2016-08-11
Stephen Luntz
When technologies become widespread, they almost always get put to use in ways that few people anticipated. You might be familiar with questions about the usefulness of electricity, or how it was predicted there would be a worldwide market for five or six computers. Technology can reshape society in ways that are even more unexpected than the uses for which they were intended.
Here are some examples of technologies that are much newer, but already showing signs of being applied in unexpected ways.
Pico-solar lights
Plenty of people foresaw that solar power would disrupt the centralised model of power generation. However, few foresaw just how small-scale solar could become. Throughout Africa, tiny solar lights, usually generating just a handful of watts, are making access to light safe and cheap.
These systems are almost as far in scale from the solar panels on Australian household roofs as those houses are from giant solar farms. A minority are large enough to charge mobile phones, another technology that has transformed life in Africa in ways no one expected. Others can power several lights, but the biggest sellers can only power a desklamp for a few hours.
Yet this is creating a revolution. Roughly half of sub-Saharan Africans live beyond the electricity grid, and reading or working at night means using kerosene lamps that consume up to 20 per cent of household incomes to power, produce toxic smoke, and can burn a house down in an accident
Even the most basic solar lights, costing around $20, can open up possibilities for education that were previously unimaginable. Those who can afford to scrape together a system that can charge a phone or power a laptop, who might have once found sending their child to school a dream, suddenly have access to a world of learning.
Millions of solar lamps have been sold in Africa alone. They have become so widespread that Solar Aid, who catalysed the market in Kenya and Tanzania, are moving on to other regions.
Image: Tailor Rosie Owino who lives in Migori, Kenya, uses solar power to charge her phone. Credit: Corrie Wingate Photography/SolarAid
3D printing
A few years ago, 3D printing was being hailed as something that would revolutionise the world, ending mass manufacturing and turning everyone into artisans. Then, as early versions were capable of only working with limited materials and making curiosities and trinkets, it was seen as another over-hyped flop.
But now more practical examples are on the horizon. The printed solar cells being developed by the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium could prove important, but for the moment they're still produced in large volumes at single locations that aren't that different from other factories.
A much more radical idea is a home 3D printer which could produce solar cells from easily available materials. This means that a single printer and set of open-source designs could transform a remote village, without access to the grid, into a manufacturing centre limited only by the creativity of the operators. Vital tools, such as surgical instruments, that currently have to be transported into war zones or other hard to reach locations could be replaced with a single machine that can make everything required, possibly with waste materials and renewable energy.
Image: Dr Scott Watkins from CSIRO holds a flexible sheet of solar cells printed in collaboration with the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium. Credit: CSIRO
Non-military drones
Tragically, the major use for drones remains to kill people without putting American soldiers' lives in danger. Most alternative uses are (almost literally) pie in the sky, or modern equivalents of kite-flying — fun but not really important.
But now drones have started to be used for search and rescue during natural disasters, and may soon be bringing aid as well. By showing the impact of cyclones and floods to the world in real time they may not only spur donations, but awareness of climate change.
Drones are also being used to protect endangered species from poachers and threatened forests from illegal logging.
Image: A member of "Serve On" holds up a flying drone — used to help identify areas that were worst-hit by the earthquake in Nepal. Credit: Jessica Lea/DFID
The paperless office (for real this time)
Back in the 70s, we were promised that computers would bring us a “paperless office”, where information would be transmitted electronically, saving billions of trees. At first, computers and photocopiers led to more, not less, paper use. The book The Myth of The Paperless Office in 2001 led to widespread acceptance that we were going to use more office paper, and the best we could do was recycle more of it.
However, as economist John Quiggin has pointed out, the tide has turned. Consumption of office paper peaked in the OECD at about the time the book came out, and is now falling worldwide. Combined with the near death of newsprint, there is increasingly less demand to turn forests to woodchips.
One of the important messages in this story is that there is usually a delay between technologies like email and cloud storage becoming available, and them being put to widespread use, and it can be hard to predict the length of that delay. But eventually, beneficial technology usually gets adopted.
Image: American computer scientist, Bob Braden, who helped create the Internet. Credit: PublicResource.org
Synthetic meat
Okay, this one isn't actually making a global impact yet.
Predicting which future technologies will prove transformative is hard. The four above have been chosen precisely because so few people saw how they would change the world. But one that is starting to register as possibly world changing is synthetic meat, also know as cultured or in-vitro meat.
For all the merits of vegetarian diets, their adoption has been slow in the rich world, and any gains have been rapidly outpaced by demand for meat from newly developed countries.
However, a single stem cell from a single chicken, pig or cow could feed the whole world, given enough culturing nutrients and an appropriate scaffold. The basis of the technology goes back 45 years, but when the first synthetic meat burger was eaten in 2013 the cost was astronomical.
Now several companies are racing to be the first to bring a product to market that will have the taste, texture and nutritional content of meat, with none of the pain and a fraction of the environmental impact.
It's unlikely that synthetic meat will suddenly replace all meat consumption — it's much easier to recreate a beef patty than a steak. But imagine the cultural transformation if we reach a point where it's taken for granted that even when you order pepperoni or chicken on your pizza, no animals died in the process of making it.
Stephen Luntz is a psephologist working with the Victorian Greens who also writes for IFLS. Feature image by SolarAid, CC-BY-2.0.