HelloTomorrow2015
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Mythbusting with 'Mr. Hyperloop'
Dirk Ahlborn is two hours behind schedule, and it's no surprise, since the project that he represents has the potential to change the world. He's the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the firms that's dedicated to building those high-speed tubes people of the future are always traveling in. It's got so much potential that you can even see hope in the eyes of the people standing in his presence, waiting for their turn to speak to the German. You might have heard that Elon Musk dreamed up this idea, but it's Ahlborn who's most likely to make it a reality. Say hello to Mr. Hyperloop.
Fruit scraps and algae: It's what's for dinner
Supercomputers are dreaming up crazy new ways to cook the food that we have today, but will we eat the same things in the future? For instance, when news of California's drought began to hit, people wondered if switching to a diet rich in insects would be the only way to survive. A variety of factors, most notably the face you pulled when someone suggests insects in place of a McCheeseburger, was why that idea crashed and burned. So what sort of food will we be eating in our resource constrained, population-heavy future, aside from, you know, people? Here's two companies exhibiting at Hello Tomorrow in Paris that have very different ideas on the snacks of 2020.
Redefining the purity ring
"I know that we can't change people's behavior," says Irina Rymshina, "but in later life they may want children and they certainly don't want cancer. I think that we can help them." She's talking about Hoope, a wearable device that, it's hoped, will be able to put an STD clinic on your thumb. If successful, then you can say goodbye to the idea of having to pee in a cup to make sure that you can go out this weekend.
Google could build a hoverboard, but won't
Buried deep in the bowels of Google's top-secret X lab is the technology that could, theoretically, enable us to all have a Back to the Future-style hoverboard. Unfortunately, according to the lab's director of moonshots, that's where it's going to stay, disappointing all of the bullied nerds of Hill Valley. Obi Felten revealed at the Hello Tomorrow conference in Paris that researchers had successfully developed a method to "levitate carbon on magnets," but that it struggled to see that too many people would actually want such a device. Yeah, we know.
