After reading 10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life, I thought: how about transforming Nigeria.
Here:
10. Digital Libraries:
Having total connectivity is pointless if all you get is the latest gossip about Paris Hilton. But the digitization of mankind’s accumulated works proceeds apace. All of MIT’s courses are now online, for instance, and, if you haven’t done so, check out Google Book Search. The time will come when any straightforward factual question can be answered immediately, online. But, alas, those are always the easy questions.
10. Physical Libraries, not Digital Libraries, permit me to use the word, but what we need now as far as Libraries in every state of the Federation are concerned is - hardware in form of books, manuals, journals, encyclopedias, fully equipped Physical libraries with the latest books, recent magazines and journals. After the physical, then we go digital.
9. Gene Therapy and/or Stem Cells
A lot of maladies actually involve inherited conditions–they’re in your genes, in other words. But scientists are working to change those genes and trick defective cells into growing correctly. Perhaps, someday, birth defects will be as treatable as pneumonia.
9. Political Aspirant Therapeutic Study (PATHS):
- a very serious Gene Therapeutic study needs to be conducted especially for aspiring politicians in Nigeria. I believe their hunger and thirst for money is a birth defect which needs to be identified, treated and destroyed before such people are allowed into the corridors of power.
8. Pervasive Wireless Internet
WiMAX, 3G, 4G, etc., all point to a pervasive wireless Internet, where being on-line everywhere, all the time, will be routine. That implies the possibility of full connectivity between any two random devices. Want to check your burglar alarm from your cell phone? It’ll be easy. Unjacking to get away and relax, however, may not be so easy.
8. Anti 418+1 Internet Solution
Internet access has come to stay in Nigeria. With wireless internet steadily gaining ground in Nigeria, more and more people are clamoring for ‘ease and privacy’. Although connection speeds are heavily shared and relatively slow, at least the internet pages are opening one by one.
The next battle ground will be the proliferation of fraudulent practices - in terms of 418+1 = 419. As more and more yahoo yahoo boys will have the convenience of doing it right from home, the question is: what is the preparedness-level of our ISPs to combat such acts? Are any measures put in place against people using their internet services for spam/scam mails etc.,? from the ISP level? Prevention is better than cure, so the saying goes.
7. Mobile Robots
The recent DARPA challenge (where robot cars navigated through suburban traffic) hints at what might come. Why drive to the deli to pick up your order when you can just send your car? We may see convoys of robot trucks on the highways. Admittedly, they’ll probably have more initial acceptance in warehouses, handling pick-and-pull chores.
7. Mobile Robot Traffic Wardens:
1) The traffic situation in our major cities should be revamped. Lagos is a sorry case and how on earth will an automatic car with GPS capabilities navigate its way amongst Lagos state bus drivers that learnt how to drive by watching experience. Should I send my car to pick up my deli, the car would still be stuck in traffic hours after leaving home. Lets assume that our roads our roads are pot-hole-less.
2) When some area boys see a driver-less car, they might think God has just buttered their bread. Besides, when other road-users see it, they too might jump out of their cars and run, since everything that is not reality in Nigeria is concluded as ‘juju’.
3) On a more serious note, I think we need Robot Traffic wardens as replacements for all the 20-naira policemen who live and thrive on the roadside causing traffic by claiming to be strip-searching.
6. Better, Cheaper Solar Cells
The cost of photovoltaic cells (that turn sunlight into electricity) are coming down. In less than ten years the cost of solar energy could be at parity with the cost of electricity from the grid, and solar cells could be standard features in new residential construction. Your house could power itself about a third of the time. (Science can’t do much about night and bad weather.
6. Anti - Please Hold your Candle Now(PHCN) and Company
I am very much interested in Solar power technology, especially as an alternative to the above organization.
5. Location-Based Computing
Instead of clicking an icon on a browser screen, you can walk outside, point your cell phone at an actual three-dimensional thing (presumably, a building that houses a business), click the phone, and get information about (or jump to the Web site of) whatever you were pointing at. As well as servers with Internet address, there will be servers with geographic coordinates.
