7 ms·
Top Breakthroughs for 2019 Curated by Bill Gates
- joe_the_user 8y agoBehind paywall apparently
- komali2 8y agoThat confused me as well - there's the line > But what exactly is the purpose of a plow? After a paragraph about it, but then the article just jumps right into the "Top Breakthrough Techs" no big deal? I couldn't tell what was going on, I'm not even sure I read the "actual" article.
- noel24 8y agoBill Gates seems to have upped his media presence this year. I am seeing a Gates article in some stream or the other almost on a daily basis.
- buf 8y agoPolitical run soon?
- izzydata 8y agoI'm fairly certain he doesn't want to be involved in politics. He at least mentioned he will not run for president.
- elektor 8y agoI have two hypotheses as to why that is. Bill Gates is financially involved in a large number of startups mentioned in the article. Good PR = more sales = Gates' portfolio is better off. The other reason is a little more conspiratorial. There is a growing trend of financial populism where politicians are clamoring for higher taxes on the rich (70% on $10+ mil). I think Gates is trying to mitigate this movement by showcasing how he uses his wealth for the greater good.
- bluedino 8y agoHe's for higher taxes on the super-rich isn't he?
- sp332 8y agoHe disagreed with AOC's recent proposal (70% marginal income tax rate above $10m/year) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/bill-gates-supports-wealth-tax-like-aoc-but-income-is-a-misfocus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/bill-gates-supports-wealth-t... but he has recently advocated for higher capital gains taxes and higher estate taxes. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/bill-gates-taxes-on-rich-should-be-much-higher-but-capitalism-works.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/bill-gates-taxes-on-rich-sho... So maybe he's trying to direct the discussion away from quite such a high number.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoHe also advocated for taxing wealth in general instead of income and supported a 150% debt to GDP target (which..is basically what most MMT supporters want). He is right that a 70% top bracket won’t increase revenues by much.
- jacoblambda 8y agoConsidering that Gates has publicly said that he wants the government to tax him more(He said it most recently during the AMA not to long ago) I would disagree.
- dtornabene 8y agoyeah, sort of. He isn't clamoring to be taxed quite yet. https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1087749307380523008?lang=en https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1087749307380523008?l...
- threeseed 8y agoNone of this makes sense when you factor in that Bill Gates plans to give away all his money when he passes away. Many people in his position would be looking to try and make the world a better place for his children. Bill Gates however is simply technically strong and wealthy enough to do this through more direct means.
- modwilliam 8y agoHe makes media appearances every year around this time to publicize his annual letter etc.
- danhon 8y agoI wrote the story about ECGs on your wrist! https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612929/wristwatch-heart-monitors-might-save-your-lifeand-change-medicine-too/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612929/wristwatch-heart-m...
- arjan_sch 8y agoInteresting that blockchain is not mentioned at all. Is it past its hype cycle?
- bhhaskin 8y agoBlockchain isn't new at this point.
- threeseed 8y agoBlockchain is a net negative for the world. The emissions it enables through the reckless waste of power does not outweigh the currently limited benefits.
- mirekrusin 8y agoVery much like ITER's fusion reactor, not worth it, right?
- threeseed 8y agoWhat a bizarre comment. If ITER is successful then it will be the saving grace of humanity. Being able to have a limitless, emission free source of power will bring hundreds of millions out of poverty and help prevent climate change. What humanity sized problem is Blockchain solving ? It's maybe a better payment system, maybe a better data storage approach, maybe a better contract mechanism. That's all. Not guaranteed. Just maybe.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yters 8y agoTech breakthroughs these days don't seem on the level of things like airplanes, the computer, the internet, nuclear power, space flight, satellites, etc. I wonder what is different now.
- SirLuxuryYacht 8y agoIt seems the difference is that developing a new toilet doesn't require the manpower that developing nuclear power or spaceflight does. This is just the list for 2019, not the 20th century.
- yters 8y agoIt's representative of recent breakthroughs. For example if we looked back in time to the invents I mentioned, the year's breakthroughs would have surrounded these much bigger breakthroughs. The theme of current breakthroughs seems much smaller scope. For some reason our vision is smaller. I don't know why. We are either focused on very large things that appear unlikely to happen, like AGI, or on very small, speculative or trivial things like social networking or blockchain. None of the middle ground which are large, clearly important and have traction. I guess a lot of the big tech I mentioned was generated by the necessities of fighting a global war.
