If you remember what houses were like in the 1950s, then you can see that even then there were many things that still exist today - washing machines, vacuum cleaners, TVs, cars. But if we go back 50 years ago, in 1900, we will notice that then the world was completely different.
Daily cleaning or washing up was time consuming and laborious. And it was at the beginning of the 20th century that electricity and internal combustion engines radically changed the world in which people live, changed cities and our daily life.
Today we are going through about the same period, with the difference that our world will be changed not by two technologies, but by three: genome editing, new computational architecture and materials science.
These technologies are just beginning to penetrate the market from laboratories. Perhaps someday they will change our world beyond recognition.
Crispr
In 2006, Jennifer Dugna received a call from her colleague at the University of California, Berkeley, Gillian Banfield, whom she knew by correspondence.
Banfield studied the life of bacteria in extreme conditions, which was only indirectly related to the work of Dugn, who studied the biochemistry of RNA and other cellular structures.
Promotional video:
The purpose of the call was to get Dugn interested in studying a phenomenon that was recently discovered in microbiology - a strange DNA sequence found in bacteria.
Dugna was intrigued and began studying these sequences, called Crispr, in her laboratory. In 2012, she discovered that they can be used as a powerful gene editing tool.
In healthcare, Crispr can be used to treat conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and sickle cell disease.
These are just a few of the diseases this technology can cure, and a number of technologies have already received approval for testing.
In addition, this technology is also used in agriculture to synthesize chemicals such as plastics and fuels.
Post-digital computing (quantum and neuromorphic)
Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed a true digital revolution under the banner of Moore's Law, according to which the number of transistors placed on a chip of an integrated circuit doubles every 24 months.
However, soon it will be necessary to come up with a new law, since the action of the old one slows down and will soon stop altogether.
Today, there are two options that can replace the old law - quantum computing, which uses subatomic effects to create an almost limitless computational space. The second technology is neuromorphic computing, which replicates the structure of the human brain.
Quantum computing is especially good for stimulating physical systems such as materials and biological systems, and for large-scale optimization processes.
Neuromorphic computing can be millions of times more efficient than traditional processors, making it ideal for tasks such as edge computing.
Both technologies have their own complexities, and it will probably take more than a decade before it becomes clear what their impact will be.
Nevertheless, both technologies are developing very quickly.
Materials Science
In order to solve some problems, we always use materials. For example, to create a cleaner environment, we need more efficient solar panels, wind turbines and batteries.
Manufacturers need new, more advanced materials to create such products.
We also need new materials to replace other materials to prevent supply disruptions.
Traditionally, the development of new materials has been a very long and complex process.
To achieve the required properties, scientists had to go through numerous tests and trials.
This made the research very costly and expensive.
However, a real revolution is taking place in science today.
Powerful modeling techniques, coupled with increased computing power and machine learning, allow scientists to automate many processes, which speeds up the development of new materials, in some cases more than a hundredfold.
For a more concrete example, let's take a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
In many ways, this aircraft is similar to its predecessor, with the exception of new, more high-tech materials that the company has developed, which made it 20% lighter and 20% more efficient.
This is a very significant effect if we take into account the global aviation market.
The materials revolution promises to benefit other industries in the same way.
Scientists believe we are entering a new era that will lead to more transformations than the digital revolution that has occurred in the past 30 years.