What were the top breakthroughs of 2022, and how do they compare to the top breakthroughs of 1922, 100 years ago? Let’s rewind 100 years and look at the pace of innovation a century ago. In 1922, the world was just emerging from the aftermath of the Spanish flu, and this year ushered in a new era of progress and rebirth.
In 1922, in the United States:
- There were ~12 million cars on the road
- The price of gas was 11 cents per gallon
- The Ford Model-T cost a mere $319
- Only 40% of Americans had electricity in their homes
- Only 35% had a telephone
- Life expectancy was 58 years for men and 61 years for women (about 20 years less than today)
The top breakthrough inventions in 1922 were:
- The first water skis were demonstrated using wooden boards and a clothesline
- The first manually retractable, convertible car hardtop was invented
- The electric blender was invented for making malts and milkshakes
- The radial arm saw was invented to cut and shape long pieces of stock material
- The use of insulin for the first time in a person to treat diabetes
- Vitamin E was discovered
- The Australians invented Vegemite
In today’s episode, Mike is talking about some of the major inventions that occurred in 2022. For each, he describes “what it is” and “why it matters.” We’ll look at breakthroughs in 7 categories: Space, Energy, Health, Food, Robotics, Quantum, and AI. It’s safe to say that the speed of innovation has accelerated a fair amount over the past century. We think you’re going to be blown away by some of these, and invite you to look into them more.
Episode resources:
Check out Abundance 360 at a360.com
To get an email each weekday about top global breakthroughs, go to: futureloop.com
Check out the video version of this episode below:
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Episode transcript below:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vaccines, robots, vegemite, inventions, embryos, podcast, stem cells, fusion, invented, gpt, happening, ai, abundance, called, scientists, future, influenza, lab grown meat, inspire, organs
SPEAKERS
Mike Malatesta
Mike Malatesta 00:00
Hey everybody, thanks for joining me for this solo episode. And today I am talking about some of the major inventions, breakthroughs or applications of inventions and breakthroughs that occurred in 2022. I think you’re going to be blown away by some of these, and I invite you to look into them more and let me know what you think you enjoy the episode.
00:26
Hey, everybody, it’s Mike. And welcome back to the Friday solo edition episode of the HOW’D IT HAPPEN Podcast. I’m very happy to be here with you today. And I’m going to be talking about breakthroughs that occurred in 2022. Specifically, I’m going to be talking about a breakthrough that occurred in following areas one in space, energy, health, vaccines, food, artificial intelligence, and robotics. And this podcast was inspired by Peter Diamandis and abundance 360. I was at the abundance 360 conference a few weeks ago, in Los Angeles, and we were bombarded with so much information on so many cool things that are happening. And I wanted to share a few of those with you today. And I do want to say right off the bat, you can check out abundance 360 at WWW dot a three sixty.com. And you can also get a daily email with all kinds of aggregated stories about cool things that are happening in the world in those areas that I mentioned and others, all you have to do is go to a website, it’s called Future loop. futureloop.com. Put in your email, and you will get an email every day or Monday through Friday that has some really, really cool stuff. And I feel like getting that email and belonging to a 360 keeps me on the cutting edge of almost everything that’s happening, you know, especially in breakthroughs in the technological part of our world in our lives. It’s like an education for me, and I use it the information I get all the time, whether it’s to inspire me to do blogs, whether it’s inspire me to do posts whether it inspires me to do podcasts like like it has today. So let’s start with 1922 rather than 2022 and this information all came from Peter Diamandis and at 60 I just put my own spin on it. So there were about seven major breakthroughs or inventions in 1922. And here’s what they were the first water skis were demonstrated using wooden boards and a clothesline. That’s number one. Number two, the first manually retractable convertible car hardtop was invented. That’s pretty cool. Number three, the electric blender was invented for making malts and milkshakes. And interestingly, it would be maybe 40 years later that Ray Kroc was selling blenders for molten milkshakes to the McDonald’s brothers. And while the rest is its history, if you don’t know that history, you should, you should read a biography on Ray Kroc. It’s really interesting. Number four, the radial arm saw was invented to cut and shape long pieces of stock material. Number five, the use of insulin in a person was used for the first time to treat diabetes. Number six Vitamin E was discovered and number seven, the Australians invented something called Vegemite. And if