Much-needed inventions
Eight years ago I posted a series on inventions that I’d like to see come about. I just asked AI, eight years later, to report on how many have since been invented or made progress toward. Below are my original 15, and bellow them is the AI report on the progress, if any, on each of them.
1. A genetically engineered bug which digests disposable nappies (diapers) and can work in landfills. It is not eco-friendly to use all that energy, bleach and detergent to clean cotton nappies, whatever gesture politics might say. A clever bug could let us all use the convenient ones with little environmental impact.
2. A plant which has been bred to mop up super-large amounts of CO2. If we are churning out CO2 faster than the eco-system can process it, we could use some extra help of this type to tip the balance.
3. A really efficient, low-energy osmotic desalinator. There's quite a lot of seawater about, but we need more fresh water. With such a device, anywhere within range of a coast could produce all the fresh water they need. We have thermal desalinators, but they are energy hungry. Present osmotic ones tend to clog up with sludge, so we need some new membrane technology.
4. A really quiet, low-emission aircraft engine. Jet engines get more efficient every year, and are a lot quieter than they used to be. What we need is a quantum jump to a new type of engine that does what we want. It must use less fuel (or less fossil fuel, at lest), yet generate more power more quietly. In Cambridge they are working on lifting body shapes with top mounted engines, but I'm looking for something more radical yet.
5. Trees that grow very quickly, so that they mature in a few years instead of decades. Maybe some team can isolate the growth factors and accelerate them, or maybe incorporate the genetic material from fast growing plants into trees. It would be good to be able to see good tree cover achieved rapidly where we want it, and facilitate reforestation.
6. A de-alcoholizer taken orally as a tablet, liquid or spray which will act rapidly to remove alcohol from the bloodstream, instead of leaving it to be processed in the usual way.
7. A wearable device which can cool the body and dehumidify the air in close proximity to it. This has to be portable, perhaps worn on the belt or in the pocket, or incorporated within clothing. It could be a small air conditioner circulating cool air around the body, or a perhaps something using the cooling effect of passing current through joined metals.
8. A new small-scale power source which does not use fossil fuels or put out harmful emissions. It's a great pity that cold fusion turned out to be a will o' the wisp. It would have been an ideal technology to give people some independence from large-scale power production and transmission. Perhaps something on a similar scale can be developed.
9. A cancer-inhibiting molecule which zeroes in on cancerous cells and prevents them from growing. Work is already being done on this at several centres, and a Nobel prize awaits the team who can do it, along with the gratification of humankind.
10. A sonic interrupter. I don't mean the noise-cancelling headset (which I called for long before it was developed, and have owned for many years). What I want now is something I can carry which will give me a bubble of silence around me. It might detect incoming sound waves and flatten them or degrade them sufficiently. Armed with one of these people will be able to create their own zones of silence.
11. Something to pulverize fish bones into fine powder without damaging the soft fish. The lithotripter uses ultrasonics to do this to kidney stones, but I want a commercial one to do this to fish bones in supermarkets, restaurants, and even homes. Gone will be the unpleasantness of finding bones in one's mouth, with the attendant risk of choking. Instead the bone powder will add nourishment to the meal.
12. A device which chills as rapidly as a microwave heats. We need something about the same size which can within seconds chill a bottle of wine or soft drink, or cool cooked dishes like fruit compôte which are best eaten cold.
13. An extra button on the TV remote which can remove the figure doing sign language in the bottom part of the screen. Every single person I have asked finds this irritating, in that it uses up screen space and distracts attention. I and some others have the added reason that the rhythmic off-centre motion causes mild epileptic-type symptoms. I don't get fits, fortunately, but I cannot watch it. Since the two pictures are superimposed, it should be easy to have a button on the remote to remove one of them.
14. Something that makes mining easier, less life-threatening to its participants, and with less environmental impact — bugs specially tailored to gobble up the coal, copper, manganese or whatever, and sent down to extract the stuff. They are flushed out, the desired resource extracted, and all organized by guys in white coats who are not exposed to the hazards associated with conventional mining.
