Idea #8: No matter what your browser's or your ability, you're still be able to reach and consume the content of the web.
Make the web accessible (not in an empty gesture of what some people think that means). Make someone who is actually differently abled sit in front of their computer and see if they can use your website, read and enjoy its content.
Read: Make layouts that don't suck :/
Once upon a time, there was a movement called "Any Browser". Oh sure, it's still around, but no where near the adoption it once had. In this movement, people of all capacities, browsers and disabilities were unaffected by the layout of a webpage, because all of it can gracefully degrade to its most basic elements.
Content was king. The layout was subservient to it and, if necessary, the king may cut off its head and still be king.
Isn't it sad that in our rush to make multi-page content, and other glitter that's 50% advertizing, 30% style and just 20% content, my neighbor still can't read sites like Wired properly?
Here's a handy rule of thumb: If I can't get to your content in Lynx, you've failed.
The implementation requires you to shift a snails pace internet advertising industry away from total page hits counting so much when planning an add supported website. I'd argue moving an inertial beast like that in any industry is almost certainly harder than building a custom solar panel with synthetic molecules or building a diamond skyscraper, because the latter two don't require the cooperation and manipulation of an entire market.
Definitely a good idea. But consider the real root of the problem - not just some, but the vast majority of the content we generate is hosted by someone else. Even this post is hosted by Hacker News, and pg ultimately controls it's representation. Facebook hosts your content, as does Flickr, Twitter, or even Gmail (which reminds me I need to setup a periodic IMAP backup of my gmail account...)
Anyway, my point is that I think you're right, but the first step is to be the change you want to see, and provide whatever content you, personally, have produced in a way that is readable on lynx (which, by the way, is totally available on Homebrew).
Oh yeah, one other pro-tip: if you're really really concerned about accessibility, try simulating their experience to really see what works and what doesn't. There was an article posted here a while back about a guy who spent a few days using the internet wearing a blindfold. The biggest takeaway for me was that the alt attribute on images was totally ignored!
Yeah, yeah, cool stuff, but those aren't ideas. Those are technologies. Evolution theory, universal democracy, organized labour, atheism, those were massive ideas. The Internet was a massive technology. Well, to be fair, that was a bad example. You will tell me that the Internet was a great technology that enabled great ideas, and I will agree with you [1]. But tell me, do you believe any of these ideas here could do that? I doubt it.
Real ideas that could change the world? I would put Big Data there, or my understanding of what Big Data could be: instead of focusing on thinking the best, fanciest hypothesis you can, focus on getting a lot of the best data you can find. Pure thinking from principia won't bring understanding to the human genome, but smart data crunching might.
Do you people have any thoughts on more ideas that could be like that? I'm actually interested.
[1] Technology provide the material/economic substrate from which philosophies and understanding comes. Automation, division of labour and credit brought capitalism, that brought bourgeois values: democracy, meritocracy, disdain for aristocracy, disdain for the disdain of "usury"... So it's given that technological progress becomes more than just "technological".
The idea that will likely change the world the most in the next major time span, is through improved neuroscience and imaging, the understanding that we do not have "free will" as we currently perceive it.
We can currently, with fMRI tech, already see a decision being made before the agent is conscious of the decision (though we can't determine what that decision is). As this technology develops, our ideas of free will, consciousness, responsibility, and ultimately justice will shift.
EDIT: not just the knowledge of this, but the general acceptance of it.
Pure thinking from principia won't bring understanding to the human genome, but smart data crunching might.
Says who? I don't know if Newton would've come up with classical mechanics if you simply gave him a ton of vectors.
I'm not so sure nature is self evident once you get enough data. Maybe we need more thinking and less data harvesting.
We have google for example, almost all human knowledge just seconds away, and we still don't have a clue on what's conscience and what makes us humans.
The difference is complexity. There is no F = M * A waiting to be discovered based on human DNA. There may still be plenty of usefull things but there complex useful things with exceptions not simple universal laws.
- One of the biggest problems we have is how to produce and preserve energy in large quantities in environmentally efficient way. If we are able to do that then 1, 2 and 4 are just nothing special. We will be able to tackle on the space!
- Wi-fi spots on everything? That is missing the point - I would argue that not the one-time cost is the problem but rather the cost of service associated with it.
- Idea 5 is so wrong that we must try in every way to protect from it. I can see the benefit of having the weather always in your sight, but I'm afraid that we as society will deep dive into it and never come out.
- War on asteroids? Better war on cockroaches. That is just wasting money on nothing. Now if we are endangered by some concrete asteroid, then we have to shoot it down of course.
- And building skyscrapers for me is missing the point. We have enough of these. Better spend money on preserving the environment and species on our planet then trying to squeeze more people on a square meter. Or just build the damn space elevator.
I have a dream - my son to take me on a space trip :)
Skyscrapers are by far the most ecologically sound way to store people. Finding ways to build them larger and more cheaply is Great for the enviorment.
Electric quadrocopters today have pretty limited range, with a flight time of about 30 minutes. You could do some pretty neat stuff if they lasted 5 hours.
Not to mention what it will mean to regular airplanes, cars and mobile technology. We'd might even start to see some futuristic weaponry, not that it would be particularly positive.
The solar panel idea is interesting, but the problem of storage still remains.
What about a global grid that spans the globe, with large solar arrays in the deserts of Australia, North America and South Africa? This way there's always an array producing power at any time during the day, although each array has to be large enough to sustain the world's power needs. Transmission would be interesting as well - anyone know how to build a TW transmission line?
