there’s a thing called a “bed wetting alarm” that helps with night-training (little kids learning to not pee in their sleep). As far as I can tell, everyone who actually uses one seems to think it works really well and was really happy they did so. It’s simple and inexpensive. But nobody uses it as Plan A for night-training, or even Plan B, or even Plan C. People seem to only use these things as a last resort when they’re absolutely desperate. Like, I suggested it to my wife and she said something like: “oh, it’s totally fine that night-training takes a while, our kid is still young, don’t worry, you shouldn’t feel like you’re desperate”. And then I brought it up to my mother, and she said the same thing. And then I brought it up to the pediatrician, and she said the same thing. None of them offered any actual reason not to buy the damn alarm. Worse than that, it was as if it didn’t even occur to them that offering such a reason might be warranted. The whole experience was surreal.
I used the alarm as a little kid. It annoyed me, but I recognized that it was fair, since all I had to do was stop wetting the bed and it'd stop waking me up. It did help me learn.
I'm not familiar with that system but it may be they're not looking at it through a lens of "doing it the most efficient way" and see the benefit in allowing the children time to learn it by themselves, even if it's less efficient.
(I often catch myself thinking about the most efficient way to do something and then realize that's not the point for that situation.)
A big one that comes to mind is embryo selection for intelligence.
Brain implants and/or genetic modification via viral vector for improvement of brain function (e.g. treating intractable depression).
Infrared dispersing paint/materials for roofs in hot climates.
CLARITY for room-temperature-stable brain tissue preservation that allows for repeatable non-destructive imaging.
The 'Silver Lining' ocean water cloud spraying for reflecting sunlight over tropical oceans in order to reduce global warming.
Biochar. Burning cellulose-rich agricultural wastes into charcoal, generating energy and sequestering carbon (the inorganic charcoal lasts tens of thousands of years in soil without breaking down, unlike just composting the cellulose which causes it to lose carbon to CO2). The resulting charcoal can then be impregnated with ammonia for a slow-release fertilizer which delivers fertilizer more efficiently to crops and thus reduces the total amount of fertilizer needed.
Treating burying used plastics in deep well-designed landfills as a good thing for the environment, because it's an efficient way to do carbon sequestration.
Having a country that not only doesn't limit, but actively recruits and sponsors immigration (including granting full citizenship rights without requiring previous citizenship be revoked) from anyone who scores above threshold on an IQ test or has a track record of impressive academic or entrepreneurial achievement and is at least a decade below retirement age. They are valuable users to be acquired! Countries should vie for these like apps vie for users!
Land Value Tax
Approval Voting (or, failing that, then at least Ranked Choice voting)
Better dam infrastructure management, like letting high-turbidity flows pass through during heavy precipitation events to reduce sediment deposition behind the dam.
and many more not coming to mind right now. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. So many good ideas out there that I have no idea how to get the world to start using.
I think a lot of these technologies are very promising, but in most/all cases, I don't think they're analogous to Zoom, in terms of being available right now, for no money, to the average person, able to be used at will, and offering a highly favorable risk/reward ratio.
Treating burying used plastics in deep well-designed landfills as a good thing for the environment, because it's an efficient way to do carbon sequestration.
This. People seem totally confused when I say that plastic bags were not an environmental problem in developed countries because they were usually deposited in land-fills and this CO2 neutral.
Brain implants and/or genetic modification via viral vector for improvement of brain function (e.g. treating intractable depression).
Wait this sounds really cool.
>Can I get this personally?
I wish! Very limited clinical trials only at this point. And that's after like 20 years of needless delay after we had the basic tech and knowledge to do it. Medical research moves so frustratingly slow.
here's a link to a news post about a recent advance: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/09/421541/treating-severe-depression-demand-brain-stimulation
Checklists. It seems obvious that they work, but I almost never get a literal piece of paper with boxes to check, even where doing so would be simple and cheap, especially compared to the potential costs of skipping some step and doing it wrong.
There are many ways to do checklists wrong, though. They can easily lead to bureaucracy is not applied correctly. Maybe that's why many people got burned by them. Checklists must be short.
Full agree. I use checklists all the time in research, and there is a big difference between an actual checklist and an almost-a-checklist research protocol. They are easy to make, available to anybody right now, and way neglected.
Agreed, I read at least part of The Checklist Manifesto, and they are super helpful and underrated. Even for processes which seem most amenable to a checklist (clear steps that don't change much), a checklist is still often missing.
What is distinctive to me about Zoom is that the technology was:
I think your analysis is correct that it really was just a cultural normalization step that was preventing us from adopting it at mass scale.
I also think that technologies with all these properties are very rare. In fact, I am about 75% confident that no other equivalently long-neglected technology or product exists that also has all these properties. In other words, my one-word answer is "None."
I am a poor recent grad, so I can't stake a lot of money on this. But just to make it fun, I'll donate $10 to the Against Malaria Foundation if anybody can propose a technology that is "like Zoom pre-COVID" in terms of being neglected while having all the attractive properties I list above (by my lights, but I'll be somewhat generous in interpreting proposals - digging up technologies that are fairly compatible with this framework is more important to me than hanging on to my $10).
I'm not counting checklists or landfills because they are already mentioned here and because I think the benefit to the average person probably still isn't that great in most cases.
Electric bikes are vastly under-utilized even in European cities where they are safe and effective to use:
The only barriers are perceived risk (not clear if the risk of an accident is higher than the benefit from physical exercise in my opinion, it could well be net positive depending on where you live) and that you look "childish" and kind of weird if you bike to work.
