The Thinker's Digest #4

Your fortnightly dose of brain food

Author

Nishant Bhide
August 21, 2023

Dear Thinker,

I like to predict the future. It feels like an exercise of challenging your own knowledge about where the world is going. To appear intellectual, I tend to speculate about big picture events - robots, a crypto dominated economy, human clones, interplanetary travel, you get the gist. Through the years of doing this, I’ve noticed I am not alone.

Few really think about the stupid, seemingly obvious things that will dramatically impact our lives. In this week’s digest, George Mack, one of those few people, gives us his take on the weird things we might use in 10 years. It starts with the future of our toilets so get ready!

From the depths of our bathrooms, we move to manufacturing machines the size of bacteria and Microsoft going green! To wrap up the week, we explore a subject that has defined periods throughout history - Art. Before the digital age, the only way progressive ideas were expressed was through physical, tangible art. We revisit one such period where a painting changed the way we perceive women. Happy thinking!

Brain Food

1. 10 Weird Predictions for the Future

We all have a habit of predicting what the major trends/products will be in the future. We tend to focus only on the major picture stuff like robots, flying cars or finally encountering aliens. This thread attempts at predicting some of the silly and weird stuff that might be part of our future. The more you read, the more you realise that most will actually become reality!

A teaser of what’s to come - smart toilets!

Read the full thread, here.

2. Rogue Planets in our Galaxy

Rouge planets are those that do not orbit around any star. We always knew that our galaxy is filled with them but we didn’t realise just how many! Studies show there might be over a trillion such plants in our galaxy. Why does this matter ? Because rouge planets might actually be good places to look for life. Some might even have liquid water!

Read the full article, here.

3. The Prospect of Molecular Manufacturing

As time has progressed, we’ve managed to reduce the size of electronic components drastically. Remember the hardware it took to store a few MBs of data 30 years ago ? Now, terabytes can be stored in a device as big as your palm. Naturally the size of components inside the device have reduced substantially. The smallest transistors are now 3 nanometers wide (that’s 10,000 times smaller than a drop of water).

This article talks about how we can replicate the molecular manufacturing ability of our own cells and apply it to technologies like chip manufacturing where materials are literally “grown”. This is really a fascinating read.

Dig in to the deep dive, here.

4. Microsoft’s Green Ambitions

Microsoft filed a patent for a new “carbon capture system” as it looks to reduce its carbon footprint specially in data centres. The reason this is news is because the promise of carbon capture systems have yet to bear fruition due to the high costs. Investment from a company with resources like Microsoft will boost the entire industry and make this ambitious concept a reality.

Read what carbon capture is and what Microsoft are doing, here.

5. The Birth of Venus

When you look at all the art made before 1400, you will notice that women are mostly covered while men are not. Botticelli broke that norm with his famous painting - The Birth of Venus. The painting caused a huge uproar in Florence with most clergymen condemning the painting. This video charts the history of Botticelli’s masterpiece and how it changed art forever.

Watch the video, here.

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Here are some earlier posts to give you a sense of the topics covered in this newsletter -