Futurology: Weaning Humans Off Death

This stunning illustration summarizes how death occurred during the 20th century.  With numerous advances in the medical/technological fields, we'll see a vast reduction of health-based deaths in the 21st Century.  Already there are great strides taken to create 3D printed replacement tissue and organs.  We can convert skin cells into stem cells and use them to repair body components.  Combined with technological breakthroughs with nanobiotics, the likelihood of dying from "natural" causes will dwindle as the century advances on.  It is my hope that these advances will motivate societies to quit destroying each other (or themselves) and focus on humanity and the advancement of it.

Visit Data is Beautiful for more information about this chart.

Hardware: Self-healing Circuit Boards

Phys.org has a great article about an awesome Cal-Tech breakthrough:  Self-healing circuit boards. Capacitors, resistors, and other electronics will be able to recover from power spikes or brown-outs, getting wet, over heated, or any other type of injury capable of ruining your device or system.  All we need is artificial intelligence (Watson anyone), and a self-sustaining power source and these entities will be our Frankenstein creatures!  What can possibly go wrong?  (/end tangent)

Can you imagine the crossover abilities of incorporating this technology into the biological 3D printer advancements?  Creating self-healing human body parts via nanobots.  Wow, exciting times lie ahead for both humans and their electronic companions.

A quote from the Phys.org article:
"It was incredible the first time the system kicked in and healed itself. It felt like we were witnessing the next step in the evolution of integrated circuits," says Ali Hajimiri, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. "We had literally just blasted half the amplifier and vaporized many of its components, such as transistors, and it was able to recover to nearly its ideal performance."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-caltech-self-healing-electronic-chips.html#jCp

Gerontology: Aubrey de Grey discussing his latest research

SENS

Bionic Eye by 2020