you’re of a certain era, you will remember a Vegemite sandwich being a line in a minute work song I come from the land Down Under was the name of the song I had to look at what an Vegemite. What Vegemite really is because I didn’t know but a Vegemite sandwich according to the internet is two slices of butter bread and Vegemite. Which and maybe some other ingredient ingredients. But Vegemite is spread, like jelly, I guess that’s also used in pastries and stuff like that. So Vegemite invented in 1922. So those are the top inventions from 1922. All were probably groundbreaking at the time, and some of them pretty cool. And we’re all we’re using all of them still today, which is amazing. They haven’t been they haven’t been replaced by anything. But I think when we talk about the seven, seven of the most significant breakthroughs, or inventions or applications of those inventions, that occurred in 2022. And of course, seven is only a portion, a small portion, I think you’ll be blown away by the difference in what we’ve been able to accomplish or, or be able to do and the 100 years from 1922 to 2022. So here we go space of the James Webb Space Telescope, which if you’re in the know, it’s the JW S T. But what is it so NASA launched and deployed the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the most sophisticated and complex observatory ever constructed. It’s an engineering and operations phenomenon. It cost the government us United States taxpayers more than 10 million billion dollars, and it took many many years and it’s an infrared infrared observatory
05:00
orbiting the sun, about 1 million miles from Earth in the second Lagrange point, l two, I think what’s really important about this and, and why it matters is, first of all, if you’ve seen any of the photographs from from the Webb telescope, you’ll see just how superior it is to our premise to its predecessor, which was the Hubble telescope. But it’s really designed to study the most distant objects in the universe, including the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. So its mission is to, you know, in it unveil unprecedented details about the universe’s origins and lead us to new cosmological discoveries. And who knows, maybe we’ll find life out there with this telescope. So pretty amazing. That’s the space invention. Now, here’s energy net positive fusion was achieved in 2022. So it just happened, you know, late. So in December 2022, scientists at California’s National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they achieved a net energy gain in a fusion reactor for the first time. So in this fusion reaction, two hydrogen nuclei are fused to form helium, a small amount of mass is converted into an enormous amount of energy, according to Einstein’s formula, which you’ll remember from school E equals MC cubed. And so this research has been going on forever. But this particular form of a fusion, this was the first time that a net positive energy gain was achieved from it. And the reason that this is important is because fusion requires a very small amount of hydrogen, hydrogen in a glass of water could provide enough energy for your lifetime. So unlike fission, which is typical nuclear power technology, which splits atoms fusion creates no radioactive waste. It can be, you know, assembled and put into small areas like you could have a fusion reactor serving your neighborhood, for example, or one per building, that kind of thing. It eliminates carbon doesn’t have any carbon emissions. And you know, if we can get the technology right and cheap, and all that it basically provides a massive amount of clean energy and it would blow away some of our clean energy tech. Today, solar, wind, hydropower, and you name it. So a lot to be done there still, but fusion is the energy game of 2022 health. So this is a weird one, it could be a bit queasy and could be could challenge your, your belief system your ethics a little bit, but I’m gonna go for it, synthesizing life without sperm or eggs. So what is it? This summer scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel were able to grow mouse embryos in a lab without the use of a sperm egg or a womb. So that’s without the traditional stuff, you need to make a baby, the scientists were able to do so by growing the mouse embryos inside a bioreactor made up of stem cells cultivated in a petri dish using a mechanical uterus combined with a novel cocktail of stem cells, some of which were chemically programmed to overexpress genes that switched on the development of the placenta and yolk sac, the team produced embryos with gene expression patterns 95%, similar to natural mouse embryos at the same age. So weird, and kind of scary, but here’s why it matters. First of all, from a science standpoint, by watching the embryos in a lab instead of in a uterus, scientists can get a better understanding of as to how some pregnancies might fail and how to prevent this from happening. So there could be an application to I’ll call it traditional birth and baby development. It also marks a major leap forward in our ability to possibly grow valuable organs for