Expertise or generalists for innovation

Together with the World Economic Forum, Scientific American engaged in identifying this year's 'Top 10 Emerging Technologies'. After a careful examination of nominations around the globe, they come up with an interesting list. For wrap-up as follows

1) 'Bio(degradable)plastics' to reduce pollution.
2) How 'Social Robots' will penetrate into our lives.
3) Miniature optical devices enabled by 'Tiny Lenses'
4) Special Type of 'proteins' for curing Cancer and Alzheimer's.
5) 'Smarter Fertilizers' reducing contamination
6) 'Collaborative Telepresence' helping participants to feel like physically together.
7) 'Safer Nuclear reactors' enabled by resilient fuels and innovative reactors.
8) 'Utility Scale Energy' storage enabling a renewable grid.

And the last two are my favorite by far...

9) 'Advanced food tracking and packaging' for public health, which is enabled by blockchain. In principle, this tech is a decentralized accounting system, whereas multiple ledgers are stored in multiple locations. Wallmart traced the origin of a contaminated item in seconds, which would take days with the conventional records. This might help for all ecosystem to eliminate unwanted ingredients from the circulation.

10) 'DNA Data Storage' Life's information-storage is being adapted to handle massive amounts of information. Scientists are working on DNA to turn into a very stable and enormous capacity compared to electronic devices. The simple bacterium such as Escherichia coli has a storage density of about 10 to the power 19 bits per cubic centimeter. Hold on now, all the world's current storage needs for a year could be well met by a cube of DNA measuring about one meter on a side.

For further reading for DNA storage:

https://physicsworld.com/a/data-storage-in-dna-gains-from-a-larger-alphabet/