1. Oceans will be extensively farmed and not just for fish (Jim 300)
IP: Likelihood 10/10. We will need to feed 10 billion people and nature can’t keep up with demand, so we will need much more ocean farming for fish. But algae farming is also on the way for renewable energy, and maybe even for growth of feedstock (raw materials) or resource extraction via GM seaweed or algae.
PT: Good chance. According to Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at the Nasa Langley Research Center, saltwater algae that’s been genetically modified to absorb more nitrogen from the air than conventional algae could free up to 68% of the fresh water that is now tied up in conventional agriculture. This water could go to thirsty populations.
2. We will have the ability to communicate through thought transmission (Dev 2)
IP: Likelihood 10/10. Transmission will be just as easy as other forms of brain augmentation. Picking up thoughts and relaying them to another brain will not be much harder than storing them on the net.
PT: Good chance. Synthetic telepathy sounds like something out of Hollywood but it is absolutely possible, so long as “communication” is understood to be electrical signals rather than words.
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says he does not think he pays enough tax, and says wealthy Americans should contribute more in order to solve the deficit problem.
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To strain out the nasty stuff we breathe in. It’s like an air filter in your house, says Justin Turner, an otolaryngologist (short, sort of, for otorhinolaryngologist, Greek for ear (oto), nose (rhino), and throat (laryng)) at Stanford University. Nose hairs trap dirt, viruses, bacteria and toxins until we blow them out, sneeze, or swallow.
Denser nose hair can be an advantage. Scientists at Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Turkey found that patients with sparse nose hairs were nearly three times as likely to suffer from asthma as those with more-hirsute nostrils.
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You might someday be much, much smarter than you are now. That’s the hope of neuroscientists focused on understanding the basis of intelligence. They have discovered that the brains of people with high IQs tend to be highly integrated, with neural paths connecting distant brain regions, while less intelligent people’s brains build simpler, shorter routes. But no one knows why some brains construct much longer-range connections than others.
For simplicity, imagine that instead of our current mean IQ score of 100, humans had an average score of 200. (Experts say this isn’t a true “doubling” of intelligence because the IQ scale doesn’t start at zero and, furthermore, the test isn’t actually designed to yield a score as high as 200 — but we will set aside these qualifications for the purpose of argument.) According to Earl Hunt, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington and president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, approximately one person in 10 billion would have an IQ of 200. With a current world population of 7 billion, there may or may not be one such person alive today and, in any case, his or her identity is unknown. However, the 17th-century genius Isaac Newton, discoverer of gravity, calculus and more, is sometimes estimated to have had an IQ of 200 (though he never took an IQ test). So, using him as an archetype, what if we were all a bunch of Newtons? Would the world be much more advanced than it is today?
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