transplant. And I want to stick with that part of it because we saw some amazing people that are working on growing, you know, inventories of heart and kidneys, and livers and other organs that are very, very difficult to come by now, particularly when you need them because you have to wait on someone to unfortunately, pass away because it’s a one to one thing. And this technology might help us make organ transplant or organ growth and then subsequent transplant like a one to 50 thing like you could grow 50 And have them in inventory, or have stem cells in inventory, bone marrow stem cells or skin stem cells and inventory to make out to make new organs. So when that’d be amazing. Next one is vaccine. So breakthrough vaccine for malaria and all influenza strains, all influenza strains. So in September of 2022, a novel malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University scientists was found to be up to 80% effective at preventing infection. In December, a research team led by George Washington University developed two highly effective mRNA vaccines that reduced both malaria infection and transmission and then in November, another m RNA
10:00
A based experimental influenza vaccine was found to induce protection against all known influenza subtypes in animals. So I know that vaccines are like a big deal now, and people have very different opinions about that vaccines. But I think I mean, it’s clear that vaccines clear to me at least, that vaccines in general have provided tremendous value to us and to our health and to our lifespans. So, you know, why does this matter? Why do these things matter? Well, according to the CDC, nearly 90 countries and territories live in areas at risk of malaria transmission, and it kills over 600,000 people every year. The majority of them, young children, children under five years old. Why is that important? Well, when we don’t have kids, when we have kids dying, that before they produce new kids, it becomes a demographic problem for us and for the whole world. And that’s, of course, happening already. The demographic problem that is, but it’s a that’s, that’s a topic for another podcast, but there’s already been 4500 Flu deaths, for example, since October 1. So so in some flex, some flu vaccines are effective some years and they missed the mark and other years. So this, this progress could hopefully create a more effective supply chain for vaccines that work and can adapt to continue working season over season, and well get rid of a lot of these deaths. So that’s the vaccines. Next one is food. So the breakthrough is FDA approved lab grown meat, you may have read this in November, California based startup upside foods became the first US company with FDA approval for lab grown meat. This was chicken particular. And it’s this is not necessarily one is just about technology, but regulatory clearance as well. It’s a very big deal. Now, they still have to get through the USDA, the food and Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA, you know, the green light their manufacturing process, but that’s expected to come and when it does, if it does, why does it matter? Well, we raised billions and billions and billions of animals every year, and we slaughter them for human consumption. And a lot of them, you know, whether it’s chicken, beef, hogs, pigs, whatever. And, you know, chicken, for example, the demand for it is sex toppled, in the last 100 years. So lab grown meat has the potential to grow real meat from real stem cells of real animals without having to grow animals and kill animals and feed animals and do all the things that you have to do right now. So maybe there’s a net benefit to the animals, maybe there’s a net benefit to the environment, maybe there’s a net benefit to increasing the food security, a lot remains to be seen. And of course, people have to like it, you have to like it, if you’re gonna eat it. But it’s pretty cool to see this type of thing happening instead of a, you know, a chemical process. For example, although this technically would be a chemical process, but or, you know, maybe it helps get past get us past some of the arguments about how animals negatively impact the environment, the climate, all those things. So very interesting. Technology. Next one is artificial intelligence. And of course, by now you’ve heard of chat GPT. I’m sure that and a lot of the other AI technologies that are out there. Now, if you haven’t worked with chat, GPT three or four, it is a product that open ai.com Open AI as the name of the company came up with and you can go to their site, sign up for chat GPT you got to put in your email address and you can see the What’s with it’s amazing is what it is now it’s it’s game changing. It’s not perfect. But basically you ask chat GPT you give it a prompt, you ask it a question, you tell it you want something. And if that thing, if there is it scrapes the internet, and if that thing has been written about or talked about or videoed about it can essentially spider out find the information and then put it into in my experience at least a very concise answer, which is very, very