I think electric bikes are a pretty good candidate! I own one and it was transformative for biking around Seattle.
On reflection, I think my reason for thinking they are not quite comparable to zoom is the following:
E-bikes can be two things: a replacement for a car or bus, or a replacement for a manual bike. As a car/bus replacement, there is a clear tradeoff: they are a whole extra vehicle you must purchase, they are less safe, they are slower in many cases. As a bike replacement, there is also a tradeoff: they are more expensive than many manual bikes, they are very heavy, they become much worse than a manual bike if the battery dies, and they may at least be perceived as riskier or having fewer health benefits.
If I ask a bike-user or a car-user "why don't you use an e-bike for the thing...
I upvoted for karma but downvoted for agreement. Regarding Zoom, the reasons I had not used it more extensively before COVID were:
1. Tech related: from experience with Skype in the early days of video conferencing when broadband internet was just starting to roll out, video conferencing could be finnicky to get to work. Latency, buffering, dropped connections, taking minutes to start a skype call (usually I would call relatives on my regular phone first to get the Skype call set up, and then we'd hang up our regular phones once the video call was sta...
Here are some examples that aren't free to adopt, but don't cost much extra compared to business-as-usual when it comes time to build or buy something similar, and/or pay for themselves over time.
Waste gasification to make hydrogen, or syngas, or fuels, or chemicals. Renders hazardous and/or non-recyclable material into a valuable commodity at net profit, while freeing up landfill space. Starting to pick up steam slowly, finally. (And before you toss this in the "not available to individuals" bin, there are companies making and selling models that fit in a pickup truck and are scaled to provide a few kW of electric power to a household, farm, or small business. If I had one I'd never have an electric bill and would produce almost 90% less trash by volume).
Having air-source heat pumps for more efficient heating and cooling, or combining heating/cooling infrastructure to save space. People still think this is only viable in a limited set of climates, but that's much less true than it used to be. Becoming more valuable as more people get home solar panels and otherwise cleaner sources of electric power, and as movement away from oil and gas for heat continues.
Drawing/annotation/virtual whiteboard in video calls. If my work laptop had a touch screen and stylus I'd use this all the time.
Prefab construction, especially for houses. Labor is expensive, centralized production is more efficient in labor and materials, quality monitoring and continuous improvement are much more reliable in a factory, and it's mostly zoning/permitting/inspection rules + popular perception of the low quality of existing "mobile homes" that hold this back. See things like log home kits, some of them are really well designed, full size houses with all different floor plans and high quality materials.
Composting toilets, especially in dry climates.
yes to drawing and annotation. This has been an itch of mine ever since I got into web dev over a decade ago. The same way the mouse allowed us to designate "this thing" to the PC without having to literally name it, we could communicate the same way to each other on the web potentially
Routine practice of certain schemas, such as rerouting from negative motivation to the isomorphic positive representation of the same contents.
There are a few solutions that have increased capital costs while providing both more convenience and reduced CO2 emissions.
Less capital costs:
Medicine (in desperate cases it makes sense for consumers, but it's more a matter of research):
Agreed with all of those. Would love a recirculating shower. Would especially love having a system for recycling sink/shower graywater for toilet flushing and clothes washing machine use. (Additional context: I currently live in an RV and so have extra reasons for wanting to conserve water and power.)
One issue I have with my InstantPot is that the learning curve for using it well seemed harder than it needed to be. I'm a pretty good cook already all things considered, and am very aware of the underlying physics and chemistry of what a pressure cooker...
Glasses-free 3D displays.
When I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall video calls being mentioned alongside flying cars as a failed idea: something which had been technically feasible for a long time, with many product-launch attempts, but no success. Then Skype was launched in 2003, and became (by my own reckoning) a commonly-known company by 2008. My personal perception was that video calls were a known viable option since that time, which were used by people around me when appropriate, and the pandemic did nothing but increase their appropriateness. But of course, other experiences may differ.
So I just wanted to highlight that one technology might have several different """takeoff""" points, and that we could set different threshholds for statements like "video calls have been with us for a while, except they were rarely used" -- EG, the interpretation of that statement which refers to pre-1990s, vs the interpretation that refers to pre-2020s.
The shower water recycle idea is something that I have already bought and tried. They sell these units for those who want to have a shower while camping. They are quite inexpensive and actually would pay for themself with a month of my typical shower usage. So, for this one, it's better than not costing anything: it actually has large potential as a cost saver.
Perhaps this is somewhat off topic, though I have found my robovac to be a great piece of technology. Here again by any reasonable measure of the value of my time the robovac has to be considered a negative cost purchase.
Remote work/school also seems in this category.
Video calls have been with us for a while. Except, they were rarely used. IME, people sometimes had Skype calls with relatives abroad and that's about it. And then, COVID happened. Suddenly, Zoom skyrocketed, with Google Meet not far behind. The reason is obvious.
Now, the time of lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings is over, the incentives to do video calls are (AFAICT) more or less the same as pre-COVID, and yet video calls persist. They became a completely routine way of doing business meetings, academic seminars and occasional social events. Why? AFAICT it's just the initial adoption barrier: once everyone did lots of video calls, and realized they are actually pretty convenient, they just kept using them.
So, here's a fun question: What other things are like video calls in the pre-COVID era? That is, the technology exists (more or less: maybe the UX needs some trivial improvements), the use-cases exist, only nobody uses it just because they're unaware or because it's not a "normal" thing everyone does. Given something to create initial adoption (like COVID did for video calls), everyone would start using it and never go back.