Have you ever been lost? Have you ever gone on a hike, and found yourself disoriented by the monotony of the forest? I certainly know I have. Now that the future has arrived, we will no longer have to worry about this any more. We also won’t have to bother carrying around bulky GPS devices, as in the future, GPS systems will be built into our shoes. Inspired by the Wizard of Oz, the No Place Like Home GPS shoes guide their wearer to wherever they wish to go. The wearer simply uploads their intended destination into the shoe, taps their heels together, and then allows the shoes to guide them by using a ring of LED lights. The shoes also have a progress bar displaying the proximity to the intended location.
No Place Like Home GPS Shoes
Last week, I discussed a ski slope on the side of a building. This week, I’ve discovered something equally amazing: a proposed three kilometers wide sky dome built over Randers, Denmark. The dome would include indoor and outdoor ski slopes, a park, a hotel, restaurants, and shops. The designers of the dome hope to recreate the experience of skiing down the Alps, and the slopes were developed by the Alpe d’Huez ski resort in France. It includes six slopes of varying difficulty, and uses chair lifts and elevators to bring skiers to the top. Amazingly, the slopes can be transformed, allowing skiers to have a different experience every time they visit.
Sky Dome from a distance
A ski slope along one of the arcs
My final example of amazing futuristic technology that somehow exists today are levitating pharmaceuticals, which are droplets of a drug that actually levitate, by using sound waves. This changes the drug from a crystalline state to an amorphous state, allowing it to be absorbed more easily by the body.
Again, I’m impressed by the ski dome. The GPS shoes are impressive, but in the world of smartphones I question if they have a place in the market- maybe avid runners and joggers would like them.
I’ve always been interested in amorphous liquids just because I find them cool and can’t quite figure them out. Application in pharmaceuticals is really interesting. I know a lot of medications can really upset people’s stomachs, making it difficult for many elderly people to get the proper doses of critical medications. I wonder if levitating drugs could help that problem.