Blog/2024-06-06/It's A Good Time To Be Alive

One of the thing that it constantly strikes me is just how fortunate I am to be alive in this particular time in history. Things that are generally awesome and that I thought would be absolute future tech are really here.

Genetic Sequencing

I've always been a huge fan of this stuff. To really know all the components that make us up. To know what our problems are going to be and to fix them up or mitigate them. This is exciting stuff. What's cool here is:

Genetic sequencing is now quite easily accessible

You can get sequenced at Nebula if you want a Direct-to-Consumer solution and it's actually a 30x WGS.

But industrially, BGI does these at ~$250/genome. And the Illumina Novaseq platform does it at ~$300/genome. The other day I even saw some news about Nanopore Tech that has these small devices that can sequence DNA/RNA but I haven't looked too deeply at them.

Gene Therapy is possible

Decibel Therapeutics has successes with a OTOF-gene-therapy. OTOF is a gene encodes the Otoferlin protein that is one of many that are required for hearing to work.

They're also developing a GJB-2 gene therapy, which I find personally relevant because Julie and I together have a high enough likelihood of having deaf children.

This tech is outlandishly futuristic. They use an Adeno-associated virus to deliver the fixed gene. This virus then enters the affected cells (and only the affected cells) and then inserts the repaired gene into them.

Embryo sequencing is possible

This is something Julie and I did with our embryos with Orchid Health. What they do is take a few cells from the blastocyst and then sequence them. Even how they fertilize Julie's eggs with my sperm is wild. They inject a sperm cell into the egg in a process called Intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Then they wait for the egg to grow and once that's done they biopsy a few cells for the embryo sequencing stuff.

Electric Cars

These are routine, man. When I was growing up, everyone would explain how they were killed by the oil companies or by Ford and GM or whatever. Well, it turned out the key element was energy density and a guy with a vision and they're here.

Charging isn't quite fast enough for me, yet, but they're getting there.

Autonomous Vehicles

For some reason, these are mostly electric but they're also everywhere. In San Francisco, where we live, they're all over the streets driving around and generally being cool road customers. They can even interpret hand signs!

Space

When I was a child, space was in a temporary lull. India was sending our stuff up and getting better at our launch vehicles but it was neither like the Apollo / Shuttle prime time nor like today. I remember watching Shuttle launches, though, and those were awe-inspiring moments. That all ended with Columbia, which was a big deal to us in India because it featured the first Indian-born female astronaut. Nowadays there's all sorts of action.

SpaceX

Possibly the most exciting space company. They've cut launch costs down to things that normal people could afford. They've got HD video of their rockets in space. They've brought iteration to a field that is famously risk-averse, and have invented the most reliable launch platform man has ever built!

Today they tested their Starship 29 with its Super Heavy booster and it went well. We had video of plasma, and watched in excitement as it cut through one of their control fins. Crazy that this is all real.

China

Less widely described in the US but the Chinese Space Program is going quite well. Chang'e 6 is their second sample-return mission. Tiangong is between a tenth and a third the size of the ISS depending on how you measure it. And they've taken humans to space!

India

I watched this stuff religiously as a child. PSLV launches were loads of fun. By the time I left India for the US, it didn't seem like the GSLV was going to be successful, but look at them now!

Computers

Computers are blazing fast now. Screens are so high-resolution. Gone are the days of squeezing next to each other to play Jazz Jackrabbit on a 640x480 display. The Internet is fast and ubiquitous. Games are beautiful. Computers have infinite hard-drive space and RAM.

But the thing that most astonishes me is just how reliable everything is now. Rehan and I would often say "the moment of truth" to announce our fear that the computer wouldn't turn on with our latest upgrade. And far too often that would be the case in the past.

Now I am less careful and more successful. I almost never install drivers. I almost never have to upgrade to get hardware support. And everything is nicer and better. Incredible.

Travel

Travel is so unbelievably easy these days. It was a whole endeavour back in the day. But now flights go everywhere, and because of scale they are much cheaper. When Julie and I went to Patagonia, we already had a pretty good idea what we were getting into. Sure some part was rough terrain and all that but much of the true uncertainty was removed. And that's always nice when you're on your honeymoon :)

There are loads more things, but these are the first few that came to mind today!