Making a World of Difference Engineering Ideas into Reality (2014) / Chapter Skim
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The Next 50 Years--Looking to the Future
The Next 50 Years--Looking to the Future
Pages 44-55
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From page 44... ...
Science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov correctly anticipated videophones and giant flat TV screens. But even Asimov sometimes got it wrong.
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From page 45... ...
It will bring answers to questions we • Develop carbon sequestration methods aren't asking, and solutions to needs we don't know we have. It will • Manage the nitrogen cycle enrich and enhance human lives in ways that are simply impossible to • Provide access to clean water predict -- surprising and delighting us, and creating innovations that • Restore and improve urban infrastructure soon will seem impossible to live without.
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From page 46... ...
DNA, or any of a number of other exotic Possessed of immense strength, it also had materials emerging from today's laboratories. E interesting electrical properties, which Geim We do know, however, that the enormous and Novoselov nailed down by studying dozens advances in materials (and concomitant leaps of ultrathin electronic devices they made from in computing power)
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From page 47... ...
But imagine dramatically shrinking those devices and many others, while also adding the raw computing power of today's supercomputers. Imagine similar giant leaps in sensors, communications capabilities, displays, software, batteries, and mechanical actuators.
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From page 48... ...
One of the NAE's Grand Challenges, enhancing virtual reality, will Reshaping Industries N be easily met, predicts Ray Kurzweil, now ew materials are one driver of change. Development of new manufacturing methods and tackling natural language understanding at tools is also crucial -- another job for engineers.
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From page 49... ...
The developing world will continue to leapfrog old Alex Pring the old wired infrastructure, as remote villages connect of Groveland, to the larger world with wireless broadband networks. Florida, practices picking up objects with his new 3-D As is frequently the case with new technologies, printed prosthetic hyperconnectivity will offer challenges along with arm and hand, opportunities.
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From page 50... ...
Wind power and solar power powers the sun -- another NAE Grand Challenge. currently represent about 7 percent of overall A research reactor, the International ThermoOne of those big challenges is creating a generating capacity, and engineering advances nuclear Experimental Reactor Project, is now sustainable supply of energy.
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From page 51... ...
and other farm machinery, precision Some visionaries believe human ingenuity and engineering wizardry fertilization, genetically modified crops, can easily wean humanity from fossil fuels within 50 years. Kurzweil, for one, and other advances has dramatically predicts that "by 2030 solar energy will have the capacity to meet all of our boosted yields of corn and other crops across the energy needs" -- including providing enough extra power to purify vast United States and around the world.
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From page 52... ...
"It may sound hanging gardens, and hydroponic gardens trivial, but it can help change the face of medicine," says Langer. in all sorts of interesting places." To fight deadly diseases such as tuberculosis or Ebola, doctors must of grain with giant stainless steel vats filled with fermenting microbes.
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From page 53... ...
As a result, researchers can now our proteins, and from manipulating genes and superior athletic abilities or chart all the connections between neurons, a biology. Danny Hillis of Applied Minds foresees intelligence?
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From page 54... ...
Or if the developing world emulates the low birth rates of countries like already know how to build population living within 60 miles of coastItaly and Japan, the number could actually decline by then to 7 billion. soaring structures two or lines -- and many more along rivers -- engineers three kilometers tall.
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From page 55... ...
If the march toward greater our solar system" says David Messerschmitt, Roger Strauch Professor Emeritus of Electrical enlightenment continues -- and the flowers of Engineering and Computer Sciences, University engineering bloom as they have throughout of California, Berkeley. "And the new frontier for history -- then the next half century really will the 21st century will be interstellar space in our be worth looking forward to.
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