Progress is 99% hype. Most inventions are more trouble than they're worth, though they can seem really cool. In the nineteenth century, the passengers of the balloons Skylark and Flying Cloud discovered the balloon telephone. Thanks to resonating balloon envelopes, they found they could talk across a mile of open sky.
Here are some inventions I have been promoting since the 1990s (detailed reports can be provided for a fee).
Open source religions
A way to "soothe" sectarian conflicts? Future faiths could be developed and upgraded by their believers.
Open source religions feature all the traditional elements, with a few innovations:
-Founders privileges: the sensation of being at the start of an epic adventure. Cult members believe they're the first persons to escape the trap of ordinary reality, a useful delusion for the guru in charge.
-Traditions and anniversaries.
-Rituals and restrictions. These should be mildly irrational to seem plausible.
-Ways for compatible believers to connect.
-A list of member prophets claiming to know aspects of the ultimate truth.
-"Social welfare" projects like by Scientology and the Nation of Islam.
-Matrix diagrams listing mutually compatible and incompatible beliefs.
-Divisions into factions and hierarchies.
The religion would evolve by having so many factions that none would predominate, but useful innovations would be shared by most.
DNA Constructors
A string of DNA can copy itself into a string of RNA which can fold itself into any shape.
That's all RNA can do: fold or not fold at any link along its length. That's what all the stored genetic data represents.
Because it's a spiral string, the folds can point in any direction. If a string of RNA folds at a certain point, it can make a right angle that can interact with other folds. A dozen or so folds, and the string is arranged into a floating, rather unstable cube. In theory any shape would be possible.
The full set of chromosomes in a single cell contains enough data to fill a CD-ROM.
Given a suitable growth medium, an RNA Constructor could manufacture complicated devices and even machinery, using itself as a scaffold. However, RNA turns out to be a poor building material. It merely creates the ribosome framework for the next level: proteins, which fold in even more complex ways.
This bottom-up approach to nanotechnology represent a future investment opportunity.
Transvision displays
Transvision image projection: a new display methodology for situational awareness (patent pending).
The user will need to wear a VR visor so their eyes can be tracked, and to project the simulated target image.
Powerful software would make any object in the user's environment transparent or invisible with respect to a more distant target object, that would be tracked by stereoscopic cameras.
If the target was someone coming down the hall, the user would see a small, possibly out of focus figure, projected through all the closer objects, slowly getting larger.
Spheroid displays
Also known as 'Escher disks'. A way to represent the surrounding view from a single point in a single image.
The 360-degree perspective would be represented as a flat disk, stretched out to compensate for 'fisheye' distortion at the edges.
Software would constantly move the center of the image.
Disks could be stacked to make 'four-dimensional' Escher-tubes.
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