Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?

102 points by scottlilly 4 years ago | 52 comments

Back in the 1980s I used to read Omni magazine. In the 90s, it was magazines like Wired, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing. These all presented views of the future that I found interesting and (mostly) hopeful - even if a good percentage of their articles had no basis in reality.

Today, they're all gone or nothing like what they used to be.

What magazines, blogs, podcast, etc. do you use to discover possible positive future technologies?

ben30 4 years ago |

https://hackaday.com/ and the podcast that goes with it.

brysonreece 4 years ago | |

Hackaday has been my browser homepage for nearly a decade, and really helped push me into engineering as a younger person. I can’t support them enough.

stnmtn 4 years ago | |

As someone who doesn't like working with hardware, I wish there was exactly this but for software. A curated list of fun, do-able, interesting projects with wide-ranging use cases.

sargstuff 4 years ago | | |

such as https://medium.com/@likid_geimfari/the-list-of-interesting-o...

ozarkerD 4 years ago | |

Hackaday is amazing. Reading that site as a kid put me on track for my career today. Can’t thank them enough.

anotheryou 4 years ago | |

is there a best-of format for it?

ben30 4 years ago | | |

The podcast

omarhaneef 4 years ago |

Tech has gone mainstream so these stories are everywhere now. The Nytimes, WSJ, Washington Post all have tech sections and if you don’t read large national “papers”, you read about them at whatever news aggregator you have.

This is no longer niche news but part of everybody’s daily information diet.

nradclif 4 years ago | |

I don’t read the NYTimes technology section frequently, but whenever I have it’s always seemed more like a “Silicon Valley-themed politics” section to me. Not at all like any of the technology magazines/websites mentioned by the OP.

omarhaneef 4 years ago | | |

Just a smattering of articles from the last week:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/science/robots-pancake-ju...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/travel/biometrics-airport...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilo...

Which is the sort of thing they had in Wired and Omni. (We should be careful not to romanticize the omni/wired days. They weren't deep technical articles like HN has, but still interesting new tech that was somewhat hyped up.)

corysama 4 years ago |

Two Minute Papers https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg

isaacimagine 4 years ago | |

While good, I feel the channel is experiencing a kind of eternal September right now—the depth at which papers are reviewed has decreased to accommodate the influx of new viewers.

martythemaniak 4 years ago |

HN has really embraced our current techno-pessimistic culture, so all the things that get on trashed here are definitely worth looking into. And no, I'm not joking. In the old days, HN had split brain, so things would both get trashed and celebrated - the famous Dropbox thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)? The top comment is gently dismissive, but overall the thread is also quite encouraging. Twitter is much better, since you can still get the split-brain effect there, rather than isolating yourself in a negative echo chamber.

So fining headlines isn't hard, I think the real value these days, which didn't exist prior to YouTube becoming huge, is that now you can actually really dive into these things in a way that was incredibly inaccessible before.

Take self-driving cars: You'll see the usual dismissive crap here, but then you can go on YouTube and you can watch Karpathy talk for hours about how they're building their system. Then you can go watch someone like Yannic Kilcher talk about Karpathy's presentation, explain pappers on which the work is based, etc. Then you can go watch AI DRIVR test the latest iteration in the real world. Because there's so much content, you can basically find content at every level, from basic pop-documentary explainers all the way to lectures and paper analysis, allowing you to gradually go deeper and deeper.

Rockets and Space? Scott Manley and EverydayAstronaut will explain missions, engines, everything. SmallStars has amazing visuals. EVs? Sandy Munro will tear down an entire car and show you every single little thing in there. Electric Flight? "Electric Aviation" will explain the engineering tradeoffs between Lillium's small ducted fans and Joby's large propeller design. Biology? iBiology let's you dive into any current reserach (Synthic Bio, Connectome scanning, using DNA as structural material). You can just keep going like that for anything, it's just plain amazing.

NoGravitas 4 years ago |

You don't. There isn't any. The reason why is explained here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...

lta 4 years ago | |

Thank you. That was one of the most interesting article I've ever read from HN

akeck 4 years ago |

Lately, I've taken a liking to low energy tech, permacomputing, solarpunk, etc. Writing on those topics is scattered among subreddits, certain blogs (e.g., 100 Rabbits) and forums, and various Medium and Substack posts.

germinalphrase 4 years ago | |

Care to toss out names of subreddits?

akeck 4 years ago | | |

r/solarpunk

r/permaculture

https://100r.co/site/off_the_grid.html

https://solarpunks.net/

https://medium.com/solarpunks/solarpunk-a-reference-guide-8b...

http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html

http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing_update_2021.html

https://www.sevarg.net/2020/05/23/on-working-from-home-and-j...