15. Membranes to extract heavy metals from water. I'm a big fan of osmotic technology, and think membranes could be used for osmotic mining. You put them in seawater and sit back and collect the gold and stuff. When toxic spills occur, they extract the lead and mercury and stuff. It takes creative minds to develop the technology, but as with all these inventions, there may be money in it.
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There is good news and bad news, in roughly equal measure. Here's where each of your fifteen stands, eight years on.
1. Nappy-eating landfill bugs — No dedicated bug has appeared, but enzyme research on plastics has surged. Nappies specifically are still mostly landfilled or incinerated. No progress.
2. CO2-mopping plant — Real movement here. Living Carbon and others have genetically engineered poplar trees with algae and squash genes to boost photosynthesis and carbon uptake, and have actually planted them in US forests since 2023. Whether they capture meaningfully more carbon at scale is still contested, but the principle you called for is now in the ground.
3. Low-energy osmotic desalinator — Steady rather than dramatic progress. Graphene-oxide and carbon-nanotube coatings are cutting fouling and pushing flux retention up sharply in lab trials, and forward-osmosis systems are commercially deployed in some water-stressed regions. The "quantum jump" you wanted hasn't arrived, but the membranes keep getting better.
4. Quiet, low-emission aircraft engine — Incremental only. Open-rotor and blended-wing-body designs are still in development, not service. No radical replacement for the jet engine has appeared.
5. Fast-growing engineered trees — Same technology as #2. CRISPR-edited poplars with faster growth and better drought tolerance are now a live research field, not just a wish.
6. De-alcoholizer — This one's had a genuine breakthrough. Myrkl, a probiotic pill, showed a 70% cut in blood alcohol within an hour in trials, and newer enzyme and gel-based approaches are now in patent filings. Not instant, but far closer than in 2018.
7. Wearable personal cooler — Portable, wearable cooling devices (Peltier-based neck and wrist coolers) are now widely sold, though nothing yet matches a proper pocket air conditioner.
8. Small-scale clean power source — Still elusive at the personal scale you wanted. Fusion has made real strides (ignition at the US National Ignition Facility, various private reactors), but nothing portable or small has replaced the cold-fusion dream. No progress here.
9. Cancer-targeting molecule — This is the standout success. Checkpoint inhibitors, CAR-T therapy and mRNA cancer vaccines have all moved from lab to clinic since 2018, with some genuinely durable remissions in cancers that were once death sentences. Not one molecule, but the concept has arrived in force.
10. Sonic interrupter — Still doesn't exist as you described it. Noise-cancelling headphones have kept improving, but a portable "bubble of silence" without headgear hasn't appeared.
11. Fish-bone pulverizer — No sign of it. Ultrasonic bone-softening exists in food processing but nothing consumer-facing.
12. Instant chiller — Delivered, more or less. The Frigondas and similar countertop devices now chill a drink or dish in seconds, much as you specified.
13. Sign-language remote button — No progress. Broadcasters haven't added this.
14. Mining bugs/nanobots — Bioleaching, using bacteria to extract copper, gold and rare earths from ore, has gone from pilot projects to commercial scale, especially for low-grade ores and tailings. Not quite the tailored nanobot you pictured, but functionally similar.
15. Heavy-metal-extracting membranes — Bioleaching bacteria are now also pulling heavy metals like aluminium, copper and zinc from industrial waste and incineration ash, with yields above 90% for some metals. Close to what you asked for.
Tallying it up, there are clear wins on the cancer molecule, the de-alcoholizer, the instant chiller, and the mining and metal-extraction bugs. There is real movement on the fast-growing carbon trees and the desalination membranes. But there is little or nothing on the aircraft engine, the sonic interrupter, the small-scale power source, the fish-bone pulverizer, and the sign-language button. Biology has outpaced physics. The bugs have been busier than the engineers.
Madsen Pirie