While screwing around looking for a way to exercise my Capitalist Pig inclinations and get someone in Antarctica using our stuff*, I happened across yet another expression of human coolness.
Scarlet Knight, First Robotic Ocean Glider, Crosses the Atlantic
In a different age this would have been a story that everyone knew about, like when Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh explored the Marianas Trench.
Today, however, we just do this kind of thing so much we don’t see it.
You probably missed this one. I did. That’s because so many people are doing so many interesting and wonderful things all the time that there is no way to keep up with it all. Buried in this ocean of creation are seeds that we cannot predict the impact of. While it makes for popular fiction to imagine robotic sharks carrying nuclear warheads, reality instead holds autonomous gliders sailing the currents of the world’s oceans feeding us more information than we could have imagined.
These “known unknowns” related to the major issues of our times give me hope. I know I don’t know what people will innovate in the future. Not for the environment, not for healthcare, not for agriculture and not for sociology. I can see the shape of possible futures where our challenges in these areas can be dealt with, if people get innovative in ways I know I don’t know yet. People from Rutgers to Cairo prove me right every day.
* (Hey, I’ll give it away to be able to say: “People use our gear on *every* continent.” ;~)