We love a list. Especially this one showing the best inventions for 2008 from Time magazine; it will hopefully give us a heads-up as to which devices, ideas and strategies we’ll all be using in a year or two.
Our favourite moments from the list:
1. The Retail DNA test. No, it’s not a test to check whether Tesco’s Terry Leahy really does belong to the great Leahy clan of Ireland or anything like that. It’s a test produced by a company in Silicon Valley, run by the wife of one of Google’s founders. We aren’t sure whether this genetic test that can tell you whether you are prediposed to various genetic traits and illnesses is technically a good thing, but it’s certainly interesting. We first heard about this via Greg Brooks, in his work for the trend agency Breaking Trends, a year ago. He said it would be big news and he appears to have been right!
2. Facebook for Spies. Not that this really has any business application. It sounds hilarious. A secret social network for spies? We thought this had always gone on….we didn’t realise an invention was necessary in this field!
3. A camera for the blind. This interesting gadget raises braille-like images of whatever the lens sees so that blind users can ‘feel’ the image in front of them. We’re not quite sure where you would go about using this but certainly an interesting development.
Stuff we really aren’t sure about:
1. Bullets that shoot bullets. This aims to help protect armies by detecting incoming rounds and deflecting and destroying them in a split second. Obviously anything that protects lives and keeps people safer is great but we can’t help feeling that a solution to bullets being fired being ‘even more bullets being fired’ is a little worrying.
2. Bionic contact lenses. Maps will float in front of your eyes. Great for spy films, less good for the rest of us who just wish they could cut glare when driving for contact lens wearers and stop all this over-the-top innovating
3. The internet of things. Does your toaster really wish it could speak to a fridge in Canada? What useful information could they share? We can only dream. Oh no, wait, this seems to be coming into reality too. Companies including Cisco and Sun have formed the Smart Objects Alliance allowing sensor-enhanced physical objects to ‘talk’ over a network with each other. Probably going to be incredibly useful in a few years but right now, it just sounds a little like robots ruling the world.
Thanks to PSFK for bringing this to our attention!
