15 Shocking New Technologies That Are Changing The World

As there are over seven billion people on the planet, we hear more and more about new discoveries, ideas, and modern technologies. While it’s great that we have so many creative minds, it has already become difficult to grasp what’s going on in the science and technology world.

This leads us to sometimes miss news about new and great technologies that are created. Certainly, not all of them are worth much attention, because sometimes they aren’t good enough to be used. There are times when new technologies lack safety, durability, comfort, and many other important qualities that make a great product.

There are those that are not only worthy of attention, but also worthy of global success. I’m talking about technologies that can totally change how we live. This includes important areas like health, food, energy, transportation, and many other areas that are needed for us to further advance and live happier lives. The good thing about these technologies is that we won’t need to wait many years for them to arrive. They are already there and ready for use!

Want to know about new technologies that are already changing the world? Find them below!

15. Illuminative Plants

As more and more people live in cities, we use more energy for illuminating dark areas at night. Because it uses lots of energy, people, for a long time, have been thinking about how to create more efficient and cheaper alternatives. To achieve this, scientists experimented with modified organisms. Rabbits, monkeys, and plants were used to see if modifying cells are enough to make organisms emit light.

They succeeded.

They were able to create various species of plants that, at night, can emit various colors. By doing so, these plants could be used in urban areas to decrease electricity costs. Moreover, many cities have too few plants, so it would make them look more natural and beautiful. Also, plants produce oxygen and decrease harmful gas concentrations, so citizens would become healthier and doctors would have more time for treating other patients.

14. Indoor Farming

To make sure people have fresh and healthy food, innovative scientists and farmers united to create a new farming method that is called indoor farming. This type of farming is like regular farming, but the only difference is that food grows indoors rather than outdoors. Such a method allows building farms on roofs, in empty houses, metro areas, and all other places that have a little bit of free space.

By recreating needed conditions like temperature, needed specter of light, and water and nutrient quantities, plants can grow even faster than they grow outdoors. By practicing indoor farming, people who live in urban areas could grow food themselves or buy fresh food from local farmers at any time of the year. Also, it eliminates the need to transport food from one area to another, making this type of farming even cheaper.

13. Balloon Internet

Over four billion people who live mostly in developing countries still don’t have access to the internet. As it makes their life more difficult, companies are thinking of many strategies to make the internet accessible in all places on the Earth. To make it happen, they are experimenting with what is called the “Balloon Internet.” After making devices that could connect rural areas to the world wide web, balloons would be used to transport these devices safely to new areas.

It would allow all people at any corner of the planet to use the internet for communication, information, and entertainment purposes. Such a project could increase the development of still poor countries that could use the internet to get a better understanding of the world and find higher paid careers. Today, many of them have to work many hours of hard physical work that gives only enough money to survive.

12. Biotechnology

If you didn’t know, biotechnology has been used for many years already and is a type of science that looks for ways to use technologies together with living organism to produce something useful. Useful products range from food like cheese, yogurt, and kefir, to remedies and biological sensors. As you can see, biotechnology is a big deal, and without it, we would be much less advanced. However, biotechnology still continues to improve and offer new beneficial products. Crops that are resistant to droughts and contain more vitamins are areas that become popular in biotechnology.

By using different organisms with modern technologies, we are capable of doing completely new things that are better than those found in technology and natural worlds, because biotechnology takes the best from both worlds.

11. Virtual Reality

Because many people enjoy playing video games, companies are developing more advanced ways to have fun while playing. One of these advancements is to make you feel as thought you live inside the game, rather than sit in front of it on a screen. We see so many different companies producing their own virtual reality products, that it becomes difficult to choose which products are the best.

One of the most interesting options is a special mask that allows you to smell the odours of the wilderness while you play a video game.

Also, one of the best parts about all of this virtual reality stuff is that gaming experience becomes a lot more realistic. You can go so deeply into them that you forget you’re in a game. Movements, visions, odors, and all other details feel so real.

10. In Vitro Meat

There are some people who stopped eating meat because they don’t want to harm animals and contribute to the pollution of the Earth. While it’s a great that they do so, in most regions, eating meat became a tradition, without which many people would stay dissatisfied.

To keep people happy, reduce energy and reduce the resources used for growing animals for food, scientists created a method to grow meat in laboratories. The good thing is that this meat could be altered to be healthier and would taste as good as the real thing. The bad thing is that we still need to wait some time until In Vitro meat will become cheaper to produce.

By producing In Vitro meat, we would get more free space that is now used for animal farms. This would decrease harm to the planet, as most farms use a lot of energy and water to keep millions of animals alive and growing for production.

9. Exoskeletons

Now, exoskeletons aren’t just imagination, because they came to reality and are ready for use. Of course, they are far away from what Iron Man uses, but it’s still a great beginning.

These exoskeletons allow people with spinal injuries to walk again and enjoy life as if they were healthy. These exoskeletons could do the trick, because these suits allow much more strength, use less of a person’s energy, and can even act as an additional protection. These primitive exoskeletons, with time, will become even better. Easier to use, more flexible, reliable, and cheaper are the qualities these suits are aiming for in the future.