As someone who lived in one of the dark orange places in north america, I can tell you that shades are very valuable by themselves. In dry and hot places being under a shades makes a big difference. A shade for your car, a shade for your house, a shade for people in the street. These shades can have the double purpose of capturing solar energy. I bet a lot of people in AZ will be very happy to use their roofs to install solar panels.
Idea #9. Build a device that can verbalize our thoughts. Something like a helmet that captures brain activity and translates it into spoken language. Next time I'm having an epiphany I don't need to rush to an input device (pen and paper or touch screen or keyboard) and lose half of it on the way there. Not to mention the potential of having our dreams recorded for our pleasure. Plus we could communicate with disabled people, from mutes to those in comas.
Something ( Plant? ) That could take Solar Energy within the desert and turn into a Liquid Fuel ( Diesel ? ), that could be refined ( using the electricity from the Desert ) into usable fuel in today's Diesel or Patrol Engine, without emitting any ( or most ) of the harmful substance that we current do.
That would be the best of best Fuel type, require no change of Engine in Planes and Cars. But still as clean.
I've imagined it would be kelp, where the pods fill with alcohol or paraffin. Harvest by milking or reaping the plants. Kelp grows meters per day; shallow seas to cultivate kelp abound in nature.
Sahara as a power plant? This has already been assessed as a ridiculous assumption several times. Because energy is not just about electrical production, but transportation as well. You cannot transport low voltage power very far, unless you start building transformers, rendering the energy output almost nil in the long run. Unless someone has found a new way to solve the problem.
Exactly. Improved battery storage capacity and efficiency might be a solution though. Also, I've never liked the idea of sending solar power generated in the Sahara to Europe. I never hear this concept in terms of helping deliver power to African countries. The exploitative exportation of natural resources from Africa is something that needs to stop in order for the region to rebound economically, politically, and socially.
Couldn't you just electrolyze water locally at small substations and then transport the gases through pipelines? They could be reassembled later near population centers by using fuel cells. Not only would that be a pretty efficient way to transport this energy, it's also a good strategy to make it available during the night.
I assume by your minimal "what water" comment you mean the Sahara couldn't support this concept because it lacks water? Considering the fact that you don't need a lot of water for this to work, there are several things that could be done easily and without a lot of additional cost (in relation to the value of the energy output).
1) Drill wells. There is subterranean water in many places, including otherwise arid landscapes.
2) Transporting water in a pipeline is also pretty easy, especially if you need pipes to transport the gaseous products anyway.
3) Considering the energy density, you could even carry it by truck over a dirt road once in a while.
And whatever you make would have to survive desert conditions. If Dune has taught me anything, it's that sandstorms really cut the workin life expectancy of tech.
Ironically a shielding made of diamond might solve that problem..
If those are the Big Ideas, then we are bankrupt of ideas. Also, didn't anyone read Stephenson's The Diamond Age? Must have, to come up with skyscrapers out of diamonds. Gee, can diamond buildings be heated and cooled and ventilated efficiently? What about ambient sound control? By the way, where's my damn jetpack?
A diamond building will be easier to cool or to heat (most skyscrapers at the moment are glass houses). The Fire Chief will probably fail them as construction materials--besides all the other problems with strength--as diamonds are combustible materials.
Diamond buildings, bones, and mechanical parts don't sound like a particularly good idea. Just because diamond is hard doesn't mean that it will be better than steel or titanium as a structural material. Diamond is very brittle. It doesn't bend well. If the Twin Towers were made of diamond, they probably would have shattered into a billion pieces the moment the planes flew into them. No time to evacuate.
It’s ridiculous. 10 seconds loading, as if they don’t care at all about performance. Ghostery goes nuts too: Brighteeve, ChartBeat, Disqus, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Google +1, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, LinkedIn Widgets, Lotame, Mobify, Omniture, SooreCard Research Beacon, Twitter Badge, Twitter Button…
im surprised this is only now making it to HN front page, it was published a while ago and is quite underwhelming in my opinion. it's an entertainment fluff piece, which i guess shouldnt surprise anyone.
the ideas are not ideas, they're technologies - or inventions - and most of them are blindingly obvious and already being worked on. even as far as technologies go, there is very little imagination here.
Sorta interesting, better than average for these lists, but not Earth shattering. The more substantially disruptive technologies are going to be things like memristors, cheap e-ink displays, or configurable manufacturing. In the next few decades the developing world is going to get online and get rich, probably in that order. Also, honest to goodness sentient machines are likely in this century due merely to the increases in brute force computing power available.
Meanwhile, thousands and perhaps even millions of humans are going to end up living off Earth and manufacturing is going to change so dramatically it'll transform our concepts of wealth. 2100 is going to look as alien from our perspective of 2013 as 2000 did from 1913.
Make the web accessible (not in an empty gesture of what some people think that means). Make someone who is actually differently abled sit in front of their computer and see if they can use your website, read and enjoy its content.
Read: Make layouts that don't suck :/
Once upon a time, there was a movement called "Any Browser". Oh sure, it's still around, but no where near the adoption it once had. In this movement, people of all capacities, browsers and disabilities were unaffected by the layout of a webpage, because all of it can gracefully degrade to its most basic elements.
Content was king. The layout was subservient to it and, if necessary, the king may cut off its head and still be king.
Isn't it sad that in our rush to make multi-page content, and other glitter that's 50% advertizing, 30% style and just 20% content, my neighbor still can't read sites like Wired properly?
Here's a handy rule of thumb: If I can't get to your content in Lynx, you've failed.