A brief résumé
of several technological developments between the years 2005 and 2055.
Carbon
nanotubes
In the
early 1990s, scientists at the NEC Fundamental Research Laboratory in Tsukuba,
Japan, discovered a tiny graphite-like structure with one hundred times the
strength of steel and improve upon this figure with research and development.
This microscopic structure, known as a carbon nanotube, with only 1/100,000 the
thickness of a human hair, is akin to graphite: a sheet of carbon atoms
arranged in a tight honeycomb pattern, stack after stack of such microscopic
sheets. Carbon nanotubes are formed when the sheets of atoms are rolled into cylinders,
and by the 2020s, the carbon nanotubes were successfully engineered, triggering
a revolution of light weight superstrong construction. A renaissance in
building begun, including megaprojects like the
The relation of the carbon nanotubes with the UST begun in Deon International’s
laboratories: the combination of new varieties of BS and carbon nanotubes created a new
generation of composite materials, allowing the construction of high-pressure resistant
materials with the strength in tension similar to diamond, and a mere fraction
of the thickness of previous materials. The development of manufacturing chips
dipped in carbon-rich protein solutions as the only practical way to
manufacture the carbon nanotubes marked the ascent of Deon International as the
largest corporation in history.
Minitels
It all
begun simply and innocently: France Telecom designed in the early 1990s a service
originally intended as a replacement for the printed telephone directory,
accessible through the telephone lines, known as Minitel. A few years later,
Minitel was hailed as a cutting edge technological marvel, offering by 2002 to
its seven million subscribers 25,000 different services, from train ticket
reservations to check stock prices, to search the telephone directory, to
online purchases, to access news, send “courrier-e” messages or enter the “chambers
de causette”. The original Minitel terminals were handed out free to telephone
subscribers, funded by the government, resulting in a high penetration rate
among businesses and the public, even when they used text based small screens, uncomfortable
keyboards, and slow connection speeds.
But the popularization
of online services analogous to Minitel in other countries (known collectively
as Nationwide Electronic Telecommunications, NET) helped to rise the quality of
the service worldwide, and by 2006 the users of the different Minitel systems
abandoned the “dumb” terminals and were logging on with DM500 high-speed colour
computers, through telnet network protocols that access information on a remote
server, over an end-to-end telephone line connection, allowing secure and
private connections. Another of the advantages of the Minitel systems is that
provides online access for many useful services without requiring a personal
computer, both executives and farmers have been banking and transacting online.
Supercavitation
In the
early 1960s, Mikhail Merkulov at the Hydrodynamics Institute in
Artificial
Intelligence
The
origins of the concept of artificial intelligence can be traced back decades in
popular science fiction, but as a true scientific pursuit it is a very young
area of study. In the early XXI century, due to advances in the integration of
computers, and the application of modern concepts of neuropsychology, enormous
databases, some creative wiring, superfast hardware and statistics, the world's
first true artificial intelligence (AI) appeared in the Advanced Computer
Sciences Laboratory of the University of Cambrige in 2019.
The first
AIs were extraordinarily expensive, and only a few governments and universities
could afford them. AIs were laboriously designed and constructed by teams of
human engineers, usually at considerable expense. Few AIs were available
because the costs must be absorbed through mass production, which was justified
only for toys, weapons and industrial systems such as automatic teller
machines.
But after
several combined computational and experimental approaches were proved, and by
2035 common electromechanical systems were being “boosted” with AIs and then
fabricated robotically using rapid manufacturing technology, thus achieving
autonomy of design and construction. However, the AIs generated until know
through these processes are unable to think and reason at, or above, the level
of a human being. Most of the AI, which has already been implemented in
everything from automotive systems to videogames, are mere individual
intelligent features that enhances current technologies.
But the
growing autonomy of design and manufacture of the AIs lead to several fatal accidents
when the AIs were used by unskilled or negligent users, therefore most modern
AIs (except the most primitive ones) are created with built-in limitations, so
humans can have the final say and therefore take the final responsibility.
Nuclear
fusion (hot fusion)
The
development of the peaceful nuclear fusion power commenced in 2005 with the
start of the first Nuclear Fusion Power Plant (NFPP) in
The NFPP
was the result of the experimentation with magnetic confinement of plasma on
toroidal magnetic configurations (known as Tomakam) creating the first
prototype of a working thermonuclear reactor: control over the nuclear fusion
was obtained applying a laser control module beam to plasma burning hot at the
temperature of millions of degrees where heavy hydrogen tritium interacted
ensuring tremendous energy liberation.
The
plasmic chamber is placed inside the laser device resonator, placing the
mirrors of the laser at both sides of the tomakam in such a way that the beam
is alternately reflected from them and intensified, and crosses the plasma
several times. Such construction, called multiple-pass, generates the emanation
impulse possessing the energy which is high enough for controlling the
reaction.
By the
2030s there were about 300 operating Tomakam nuclear reactors in the world with
the total installed capacity of 2000 GWe. Nuclear fusion power (NFP) provides
now about 70% of the world electricity. Thus, in a quarter of a century the
capacity of NFP increased from 5 to 2000000 MWe. It is difficult to find in
history another example of such quick penetration of an energy technology into
the life of the society.
Earth
Crust Deep Drilling
ECDD or
laser drilling is a relatively new technique that uses powerful energy beams,
avoiding the inconveniences of traditional drilling: continuously change bits
depending on the rock layer being drilled, bring broken rock out of the
deepening hole, replace worn-out and broken drill bits, and use costly heavy
solid systems to plug the drilling formation and maintain a constant pressure
against sudden high-pressure pockets.
Advanced
chemical lasers reaches rates of penetration 100 times that of conventional
rotary drilling techniques may be attainable, and can vaporize holes through
rock of all lithologies: shales, limestones, dolomites, granites, salts and
sandstones of different composition and cleanliness. At the same time the laser
fuse rock into a glass or ceramic-like sheath around the hole, forming a
ready-made sealed casing automatically set into the well bore at the same time
as drilling.
Pioneered
by the Macronesian Alliance, this technology robed all opportunity to Lunar and
asteroidal mining to develop, because mineral resources that used to be out of
the reach of drilling machinery can now be easily extracted: the mining hole
near Wewak (