- SirLuxuryYacht 8y agoYes, the drive to kill something before it kills you is a very strong driver of innovation. All of these breakthroughs cater to precisely the opposite target: promoting human health either directly, or by improving our environment. This makes sense since this is the primary focus of the Gates Foundation, in 2019. That's a small scope if you ask me. You'd better believe that humans returning to space would be on this list if Gates had a horse in that race. I personally admire Gates' commitment to humans rather than stuff 'n things. Also, I don't think its fair to call blockchain or social networking trivial. But thats neither here nor there given this listicle.
- 8y ago
- SirLuxuryYacht 8y ago>> In China, consumers are getting used to Alibaba’s AliMe, which coordinates package deliveries over the phone and haggles about the price of goods over chat. I'm surprised by this. Seems like there is a lot going on in real brains when negotiating, much less a computer running some probabilistic algorithm. I'd be interested to see the specifics of how "consumers are getting used to" having a computer talk the price down with a real human seller.
- patall 8y agoA small comment on one of these technologies: cell-free DNA. A big problem in innovating there is that THE big backbone technology player Illumina (for DNA sequencing) has its own big research initiative (named grail) in the field. I know from at least one start up that got into trouble regarding some new tech with them as Illumina obviously does not want competitors to succeed and has far too much knowledge about those to let them go freely. So being a big "breakthrough" area can have disadvantages as it also attract monopoly players.
- tomp 8y agoSome thoughts: - custom cancer vaccines - the idea being that the vaccine, which triggers a person’s immune system to identify a tumor by its unique mutations, could effectively shut down many types of cancers, but this could also easily be retargeted and used to shut down the whole body (or just a vitally important part). It's still a question of delivery, the toxin would need to be delivered to the body in an undetectable way to be really dangerous... This is explored in an episode of The Expanse [0]. - carbon dioxide catcher - I wondered before to what extent does production of [...] synthetic fuels, using the captured carbon dioxide as a key ingredient even make sense - more energy is spent (likely from carbon) to produce the fuel than is released by burning the fuel, so this really only makes sense if we have enough clean energy to power the whole world (e.g. solar), but not enough batteries to run the economy (cars don't just need energy, they need energy in a convenient portable form). The CO2 -> fuel processes could enable us to go to zero-net-CO2 energy cycle, while keeping current infrastructure (fuel-burning cars, planes, ships). - an ECG on your wrist - how about an ECG in your wrist - a chip implanted into your body that would be able to not just measure the heartbeat, but also continuously monitor various blood markers - glucose, cholesterol, stress hormones, ... Is anyone aware of any company working on this? Are such sensors even possible from a medical-technology perspective (disregarding energy, data transfer and privacy issues)? - sanitation without sewers - a similar technology (full dirty feces -> clean carbon & water process) will need to be developed for space habitats... - smooth-talking AI assistants - this almost seems like a solution in search of a problem. Do we actually want to haggle with an AI (hyperoptimised and hyperexperiences and almost certain to beat us while giving us the impression that we're getting a great deal!), don't we just want to get a fair price (in the free market sense, i.e. with most profit competed away)? I wonder what are some problems that can/should be automated at scale, but that cannot be automated via other means (e.g. buying plane tickets online)... I'm guessing Google's application of an AI booking appointments (with people) is one of the best applications, as it treats speech as a kind of a universal interface (originally developed for humans)... [0] https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monster_and_the_Rocket https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monster_and_the_Rocket
- joe_the_user 8y agoAll these seem like more or less products that are variations and extensions of things already existing. Indeed, a lot of them are solutions in search of a problem. Robot dexterity has indeed been increasing for a long time but has been held back back by computational complexity of interacting with the world. Cancer treatments relying on the immune system have been tried over and over again and have failed for a similarly period, undone by the complexity of cancers. Carbon sequestering in various forms is often talked about but none of them make much sense compared simply stopping profligate carbon release (sure, once that stops and things are still bad, then this maybe but stopping release is always going to be the most cost effective until we some serious reduction). So either the complexity of modern society means world-change innovation has become vanishingly small or Gates is pushing products of some pals rather than taking a serious look at possibilities.
- RickJWagner 8y agoI have to admit I was never a fan of Bill Gates when he was heading Microsoft. But he's turning out to be an ideal billionaire. I think he's really making a difference.