Fast Company Magazine, only a recent discovery of mine, in its February issue, produced an intriguing article titled "World Changing Ideas", which foretells how a number of companies will impact on our lives in the near future. I bring them to you in synthesized form.
This year the first vaccine for malaria (known as RTS,S by the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative & Glaxo-SmithKline) could come up for regulatory approval - a real lifesaver in Angola and Uganda. This would show it is biologically possible to make a vaccine for not just malaria.
Drones, often thought of only as killing machines, are now being used by NASA to get more accurate hurricane warnings, by the Chinese to survey an earthquake region, and by RP SearchServices to help law enforcement agencies for jobs like finding lost persons by their infrared signatures.
Idaho and Tennessee passed legislation approving computer science to fill math or science graduation requirements. Code.org and Association of Computing Machinery are working to spread this idea nationwide as a fundamental new literacy for all.
Expect Labs will release an app that listens to your phone conversations and then serves up information needed before you even ask for it.
O3b Networks is working to expand the Internet into developing countries via eight satellites delivering 3G networks to isolated areas. They foresee eight billion new users.
The biometrics industry, with new hand-held scanners and automated sensors that can read eyes from 30 feet away, is expected to reach $14 billion a year as iris recognition systems aid or replace fingerprint scanners with ten times more efficiency.
Desktop 3-D printers, like MakerBots Replicator 2, are becoming accessible for home and school use. As many as 5,000 could be in schoolrooms by the end of the school year. This three-dimensional imaging will allow us to take irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind artifacts heretofore seen only in museums and, in a sense, put them into the hands of learners around the world. A mask of Abraham Lincoln is one of 20-plus objects from the Smithsonian collection that its digitization office has placed online as a demonstration of the potential of 3-D scanning, along with the Wright Flyer, a woolly mammoth skeleton, a supernova, a bee, and a sixth century Chinese statue known as the Cosmic Buddha.
A growing number of states now allow benefit-corporation status, helping protect social-minded companies from "stock-price-is-everything" investor lawsuits. Next milestone: a public company adopting the status.
Big medical centers will have to pull data from myriad wearable health-tracking tools, like Jawbone Up, the Fitbit Force and the AliveCor Health Monitor, into electronic health records, remove identifying information, and make it public.Cloud-based data is becoming an increasingly important medical tool.
D-Central, a non-WiFi router used to create private NSA-proof networks, and Android apps, like Wickr, are proffering self-destructing texts with sophisticated encryption.
Biotech company Proteus Digital Health plans to produce a "smart pill" with a pin-head sized sensor that will monitor the medications a patient takes, then deliver it to a smart phone.
Google Fiber, technology that brings unheard-of speed levels to Internet service, could reach 7.5 million homes by 2022.
Not on such an international interest level, but mind-blowing for internet game fanciers is Oculis Rift, which allows game players to step nside their favorite games for the very first time.
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