5. Mobile Phone owner registration
Sometime ago, I vent my anger in the post: from scam emails to scam phone-calls, I still maintain that the government should mandate mobile phone owners to register their mobile-phone numbers and that there should be a telephone DIR, just as it is in Europe and America. How I wish the location of the calling party, and the caller himself/herself could be identified. At least we could get rid of a lot of flashers who end up trying to discuss 418+1 business.
4. Desktop 3-D Printing
Instead of going to the store for your next gadget, you might download a design of your choosing and generate it in your desktop 3-D printer. The next step will be to design your own gadgets, post the designs, and sell them, etc. Toys, kitchenware, and decorative household items should be fair game, at least. Cottage industry, here we come!
4. African Desktop
This would be a nice one, coz at least we could design what we want and watch it go into production. The idea of being a collector/user only might just about come to an end. However, as much as online business and sales are concerned, I believe the reputation of Nigerians should be nationally-salvaged in terms of online payments, eg: credit cards, pay-pal and co. etc.
3. Moore’s Law Upheld
The law, stated by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore in 1965, implies that available computer power can be expected to double every other year. For at least two decades pundits have been pointing out barriers to the law’s fulfillment, and the chip industry has been smashing those barriers. Currently they can’t agree if the law has a couple of more decades of life left, or 600 years. Either way, in terms of available computing power, it’s clear that we ain’t seen nothing yet.
3. Computer Village Law
Is it possible? that we can move from being a dumping ground of various kinds of computer systems, to innovation and the do-it-yourself idea?
2. Therapeutic Cloning
Forget the stories about generating identical copies of a particular sheep or person. The whole idea behind cloning all along has been to grow replacement organs or tissue in a vat, which the body would see no reason to reject. Cancerous or damaged organs could be replaced by new, disease-free clones of themselves.
2. ATM Fraudulent Technology
I mentioned earlier that Nigerian politicians would need a lot of anti-fraud therapy. The latest is ATM machines deployed by banks across the country who, sorry to say, have joined this fraudulent technology.
example: you want to withdraw NGN20,000.00:
- you punch in your authorization keys etc, you punch in the amount to be withdrawn, these ATM machines would deduct the amount you punch-in from your account-balance, then show: your transaction is being processed…….., then, again, …..process failed due to disconnection etc., the machine will not give you the money, neither will the machine print a statement/receipt about the failed transaction, as a reference. After complaining to the bank officers, there is no proof that the ATM machine didn’t give you the money. Either way, you loose, coz there has been a deduction on your account balance, and you are still cashless.
1. The Hydrogen Economy
Instead of guzzling imported oil (and being at the mercy of oil suppliers) we could turn water into hydrogen and burn that (or use to charge fuel cells.) Meanwhile, the only byproduct of the combustion of hydrogen is … more water! However, hydrogen storage remains a thorny issue, due to its low density, and hydrogen may end up being only one of many interlocking components that replace the current oil economy.
1. Our Generator Economy
Someone once told me that there are as many generating sets in Lagos states, as the number of houses where people live, and that in fact, the ratio might be more, since many people have a ‘backup generator’. Not only in homes, but in corporate organizations, schools, business, virtually in every area of endeavor. Even the recharge card lady needs electrical power to keep her commercialized mobile phone alive and available for public use.
With all the oil Nigeria is producing, exporting and burning off on a daily basis, the long lines at fuel stations have not eased. Every now and then, there’s the tension, there’s the rumor that perhaps fuel price might increase. The cost for 1-litre of fuel is still on the high-end, the expectations of the common Nigerian isn’t met. The equation concerning the returns of the oil money and the development-pace of basic infrastructure(light, water, food) isn’t still balanced, and yet the first part of the 21st century is almost over. What will happen when the West perfects their hydrogen economy research and they begin to depend less and less on oil? methinks, since we would have less and less of customers to sell our oil to, we would jump from frying pan straight into fire.
