As you might guess from that cute, pondering look on top, some major changes happened on our Journey! It has been a trying, sleep-deprived month. It has been a month of new experiences and rapid learning. For everyone. Yet, as our little one grew, so have we, trading sleep for knowledge; and our activities for quiet moments with him. It has been an amazing month.

With much of our time and energies being focused on him, we had to forego many of our interests, especially outdoors ones. But, that meant we were able to do a lot more reading and learning along the way. And that is what we want to share in this post – the events that inspired us, the podcasts that got us thinking and articles that explored what kind of future we are creating for next generation and our little one.

The future is bright

It is easy to be pessimistic and fearful when tuning in on news channels nowadays, where it’s plain to see how personal interests and greed are affecting not only humankind, but our entire planet as well. Fear sells. While certainly there are a lot of issues that are worrying and need to be discussed, that’s not the direction we are going to take now, in this post.

Technology is going to be the answer to a lot of those issues, from our planet’s climate changes to making space travel economically feasible; from curing terminal diseases and extending human lifespan to also improving quality of life. Here are the developments that excited us, mainly from The Economist, Reader’s Digest, Forbes and Northeastern Magazine:

The next big step in humanity’s progress is the use of AI, or Artificial Intelligence. If that sounds like science fiction out of a movie, you might be surprised to learn that different AI technologies have been in use for years now and have, in fact, been collecting data on you. Every time you liked something on social media, or viewed products on Amazon or Netflix, an AI program has gathered more information on you, and offered you personalized, tailor-made ads or news articles. If you ever used Alexa or Siri, you interacted with an AI. Even though the technology is still in infancy, when Google’s CEO says that “AI will be more profound for humanity than fire and electricity”, you know it’s big. And it’s not restricted to big players, your Googles, Apples, Teslas and Amazons. Companies of all kinds are harnessing AI to collect data, offer personalized service and customer care, and even decide whom to hire or approve bank loan based on lie detection.

To quote The Economist, “Machines can help ensure that pay rises and promotions go to those who deserve them. That starts with hiring. Algorithms will pick up differences in pay between genders and races, as well as sexual harassment and racism that human managers consciously or unconsciously overlook.”

Those are just some of the potential uses, and there are potential issues as well, like privacy to name one. The reality is that a lot of jobs will become obsolete by these “thinking machines”. But on another hand, lots of other jobs will be in demand, mainly related to computers and programming, as the humanity is progressing closer and closer to symbiosis with machines. We are already inseparable from our smartphones! 🙂

Another area where AI is making strides is early diagnosis of cancers and other life threatening conditions. Not only are AI programs able to diagnose strokes and heart conditions from brain and heart scans, but can discern skin cancers from ordinary images, and all of that faster and more accurate than actual experts!

There’s another piece of technology that has been put to all sorts of uses, and relevant to our topic, has influenced our life quality and expectancy, and that is 3-D printing.

The fact we can input our own stem cells in it and create any shape we want, meaning we can design them for any part of the body, opens up a world of possibilities. Some aspects, like “printing” the stem cells directly onto the skin of burn victims is already successfully in use. Others applications, like printing organs (ears, ovaries, liver, muscles) have passed the animal testing (as bad as that sounds, the mice have accepted new organs) and next step is human testing. It is estimated that within next decade we will have knowledge and resources for the whole process to be in general use, meaning we will be able to print ourselves new organs from our own stem cells.

Add to that the breakthroughs coming from gene mapping field, where genes are identified that cause diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes or different types of cancer. All of that contributes that once the technology is perfected, we as a species will be able to live longer and better.

Healing the planet

By now, most of us have realized that humans with our short term thinking have caused grave changes to the planet’s ecosystem. Ever-rising CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are causing violent changes in temperatures and water levels. As a consequence, that is causing incredible loss of life, both human and animal. Just now, we are starting to realize the effects all our discarded plastic is having on the whole ecosystem, including ourselves. All those plastic microfibers are coming back to us through food and water, and we can’t even determine yet what that will do to our bodies. We are still lagging behind the changes here, due to soaring energy demands in developing Asia and also political lobbying. Luckily, human ingenuity is trying to rectify those issues, using technology.

Carbon Engineering, company founded by a Harvard’s climate expert and backed by Bill Gates, has successfully tested the device seen in the picture above that chemically removes CO2 from the air. The cost of it – about 100 USD per ton of CO2 – means it would still cost trillions of dollars to remove all greenhouse gases from our atmosphere. But it is a significant step forward; especially considering their plan is to make it more cost-effective by turning the captured CO2 into fuel!

Good news for our seas as well, as researchers at the Stanford University have found a species of worms that actually eats and decomposes plastic! They do eat slowly but once again, it’s definitely step in the right direction. 🙂

I could go on, about self-driving cars or insect sized drones being developed, or commercial space race happening right now, but I would like to finish this lengthy post by recommending 3 amazing podcasts that contain a lot more useful and amazing knowledge.

Let’s Know Things (iTunes / Google Play / Youtube)

This weekly show that lasts about 45 minutes per episode, will inspire you and expand your mind with wide array of topics you didn’t even know you cared about. I can’t emphasize enough how well researched it is and how it puts today’s news into larger context. You will gain different perspectives, check it out!

Science Vs  (iTunes / Google Play / Youtube)

If you wished to know what holds true in everyday life and what is just a modern myth, this is a show for you. In 30 minutes episodes, this quirky team pits Science (AKA facts) versus various subjects, including vaccines, meditation, organic food, hypnosis, UFOs, obesity and many others. Really informative!

Afford Anything (iTunes / Google Play / Youtube)

Slogan of this podcast is “You can afford anything, just not everything.” This FIRE (Financial Independence through Real Estate)  blog/podcast was one of the first inspirations towards our Journey. We highly recommend to anyone who wants to do better financially, but doesn’t know how or where to start.

There you go, lots of new knowledge gained, hopefully it inspires you to be better and be smarter. Like our little one, we will be aiming to learn something new every day.