Zoo3y 4 years ago | |

seconding this. sustainable power and minimal, human-centric tech is the future.

ipnon 4 years ago |

The Internet is bigger than ever. Depending on the community the sources differ.

For ML, you have to read papers and fill in the gaps. Learn the basics enough to be able to slog through the vocabulary and math, then try to turn theory into reality.

For crypto, everything cool that happens in public happens on Twitter. There are news aggregators for crypto news, but it all happens on Twitter first.

It seems it takes more personal effort to get to the cutting edge these days. That could be because this edge is always getting farther away from the starting point, the blank slate of ignorant childhood.

runjake 4 years ago |

Adafruit and the surrounding community.

Also, there are several thriving tinkering communities on YouTube.

https://adafruit.com

OnionBlender 4 years ago | |

I've been playing Shenzen I/O and I like the idea of Arduino/Feather but I have no idea what I would actually make if I got a microcontroller.

madvoid 4 years ago | | |

Home automation or LEDs are always a good start in my opinion. Home automation because it's something that will affect your life and you'll notice, LEDs because they're pretty (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468919).

analyte123 4 years ago |

My theory is that it has basically gone underground (private groups on Slack, Signal, Discord, etc and maybe some public-yet-opaque activity on Twitter) along with much of the rest of the internet.

Weird and wonderful tech is by definition something that threatens the status quo, and having a public presence could attract unwanted attention by hostile journalists or even law enforcement. This has been called the dark forest theory of the internet. Being unsearchable also raises the the barrier to entry and keeps newbies out - besides not having to deal with them, this also keeps more in the pot for you if you ever figure out a monetization path.

Unfortunately I never got on the cool Discords or whatever in time to know the details of or network myself into these communities. But I’m pretty sure there are people printing pharmaceuticals in their garage with bacteria right now. DIYbio is fascinating (like the guy who made his own vaccine) but there’s no primer or news site about it - you’re going to have to dig hard and actually talk to people to get informed. I know for a fact there are people printing and inventing new firearms and things like electrical primers.

There are cool things (for a certain definition of cool - not necessarily positive) going on with cryptocurrencies - check out rekt.news for a sample of what’s going on. They are covering heists, but the details tell you a lot: did you know you can take out a loan of $100M right now with zero credit or identity checks? You just have to pay it back in the same transaction.

TigeriusKirk 4 years ago | |

The DIYbio community at least is quite intentional about keeping a low profile. It's not hard to imagine how the mob could pick any random experiment to blow up about on a slow news day.

gavinray 4 years ago | |

Discord is where I go to get help with any technology. It's not much different than being on IRC when I was younger though -- same sort of scenario.

My Discord is half a decade old now, hard to believe:

  > Created: <Day>, XX Oct 2016

HackerNews is where I go to keep up with things.

nynx 4 years ago | |

This is correct. They keep a low profile.

f0e4c2f7 4 years ago |

HN, Indie Hackers Podcast, All-in podcast, Lex Friedman podcast, TikTok, and conversations with people I meet in virtual reality.

themodelplumber 4 years ago |

Visions of the future is really important here. That's kind of lost prominence in tech writing these days. (Did we all decide we had a big enough dose of the future for now? There's a lot of existing tech that's mind-blowing, and still hard to catch up with, I guess)

I'd probably start with Isaac Arthur.

dusted 4 years ago |

It feels like very few new things come out.. (I'm ignoring anything "as a service" and anything that requires an Internet connection).

boringg 4 years ago | |

I would expand upon this and say anything new and exciting gets ruined by companies slapping on SAAS models etc.

