Looking To the Future

By Bill Saporito

Some advances barely get noticed. Those new game boxes? Lots of ink. Not so much the new chips that run them. So it is with this year's Technology Pioneers. Consumers will flip when they see MicroOptical's video goggles, and they'll dig Ruckus' wireless router. In rural India, where Drishtee is taking computers to the poorest people, the benefit is obvious. But Dust Networks' self-organizing mesh networking system is pretty cool if, say, you work in industry. So too are the paper batteries of Enfucell or the flexible sensors of DeepStream. Sensors are a real big deal on this particular planet. So is medicine, where no breakthrough is small, whether it's Amorfix's blood test for mad cow disease or HealthSTATS' wristwatch-like device that measures blood pressure. Either one could save your life. And speaking of lifesaving, how about Aresa's landmine-detecting plant? Not as hip as Technorati, a Web-search wonder, but in war's bloody wake, this is one weed that will be appreciated.