#1 📈 3 daily problems and 3 technologies that solve them

One of them even caused by technology itself.

Who is this guy? I’ll give you details at the end of the post :-)

Moore's Law states that computational capacity doubles approximately every 2 years, and this has been empirically confirmed since it was formulated in 1965. This has meant that we are currently living in the best era of computing: any smartphone today has more computing power than the computers that took us to the Moon.

Despite this, there are three problems that technology has yet to solve:

1. Increase computational capacity even further.

2. Anticipate the future by making reliable predictions.

3. Automating complex decision-making processes.

Because in a hyper-globalized world like the one we live in, it is becoming more and more necessary to have technologies that help us to be more efficient, increasing profits or reducing costs without hardly varying the resources we have available.

And that is what we will see in this first edition of Feasible.

Let's go for it!

What comes to mind when you read the words cutting-edge technology?

This is a question I've been asking my close circle lately and the answers have been varied, but could be summed up in two movie titles:

• I, Robot

• Minority Report

In case you haven't seen them, they are two science fiction movies that present us with a somewhat dystopian future (more the first one than the second one). In I, Robot we see humanoid robots fully integrated into our society, but one of them seems to be out of control and Will Smith saves humanity -it is not the first time he does it-. In Minority Report, three people are able to see the future and exploit this quality with the police to help prevent crimes, and Tom Cruise finds himself in a crossroads because he is accused of one he will commit.

These films are based on two novels by two famous authors: Isaac Asimov and Phillip K. Dick. Both were very prolific science fiction writers whose novels have served as the basis for many other films such as Foundation and The Bicentennial Man (by the former), or Blade Runner and Total Recall (by the latter).

Both were able to imagine the future despite living in a time when there were neither smartphones -nor were they expected- nor very powerful computers. And yet, in the films above there are elements that anyone could relate to cutting-edge technology: super-intelligent robots in human form or the ability to anticipate the future.

But if the latter is possible, if there are people capable of visualizing the future, it is in part because of the famous quote popularized by Isaac Newton in 1675 that refers to future discoveries coming thanks to the road we have already traveled:

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

So how did we get here, and what were these Giants that Isaac Newton mentioned in his famous quote?

Actually, technology is a much broader word than we usually imagine. In fact, it is usually defined as "the set of theories and techniques that allow the practical use of scientific knowledge". And there is room for many concepts, from the first tools made by our ancestors to the invention of the wheel or the printing press, space rockets, or even money.

And although it may seem very reductionist, I believe that current -and future- technological era is determined by a single discovery.

The transistor

Without going into too much detail, the transistor is a semiconductor electronic device that works like a stopcock: it allows or not the current to pass between two of the three legs that it has conditioned to what happens in the third one. This, which seems very simple, is the basis of today's electronics... And it was created almost 75 years ago, in 1948.