And yes I recognize that businesses need to make money I just despise the saaslife

jimthom 4 years ago | |

I totally agree with this one as it becomes totally useless once there's no internet connection.

lcall 4 years ago |

Sounds lame I know, but really (for when I want an overview or maybe to pass time): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies#See_also ?

jareklupinski 4 years ago |

for the fantastical stuff, I'm a fan of Design Tech blogs and aggregators like https://www.yankodesign.com/

it's 99% just gorgeous renders, but still helps get the idea machine going :)

colechristensen 4 years ago |

The hopeful future died with the dotcom bubble burst and 9/11 together.

carapace 4 years ago |

Rex Research

http://www.rexresearch.com/

Sure, most of the stuff there is pretty crackpot, but the stuff that isn't...

MrLeap 4 years ago | |

Is there a list of this stuff.. presorted to remove the crackpottery?

I have no mental facilities that aid me in filtering anything out of this, but I wish I did. It looks like a blur of thermodynamics violating attention bait. :O

carapace 4 years ago | | |

> Is there a list of this stuff.. presorted to remove the crackpottery?

Not that I know of. A lot of these devices and inventions are still in the indeterminate realm between crackpottery and established tech, so it would take some work to make that list, eh?

FWIW, there are a few people who seem to me to try to do a good faith investigation of some of this (weird) stuff (E.g. http://jnaudin.free.fr/ )

Some of the things are pretty conventional (compared to free energy devices) such as the Vaneless ion wind generator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator

TuringNYC 4 years ago |

Black Mirror? /s

grizzles 4 years ago |

IEEE Spectrum -> https://spectrum.ieee.org/

reportingsjr 4 years ago |

IEEE Spectrum is still fairly decent.

MIT Technology Review is ok, it never grabs me and makes me want to read it frequently though.

jcun4128 4 years ago | |

Video Friday is cool

digitalsushi 4 years ago |

Neophilia is real and it's impossible to satisfy when everything is always new

It felt amazing in the 1990s when you were a teenager staring at the same 184 lego bricks for 6 months

But now you're older and blind to interesting new things because you're looking for new things in a bucket of new things

foothall 4 years ago |

I enjoy the Linux mobile space: https://linmob.net/ is a good blog to start.

That community happens to be interested in other topics such as decetralization and repairable hardware too.

tmaly 4 years ago |

I honestly find a lot of interesting projects on Tiktok. Saw a laser harp driven by arduino last night that I am interested to explore.

I have also come across some DIY haptics for VR on there.

kiwiThrowAway2 4 years ago |

Reareading science fiction, Vurt - Jeff Noon, Snow Crash Etc...

sargstuff 4 years ago |

"future technologies" is pretty wide open. aka could start a separate ycominator companion site and still leave out a lot. ;)

One helpful approach I'd use would be to use a search engine(s) to help narrow down the focus a bit. aka "omni alternative";"tech podcast"

Yeah, typcially way to much info indepenent of what term(s) one uses; but great for getting a grasp on what's relate; prunning ideas dont want to conside; and new takes/views on "old" stuff.

Obviously, have to concept prune by default & necessity. Also bit more "customized overload", too

try search one day, wait for some time (day, week, month, year(s); do same search terms -- get an idea of how quickly things are evolving.

note: for given term(s)/topics, might seem to disappear, but things changed enough that the "search" is obsolete! try same search on multiple search engines!

A few prune/starter search category ideas:

1) Lot of self project blogging aggrigate & individual/group sites (vs. 80's & the dialup bbs). just try a term(s)/author and prune away!

general: www.indistructables.com / youtube / https://www.thingiverse.com/

directed: blinkenlights.net ; "tech magazine", grab a term/author/story & search

2) Searching foundational sites (gnu/mit/ieee/acm); sites containing citation/papers (csail robotics spinoffs) websites, aka cmu robotics, mit csail, georga tech, etc.) either for whats being done or reviewing what's cited in paper(s). aka hardware needs software & vise versa.

3) In the search vein, sometimes just doing search for things like the 1920's mechanical tv, ardrino punch card reader, and/or 3d printed project can turn up some fasinating stuff/ideas.

general: hackaday / makezine

directed: check out a project's url / citations / inspiration / etc.

general "thing a group/individual has done" : www.creativeapplications.net has limited set of examples on home page with archives stuff available to subscribers.

http://technovelgy.com/ what was once 'future tech'.

aka what Asimov ideas are still yet to happen? / What sci-fi writer ideas is SpaceX going to run into?

4) search term "open source projects":

https://medium.com/@likid_geimfari/the-list-of-interesting-o...

https://www.oshwa.org/open-source-hardware-journals/ https://opensource.com/tags/hardware