developed ‘liquid window’ can block sunlight to keep a building cool but also absorb heat to be gradually released during the day or night to cut energy costs, scientists said.”
Immersive Audio: A way to add artificial sounds to your environment that appear so life-like, you won’t be able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s infused into your environment. Perfect for creating authentic AR/VR experiences and other forms of creative entertainment such as listening to interactive true crime podcasts.
Haptic Music Suits: It may be a while before we can go to concerts again but when we do we may be wearing special suits that would let us feel the music through vibrations. An impressive feat that would be made possible by haptic feedback technology.
SoundBeamer 1.0: It may soon be possible to have music beamed directly into your head!
Consequence of Sound explains what the next generation of headphones will be all about:
“Apple revolutionized the game with noise cancellation AirPods, but one Israeli company is coming for their throne. According to the Associated Press, Noveto Systems has invented a new product that can beam music directly into your head — no earbuds or brain implants necessary.
The device is aptly called SoundBeamer 1.0. It reportedly works by creating a personal sound bubble for the user with 3D audio of their choosing — be it from an album, movie, or video game — while filtering in the natural sounds already occurring around them. The benefit of using the SoundBeamer 1.0 is that you get the surround-sound experiencing of proper audio without any of the pain of headphones or being out of touch with your surroundings.”
Are any of these cool ideas the Greatest Idea Ever?
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