8. Brain-Controlled Devices

Do you sometimes forget where your smartphone is? Then, you should know that scientists created a method to use devices by using the brain. This technology was first tried with people who suffered from health problems and couldn’t move their bodies. It was so successful that, in 2004, people could play pong with their minds. As I’ve mentioned before, this technology would be useful not only for people with health problems but for all of us.

It would allow us to make our lives easier and skyrocket video game experiences to a whole new level. By improving this technology, we also come closer to the creation of devices that would allow us to communicate with people telepathically. This means that you wouldn’t need to speak or be close to other people to say something. After all, this test was tried on monkeys and became a huge success.

7. Super Fast Transportation

As the world becomes more and more globalized, we need to be in many different places at once. So, we need to find a way to travel faster that we do today. A simple solution for this is to create new ways to travel and improve the older transportation technologies we have.

One of the best examples is Elon Musk’s hyperloop traveling. It would be so fast, that you could travel from LA to SF in 30 minutes, a trip that normally takes six hours.

The Hyperloop isn’t the only great transportation technique that is in production. The three problems they had were that they used too much fuel, created too much noise and became damaged too quickly as a result of their high speed. Scientists are still trying to improve these planes, so, hopefully, we’ll see them soon.

6. DNA Editing

Because more and more people are born with genes that make their life difficult and increase their chance of death, genetics created technologies that allow to “cut” harmful genes, adding new and activate genes and deactivating those genes people already have.

DNA editing is not only a great way to keep people healthy. This can be used to help people who want to become great athletes but don’t have genes that would make them good at a particular sport. Or, people who want to become scientists but have difficulties remembering things. Of course, genes aren’t enough to become the best. Even with good genes, people would need to improve quite a bit if they wanted to become successful.

Simply put, beneficial genes are only an additional help, not 100% guaranteed results. So, even after gene alteration becomes popular, people would still need to do a lot of work.

5. Modern Desalination

While people long ago learned how to use desalination to get drinkable water, the old methods were time-consuming and ineffective. Now, we have a much better understanding of chemistry and physics, so the scientists created much more effective ways to desalinate water.

Now, we can do it not only faster and cheaper, but also by getting additional benefits. One of these benefits is free minerals. That’s right. The water is full of minerals that, if desalinated, could become a cheap source of materials that would be used for manufacturing. While we still can dig minerals from underground mines, there are fewer and fewer of them left. And those that are left require going very deeply below the surface so mining costs have become higher and materials have became more expensive too.

On the other hand, the whole planet has billions of tons of water that if desalinated would give drinkable water to all people and, at the same time, resources for further development.

4. A Real Tricorder

If you’re a fan of science fiction movies, then you’ve probably heard about a tricorder. If not, then you should know that it’s a device that characters from science fiction movies use to check health parameters. The blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, temperature, breathing, and an ability to diagnose 12 well-known diseases like shingles and HIV would be available on the tricorder.

To create a tricorder as fast as possible, there was a competition with a prize of $10 million. So, many wise people united in small groups to win this huge prize. By knowing this, we should soon see a tricorder in reality.

If we could create a tricorder, we could use this device to make sure we are healthy. If not, then we would know that it’s time to learn how to become healthier. With such information, more people would stay alive and would enjoy happier lives.

3. Agricultural Drones

Because farming is time consuming and hard work, more and more farmers are looking for help in modern technologies. One form of help is agricultural drones. While they resemble other drones that now are used in the army and film production, these have different functionalities.

One of the primary things they do is to take infrared pictures that allow farmers to determine where crops grow healthy and where they face problems. By knowing such information, farmers can make important decisions about how they should grow crops to produce more food and spend less energy and resources. Furthermore, some companies are creating agricultural drones that would be able to kill harmful insects, fungi, and other dangers from which agricultural plants die and become less nutritious.

More types of agricultural drones are in development and are said to be able to water, plant, and do other necessary functions. Simply put, such robots would do almost all the work themselves.

2. Super Materials

As we learn more about chemistry, we understand how we can combine atoms into new, amazing materials. One of them is called graphene. It’s a material that consists of one layer of carbon atoms and, because of its thickness, it is super stretchy, conductive, and 200 times stronger than steel.

Graphene could be used in building almost everything imaginable. Armored vehicles, clothes, computers, and many other things that, by using graphene, would become much better and long-lasting. Furthermore, graphene is just one example of amazing material created by scientists. There are many more of them waiting for global production.

The only difficulty these materials experience is making their production faster and cheaper. For instance, now the USA, the UK, and Japan want to become the first countries to start the global graphene production, which would allow these countries to make lots of money.

1. 4D Printers

You have probably heard about 3D printers. Yet, what you may not know is that there are 4D printers. Both printers do the same thing – print materials or specific items – but 4D printers create objects that, when needed, can evolve. You see, our living conditions always change so what is useful today, may be useless after one year. To avoid creating things that would be in need for only a short period of time, researchers created printers and materials that would be capable of adapting to changes.

By doing so, all stuff made by 4D printers can be used much longer than those made by 3D printers. 4D materials change themselves by manipulating their form and chemical structures, allowing them to become amazingly adaptable to all types of environmental changes, damage, and other possible dangers.