Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into reality for a better future.
And today, we're going to talk about transformational technologies.
What if we could heal all the ails of humankind?
What if we could entirely eliminate stress? Or depression?
What if we could increase our performance so we're suddenly superhumans?
What if we could do all these things in a way that is noninvasive?
What we're talking about is called transformational technology.
And that is what we're focusing on today.
Transformational technology is merging cutting edge science, technology, and good design
to create solutions for humans to be the best versions of themselves.
A lot of them are actually using a lot of wisdoms from the past,
in Eastern medicine, for example,
and merging them with the latest and greatest in technology happening today in the Western world.
So, transformational technologies can take many forms.
Some of them are digital.
You may use an app to guide you through meditation, for example.
And sometimes it's physical.
It might be a wearable that reads your body or stimulates your body
to get you into a state of better performance or relaxation.
We're going to talk about six different ways transformational technologies
can actually help with turning you into a better version of yourself.
Number one: transformational technologies can help you with information.
For example, when you put an EEG device on your head,
it reads the brain waves, your brain activity, during the day or at night.
It can give you a lot of information about how you react to things,
how you get stressed, how you sleep, how you focus.
And this type of information can be very useful for you
to take your body and your mind from what it is today to a better performance.
Another thing about information is that you can create closed loop systems
where the information comes in through a wearable and is translated in an activity -
let's say a video game.
For example, a company called Akili just became the first FDA-approved video game solution.
It's basically a video game that is prescribed by doctors for children who suffer from ADHD.
And by creating a feedback loop system,
children with ADHD can actually get focused in very wonderful ways.
And that's all without medication, that's all without (hopefully) side effects,
and that is where medicine is going.
Number two is about performance.
Everybody wants to perform better intellectually and physically.
Everybody wants to be their best self.
And with the Halo Sport 2 that we developed here at Nonfiction,
it's about stimulating the motor cortex with electricity,
and by doing this and using the natural plasticity of the mind,
it actually allows us to get closer to that state of flow
so we can really focus in on what our goals are to perform better.
We see them used in the US Olympic team now.
We see them used at the San Francisco Giants baseball team to help them perform
better and achieve higher results on a regular basis.
So point number three is about stress relief, anxiety and depression relief.
A lot of us experience stress at work, at home,
sometimes when we sleep even.
And some of us experience anxiety and depression as episodes.
What if I told you that you can use technology to really understand
how your body reacts by using devices like this one?
The HeartMath device.
What it does is it captures your heart rate viability
and it puts you through this exercise, breathing exercise,
where you really center on yourself and calm down your heart rate from there.
The other devices that help with Galvanic Skin Response
and do the same thing.
Being in control of your stress level will open the door to many opportunities for you to flourish.
Number four is about alleviating symptoms of diseases.
Here we have the Cala Trio.
What it does is it helps people with essential tremors to reduce their tremor.
It does this through electricity as medicine.
This is really, really fantastic because prior to this product, people were using medicine,
drugs, and very, very invasive surgeries to implant stimulators in the brain to help alleviate this problem.
So, suddenly by just putting on a simple wearable, people can reduce their essential tremor,
they can write letters to their grandchildren, they can drink a cup of coffee very easily,
and it's FDA approved.
Another exciting device that supports general brain well-being and mental acuity is the Vielight wearable.
It is something that you put on your head,
and what's magical about it is that it uses photobiomodulation to stimulate
a specific part of the brain with light.
The Vielight Neuro is being investigated in active clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
What's really encouraging is that noninvasive light stimulation doesn't require implants, surgery, or drugs.
Point number five is about therapy.
If you experience chronic pain from sitting at a desk for too long or standing at work for too long,
or even if you are an amputee and really experience chronic pain from there,
there are ways to use technologies to actually alleviate all that pain
using VR for example, and really tricking the mind into believing that that pain does not exist.
Or, you can use vibral-acoustic technology, for example,
to really cancel the pain that you're experiencing through your brain.
Number six is about super-human abilities.
What if we could hack the body?
Or use prosthetics?
Now, we have no outwardly visible disabilities,
but why not have another prosthetic to do something better or faster?
Right now, we use what's called, "cobots."
Cobots are robots that sit beside somebody and help them out,
usually on manufacturing lines and in factories,
to help them do their job better.
What if you didn't need that extra robot,
but you as a human would just perform better with your own prosthetics?
With your own hacked body to create an environment that's ideal for you?
So you can see transformational technologies as overlapping a lot of the
future of healthcare and the future of wellness together,
because we don't believe that you can do one without the other.
And it's really transforming what today we call, "healthcare" is actually "sickcare."
It's only waiting until you're sick to take care of you.
What if it was more preventative?
What if you learned to listen to your body from a very early age?
This transformational technology thing is about staying well and thriving,
which is the bridge between today and tomorrow.
Let's think about tomorrow: the future of work, for example.
So, a lot of jobs tomorrow don't exist yet.
And we as humans, as workers, have to learn new skills all the time.
And transformational technologies are here to support us intellectually, physically, and emotionally.
But before work, we need to think about education.
Education's really important because we really have to build a good, strong foundation of people
that have a really high emotional intelligence,
that are very able to communicate with their fellow person and communicate with their body as a whole.
And as we do this, we raise them and prepare them for the future of work and the future of societies.
Think about education and people who work - they live in a city.
And the future of cities is smart cities.
Cities with sensors, cities that really understand what each citizen's needs in terms of help,
in terms of support, in terms of privacy,
and really designing the future of cities to support humans,
to help humans is where technology needs to go.
And on that note, what we call today, "transformational technology"
perhaps should just be "technology" in the future.
So the takeaway is we talked a lot about noninvasive technology, low-impact and high results.
And this sounds like science fiction, but it's actually reality.
By merging cutting edge science, technology, and good design,
we support twenty first century human flourishing like never before.
And if you are currently developing a transformational technology that will change people's lives,
come talk to us!
We can transform that science and that technology into a product that people love to use every day of their lives.
So we thank you for joining us on this journey today
and talking about transformational technology.
And we look forward to seeing you again.
Bye.
Bye bye.