cool. Like, people can write songs with it, people can write books with it. I’ve written marketing materials with it, because it’s just, it’s just an amazing thing. If you haven’t tried it, you should try it very cool. Go to open ai.com Why it matters? Well, I mean, let’s just put it this way chat. GPT or artificial intelligence can do the work of a human in a few minutes. And I don’t mean the all the work of humans, but the work that is often repetitive or challenging or boring for humans to do AI can can do it. And it can be like a really cool copilot or a really cool resource for you to have to help you be more effective, more productive and more creative because you’re spending less time it’s like Chappie chat GPT AI at least now it’s not creative. It’s just it’s like an internet search that actually provides you with the answers instead of you having to go keep looking for stuff and putting it together. It’s
15:00
Just super cool. So artificial intelligence chat GPT and others check them out. And finally with robotics, so Tesla unveiled their humanoid robot called Optimus. And what it is, it stands about five feet eight inches tall, it’s got a head that contains Tesla’s AI chip and the current version can lift 150 pounds, it can carry up to 45 pounds travel five miles an hour or so. And future versions are going to be able to climb stairs, walk up hills and use tools, like a drill or screwdriver, among other things. So the thing is with with robots is like what’s the utility? What can they actually accomplish, particularly robots that aren’t in a fixed spot doing the same thing every day? That is a really big challenge for a robot to be human like But anyway, this optimists why’s it matter? Well, Elon Musk, intends to mass produce these like millions of them and sell them for less than $20,000 Each, which for a robot is incredibly low price. And I imagine that would continue to go down. And he believes that these robots will completely reshape the economy and society that the robots would be able to perform like, like artificial intelligence would be able to perform boring, repetitive and unsafe tasks and free humans up to do safer and more productive work. He thinks that that will equate into a future of abundance, getting back to the abundance 360 theme and a future where there is no poverty and where you can do whatever you want in terms of products, and you could have whatever you want in terms of products and services. It’s really a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it. That is a quote from Elon Musk, I don’t know, baby, I’m sure that that that we will continue to make huge advancements in robots, I’m not sure about limiting how they’re going to eliminate poverty or give you whatever you want in terms of products and services when when you want them. But I’m also not going to bet against them. Because I have seen in the last four or five years, the progress that’s been made with robots, and in fact, the progress that’s been made in all of these areas, space, robotics, AI, health, vaccines, energy all and food, all of these areas, and I am not going to bet against I don’t know if these companies are going to be the ones that win, but I am not going to bet against a win
17:19
in these areas. So that’s seven, we had our 2022 inventions which now sound cat sound kind of boring. Alright are 1922 inventions with now saying sound kind of boring? And are 2022 inventions, which I hope you’ll agree sound? I don’t know. Pretty cool. So thanks for listening. Again, you can go to future loop.com Sign up with an email you can get every day. You though they will send you an email that I think you’ll find really interesting. And it’ll make you feel like you’re smart and ahead of all of your friends. And of course, you can check out abundance 360 And Peter Diamandis at a 360 dot com. So thank you for investing your time and your energy and your attention with me today. I hope you got something valuable out of this episode. And if you did, please consider following the podcast hitting me up with a note whatever is an appropriate action for you to take. And until next time, I just want you to maximize your greatness. And I want you to create a future that is your property property that you are very, very proud to everybody. Thanks for listening to the show. And before you go, I just have three requests for you one if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me Give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two, I’ve got a book it’s called owner shift how getting selfish got me unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller, and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes and Noble Amazon, you can get it everywhere if you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy. And if you get it please let me know what you think. Number three, my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday. And I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name Mike malatesta.com. You do that right now put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. The newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you
