Home > Views > Blogs > Daily Brief > Back to the Future, Presented by Xerox
PRINT
RSS
SHARE
TEXT SIZE:
Send a copy to me

Separate multiple email addresses (max 20) with commas.

0/1500
Letters are not case-sensitive, disregard spaces.
captcha image
Try a New One
This helps us prevent automated registrations and spamming.

Main
Michael Jackson's Neighborly Real Es...   The Great Retirement Salad Bar
May 12 2008 7:30PM EDT

Back to the Future, Presented by Xerox

It's the 21st Century, and — as you know — we all have flying cars! I got a ticket form the sky police the other day for not wearing my cloud belt.

Actually, no. I didn't. No flying cars. No food pills. No baby vending machines. But, a recent exposition at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) unveiled a few cool inventions to keep you bemused until the airborne autos arrive.

Also on Wired.com:

Gallery: Motorcycles Can Be Both Eco-Friendly and Badass

Gallery: Stitched-Together Pencils Evolve Into Beastly Sculptures

Hydrogen Cars Won't Make a Difference for 40 Years

Subscribe to Wired magazine

Since Xerox owns the place, it's fair to start out with a printing, copying advance. PARC came up with printable paper that wipes itself clean in 24 hours. It does not use ink, so the specially coated paper produces dark tones when exposed to the light the laser printer produces. The tones fade away in 24 hours, allowing the paper to be reused up to 100 times.

A Solar Concentrator sounds like a cool planet-destroying weapon, but it's actually a PARC-perfected miniaturized solar panel that concentrates sunlight 500 times. The invention means improving solar panels, making them a more reliable energy source.

Finally, PARC is looking to upgrade the speed and efficiency of water purification by using simple centrifugal force to separate solids from large amounts of water. The energy-efficient technology could bring cleaner water to both developing areas and large cities of the future — where you'll drive the flying cars.

by John Scott Lewinski for Wired.com

Artwork by Dawid Michalczyk

See more in

Loading...


Recent Blog Posts

Archive

Jul 2008



Also in Portfolio.com
Most Emailed
Recently Commented