Software ate the world; will new kinds of hardware save it?
Summary
Photos of balls charging up to power their spatial positioning sensors garnered headlines and baffled fans, who had no idea this new technology had been in development for six years. But while mobile software has been changing the way we live, new developments in hardware have more potential than ever to revolutionize our quality of life and protect our planet by creating entirely new platforms and use cases — and it’s time to pay attention. And relying entirely on smartphones would have precluded the development of new robots to help rehabilitate people with central nervous system damage and implantable cardiac sensors that remotely monitor patients living with heart failure disease. New hardware ideas involve complexity and technological risk distinct from pure software because of the multidisciplinary nature of the development, the relative time scale and difficulty to iterate, and the capital needed for materials and the supply chain. There’s no question that technology and hardware hold the potential to improve human health, drive sustainable practices, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and more.
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