‘Reprogrammed’ stem cells to be tested in people with Parkinson’s
nature.com
nature.com
CRISPR/CAS9, full genome sequencing, stem cells, we're going to start seeing the real results from these over the next decade, and if that means my Mother can have her parkinson's cured, I'm incredibly optimistic about the future.
It takes time for 7 billions of people to make mistakes and learn, and even more to agree on something.
Meanwhile the things we are creating are more and more powerful, and reach more and more area in our lives.
It's going to be a tricky future.
The problem one faces is one is using debugging-techniques on a lasagna of only "code-like" commands that no resemblance to the code-divisions or processes of human-generated code.
IE, Nearly all "genetic engineering" is cut-and-paste changes hoping that such operations can give one-for-one changes in the attributes of organisms. Sometimes this works but it seems like it have inherent limitations. It seems to me progress will require understanding what the genetic code does and that's going to require different progress than what we have now.
I disagree, things like Car-T cell therapy have been some of the most exciting developments in the fight against cancers
Hopefully we can focus on making social/ethical progress soon as much as we have in technology. There are still many places and practices in the world that someone from the "first world" would have a hard time believing.
That was true in the 1960s as well. People often don't know what they want until it's old hat.
Today a person can communicate with anyone anywhere instantly, be almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, or get almost everything they would ever need in their entire life without leaving their house.
Sure we had planes and telephones in the '60s, and maybe we'll have teleporters and artificial telepathy in the future, but you know what I mean.
I think there are many things that will change in the coming centuries that will foster people's values and give them greater meaning.
Of course, bad stuff will happen too. Such is life.
Internet infrastructure generally limits upload rate for consumers in home internet and mobile internet is heavily capped. Both of these heavily limit one's ability to communicate. A recent popular example of the latter would be the issue where the firefighters in California had their data run out. SLAs or not it's a clear example of how our communications infrastructure is lacking.
Transportation infrastructure is has a lot of room to grow, only a few cities in the United States have functional subways, and many are researching new ways to easily move large numbers of people in a dense area.
These are tied together as well in that better internet will allow for more remote working so even in denser areas people may not need to all commute simultaneously.
Regrowing your ear drum is not going to resolve nerve damage, though: it'll deal with conductive hearing, not sensorineural. I'm sure you know this already.
As someone who is losing hearing due to a degenerative disease, I am sympathetic. The worse part of it for me is the severe tinnitus that came along for the ride. It is challenging in so many different ways, not the least of which is that it is completely invisible from the rest of the world.