I see a lot of negativity that technology is going to stagnate in the next few years, often out of the "we were supposed to have flying cars by now" vein. But stuff like this makes me feel we may be in for some of the greatest medical revolutions in generations over the next few years.

CRISPR/CAS9, full genome sequencing, stem cells, we're going to start seeing the real results from these over the next decade, and if that means my Mother can have her parkinson's cured, I'm incredibly optimistic about the future.

Stagnation is the opposite of our problem. We are innovating at a faster pace that we can manage it : laws, studies, education, ecosystem feedback and the society in general are completly unable to adapt to the tremendous amount of stuff we make up and the rate of it.

It takes time for 7 billions of people to make mistakes and learn, and even more to agree on something.

Meanwhile the things we are creating are more and more powerful, and reach more and more area in our lives.

It's going to be a tricky future.

Biomedical progress will accelerate as we accumulate, and become more skillful with, tools like CRISPR and genomic sequencing, but the real rate-limiting factor in these developments is testing. Making sure a treatment performed on humans is safe is an extremely important and still very difficult process. Without innovation in that sphere we’re unlikely to see stem cells and co. generate a fraction of the possible advances, in the near future.

I believe we have had a few efforts at direct cellular level and genetic intervention - things like treating immune cells to teach them to attack cancer cell. These efforts have often been disappointing. And in general, genetic engineering has faced a lot of road blocks.

The problem one faces is one is using debugging-techniques on a lasagna of only "code-like" commands that no resemblance to the code-divisions or processes of human-generated code.

IE, Nearly all "genetic engineering" is cut-and-paste changes hoping that such operations can give one-for-one changes in the attributes of organisms. Sometimes this works but it seems like it have inherent limitations. It seems to me progress will require understanding what the genetic code does and that's going to require different progress than what we have now.

> things like treating immune cells to teach them to attack cancer cell. These efforts have often been disappointing.

I disagree, things like Car-T cell therapy have been some of the most exciting developments in the fight against cancers

Yep, that's because CARs are one of the first medically relevant genetic engineering projects that is not just a "cut-and-paste change". It is the insertion of a new capability into the immune cell. That is of a very different kind than prior approaches. And it's why the movement forward here really will start to accelerate as there are more and more changes that come online that more resemble CARs - and are inventive of new functions rather than just a simple tweak.

I hope so, I think there's some valid arguments that forms of technology have stagnated (flying cars is not one of them). All power to medical progress though!!

> Aside from medicine, technology in general is arguably already "good enough" for most people.

That was true in the 1960s as well. People often don't know what they want until it's old hat.

I mean somewhat objectively, not people's perception of it.

Today a person can communicate with anyone anywhere instantly, be almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, or get almost everything they would ever need in their entire life without leaving their house.

Sure we had planes and telephones in the '60s, and maybe we'll have teleporters and artificial telepathy in the future, but you know what I mean.

I don't think it's possible to be purely objective about this. It's a question of values and meaning.

I think there are many things that will change in the coming centuries that will foster people's values and give them greater meaning.

Of course, bad stuff will happen too. Such is life.

While medical stuff is very exciting and is still basically in its infancy, I think there's a lot to be done for technology even in the "developed world."

Internet infrastructure generally limits upload rate for consumers in home internet and mobile internet is heavily capped. Both of these heavily limit one's ability to communicate. A recent popular example of the latter would be the issue where the firefighters in California had their data run out. SLAs or not it's a clear example of how our communications infrastructure is lacking.

Transportation infrastructure is has a lot of room to grow, only a few cities in the United States have functional subways, and many are researching new ways to easily move large numbers of people in a dense area.

These are tied together as well in that better internet will allow for more remote working so even in denser areas people may not need to all commute simultaneously.

Until we can control the weather and climate, prevent ecological disaster etc we are far far away from having good enough technology.

I used to think like this, until I saw a lab where stem cell research is done. The scientists were carrying around a tray of harvested baby organs.

I lost the hearing in one ear in a car accident when I was a kid (nerve damage) - I keep hoping that these advances will allow me to regrow my eardrum some day.

Is there no option to rebuild an artificial ear drum? Is your ossicular chain also shot?

Regrowing your ear drum is not going to resolve nerve damage, though: it'll deal with conductive hearing, not sensorineural. I'm sure you know this already.

As someone who is losing hearing due to a degenerative disease, I am sympathetic. The worse part of it for me is the severe tinnitus that came along for the ride. It is challenging in so many different ways, not the least of which is that it is completely invisible from the rest of the world.

There are two companies working on regenerative medicine and gene therapy to preserve and restore hearing: Akouos and decibel therapeutics. Not sure if they're working on stuff related to your condition but there's a lot of money behind the research and it seems promising

I thought this would have been done 5 years ago.