The Age of Wonder

by David Vivancos

I have been working with cutting edge technologies, for the last 21 years, for example in Artificial Intelligence and computation since 1995, Virtual/Augmented Reality also since 1995 , Neuro-technologies / Neurosciences since 1998, Gamification since 1999, “Mobile” Apps since 2000, Space Propulsion since 2002, Nanotechnologies since 2005, 3d printing since 2009, and again since 2014 with Artificial Intelligence, mainly Deep Learning & Neurosciences, and some Virtual Reality too.

Always trying to spot social, behavioral or economic trends, and this is the sweet spot I love to be in, sometimes clearly 3 or more years ahead, and that is something good, but also a learning experience, the hard and soft way, through the companies I have built or help others built. Indeed I have the privilege to live out of it.

I always say that you should invest at least 25% of your personal time and money researching what is to come, not 3% as some countries struggle to reach. And the reason is simple, the rate of change is simply exponential and unless you invest in it, you will be left behind.

Through all these years I have learnt, the critical importance of self learn, but with as much practice as you can, and since we are heading at high speed to the automated world, there is no much time left, so don’t expend all your time in just theory, unless you are a theoretician or a philosopher, of course also needed in our societies.

Once of the things I usually do, for this trend spotting task, is supporting several times a year, some projects personally or through crowdfunding sites.

To illustrate it with an example, last weekend I received my Scio Developer Edition, and when I started working with it, and it works great!, I was simply wondered or amazed or shocked about the possibilities it opens, and what the human potential and determination could achieve.

To frame this right, I have to say that I have seen a lot of devices, I help the leader in Brain Computer Interfaces Emotiv Inc, in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, built a Big Data of my own brain, and many other things, so not so easy to get that feeling, but glad to have it!

For those who doesn’t know what Scio is, it is “just” a “pocket molecular sensor” using Near-infrared spectroscopy, nothing else, if you remove the word “pocket”, it will be no big news, the technology has been around since the 19th century, and it is widely used in astronomy, healthcare, industry and many other scenarios, but it is usually out of the reach of non scientific folks, due to high cost, bulky devices and relative complex operation.

But now this is a “pocket” and really small and cheap device, and like any other new tool, that we have at our reach, it will enable new business to be built upon it, and a new world to be discover.

I believe that we are in a fantastic age of wonder & discovery, where we can still be amazed, if you keep exploring every day the new tools and opportunities that smart people built for you, or even better if build your own new tools and share them with the wondering world.

For the record, this is the spectrogram of the food I just eat, If you had a Scio you could guess what this is, if not you could always wonder!

Thanks Damián Goldring, Dror Sharon and team for bringing us this wonder technology!