Meta-Materials, BioTech, Quantum Computing & 3D Printing - together these will allow us to create new and diverse physical products. Meta-Materials - Look to g

Meta-Materials, BioTech, Quantum Computing & 3D Printing - together these will allow us to create new and diverse physical products. Meta-Materials - Look to graphene, aerographite, graphene-gel, carbon-nanotubes etc. there are some pretty awesome new materials scientists are coming up with and their potential uses are too diverse to list. Bio-Tech - There was an article here on HN a few weeks ago about Medi-Gel, a substance that can close severe wounds in no-time. We can read the visual input from a persons eye-balls by scanning the brain. We can (kinda) integrate digital cameras directly into the brain (with limited resolution). We can grow cells (potentially organs) in labs. We can make mechanical hearts. We're about to embark on mapping the human brain. Nanotechnology, etc... Quantum Computing - I know I may get laughed off HN for this one, but give it time, it may happen. Imagine if that computing power was packed into smaller devices, perhaps even combined with some of the tech discussed here. There's even speculation that the NSA have built a Quantum computer - which is theory could crack ciphers in times orders of magnitudes faster than todays super-computing technology. 3D Printing - This may seem like old-hat news with the recent advent of the hobbyist 3D Printing scene but consider that businesses have been using stereolithography techniques on a much-improved larger scale with better resolution. In theory, we could in the near future 3D print large scale objects in short-spaces of time using a mixture of materials. I agree with b0ttler0cket, the common-view these days is that most software engineering is less innovation and more iteration. I think most of the premises and ideas behind writing software have largely been the same for the past 30 years and in our most recent years we've seen how combining cutting edge physical technologies has created new marketplaces for never before thought of products. Software just helps integrate and automate that new hardware.