What I Learnt Yesterday
By: Duncan Geere
Tags: 3D Printing, Futurology

Status Update: I’m now back in sunny Sweden, after a week on the road and then a week on holiday. Medium seems to have changed a lot while I’ve been away, which is a little annoying because they’ve taken away several of the formatting options I regularly used. As Marcin Wichary explains, it’s because writers tend to write on big screens while readers read on small screens , and the new options should look great on both. Let’s hope so. On with the links — here’s what I learnt yesterday.

On Predicting the Future

I’ve been pretty excited over the last few weeks about what will happen in the coming decades in terms of artificial intelligence and colonising other planets. But this ComputerWorld article from 2008 is a stern reminder that we’re actually pretty bad at predicting the future. Here’s a chunk:

Some changes and new functionality in the laptops we’ll use in 2015 will come about because of significant advances in the materials used to create the devices. Magneclay is just one example. Another example is a change in the plastics used in the notebook case. In fact, by 2015, dropping a notebook might not be the catastrophe it can be today.

Yeah, I think dropping a laptop is still going to be a catastrophe for a few more years.

On Sitting and Standing

Over the past few years I’ve flirted on and off with standing desks. Shortly after I moved to Sweden three years ago, I hacked together a standing desk out of IKEA bits for £136. That desk is still going strong, but every six months or so I swap it from sitting to standing because I’m not quite happy.

The best bet would be a motorised desk that moves up and down like the IKEA Bekant, but then yesterday I spotted a new bit of research that suggests sitting and standing are equally bad for your body. After tracking 5,000 people for 16 years, a team at Exeter University and UCL found:

“Any stationary posture where energy expenditure is low may be detrimental to health, be it sitting or standing,” said Melvyn Hillsdon from Exeter’s sport and health sciences department. “The results cast doubt on the benefits of sit-stand work stations, which employers are increasingly providing to promote healthy working environments.”

So yeah. Maybe a treadmill desk is the answer. But realistically that’s not going to happen in my current apartment. Hmm. Maybe I should just go for more lunchtime walks. Thoughts welcome here.

On 3D Printing

I just finished writing a story for Techradar on the baby that was 3D printed before it was born. They did it for medical reasons, but then I thought how super-cool it would be to get a set of Russian dolls of your embryo as it develops. Would that even work?

“Based on the images we had, it was unclear whether the mass would block Conan’s airway after birth,”explained Glenn Green, one of the doctors who worked on the case. “The 3D printed model of the fetus allowed us to actually see in person what it looked like and have something in our hands to help us decide the best way to care for the baby.”

On Losing Weight

A few years back, I spent ten months living and studying in Oklahoma. It was wonderful, and I had a great time, but one of the things that surprised me the most was the scale of the obesity epidemic there. About a third of the adults in the State are obese. That’s why a piece by Mosaic caught my eye yesterday, chronicling the efforts of Oklahoma City’s mayor to fight back. It’s remarkable, because it’s being done with the fast food and soda industries on board, and relies largely on persuasion rather than taxes and bans.

You should read it in full, but here’s an excerpt:

In January 2012 the city hit the mayor’s million-pound target — 47,000 people had signed up, losing on average more than 20 pounds apiece. An admirable achievement, with the campaign proving a clever way to raise awareness. But for all the publicity, Cornett’s ambitions had grown way beyond that original simple stunt: now he wanted to remake his huge metropolis by remoulding it around people in place of cars. Or as he explained it, “putting the community back in the community”. Yet although these days hailed as an urban visionary, he readily admits there was no ‘grand plan’ at the outset.

On Tokyo’s Disaster Manuals

The lead story in my weekly Outside the Bubble compilation (which aims to burst geographical filter bubbles) yesterday was how a lovely illustrated manual for disaster preparedness in Tokyo has become a collector’s item — selling like crazy on internet auction sites. I got to see one of the manuals when I was in Tokyo recently, and they’re absolutely stunning. If anyone wants to hook me up with one, then please feel free.