The world's spinning fast. Sometimes I forget about how much science and technology have progressed in my lifetime. Here are some advances to help remind me.

Since I was born…

1971 - The Stanford prison experiment was conducted.
1974 - Start of Dauphin Manitoba's Mincome project (until 1979).
1975 - The term fractal was coined.
1975 - The world population reached 4 billion people.
1976 - General relativity was tested and confirmed to an accuracy of 0.0000007%.
1976 - A spacecraft successfully¹⁾ landed on Mars.
1976 - The first known Ebola outbreak occurred.
1979 - Smallpox was eradicated.
1980 - I saw my first bank machine.
1980²⁾ - I first used a wireless remote control and a microwave oven. The dawn of the age of “action at a distance”?
1981 - I first played a video game console at a friend's house.
1981 - First launch of a Space Shuttle.
1981 - Warmest year on record³⁾ with a global average temperature 0.32°C above the 20^th century average.
1982 - I first heard of a new disease, AIDS.
1983 - Pioneer 10 space probe crosses Pluto's orbit.
1983 - I wrote my first computer program, in BASIC.
1983 - Polymerase chain reaction was invented.
1983 - Warmest year on record⁴⁾ with a global average temperature 0.36°C above the 20^th century average.
1984 - Prions⁵⁾ were confirmed.
1985 - The wreck of the Titanic was discovered.
1985⁶⁾ - I first heard about the Antarctic ozone hole.
1986 - The space station Mir was launched.
1986 - I bought my first computer, an Apple IIc⁷⁾.
1986 - The worst nuclear power plant accident to date occurred.
1987 - The world population reached 5 billion people.
1987 - Warmest year on record⁸⁾ with a global average temperature 0.38°C above the 20^th century average.
1988 - The first confirmed exoplanet⁹⁾ was discovered.
1988 - I sent and received my first email.
1988 - Warmest year on record¹⁰⁾ with a global average temperature 0.39°C above the 20^th century average.
1990¹¹⁾ - I saw a cell phone.
1990 - Warmest year on record¹²⁾ with a global average temperature 0.45°C above the 20^th century average.
1992 - The Atlantic northwest cod fishery collapsed.
1993 - I browsed the World Wide Web for the first time.
1994 - Fermat's Last Theorem was proved.
1994 - Green fluorescent protein was successfully used as a fluorescent marker.
1995 - Warmest year on record¹³⁾ with a global average temperature 0.47°C above the 20^th century average.
1996 - Dolly the sheep was cloned.
1996 - I got Internet service at home¹⁴⁾.
1996 - A feathered dinosaur was discovered.
1997 - A computer beat a chess grandmaster in a match.
1997 - I started my own website¹⁵⁾.
1997 - Warmest year on record¹⁶⁾ with a global average temperature 0.52°C above the 20^th century average.
1998 - It was observed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
1998 - Warmest year on record¹⁷⁾ with a global average temperature 0.65°C above the 20^th century average.
1999 - The world population reached 6 billion people.
2001 - Wikipedia was launched.
2003 - The human genome was mapped.
2003 - I bought my first cell phone. (Held out as long as I could.)
2003 - My first wireless access to the internet.
2005 - Same-sex marriage legalized in Canada.
2005 - Warmest year on record¹⁸⁾ with a global average temperature 0.67°C above the 20^th century average.
2009 - Bitcoin, the first digital cryptocurrency, is released.
2010 - I started buying digital music when some digital stores started selling unencumbered MP3 songs. Previously, music was encumbered by Digital Rights Management in Canada.
2010 - Warmest year on record¹⁹⁾ with a global average temperature 0.73°C above the 20^th century average.
2010 - The first privately funded company to successfully launch to orbit and recover a spacecraft.
2011 - Cancelled my TV service – strictly Internet since.
2011 - A computer won a natural language quiz show against two of the most successful past human contestants.
2012 - The world population reached 7 billion people.
2012 - The Higgs boson was (probably) discovered.
2012 - A man-made object first left the heliosphere.
2012 - I digitized my entire research library (about 10 linear feet – or 30,000 pages – of books and papers) – strictly electronic from then on. Also switched pleasure-reading from paper²⁰⁾ to e-books.
2013 - The US Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring DNA cannot be patented.
2013 - A nuclear fusion plant produced more energy than it absorbed. (Not as much as it consumed, though, due to losses.)
2013 - I switched from incandescent to LED light bulbs at home.
2014 - Cells from the olfactory bulb are transplanted to the spine to restore some sensation and function in a paralyzed man's legs.
2014 - A spacecraft successfully landed on a comet.
2014 - Warmest year on record²¹⁾ with a global average temperature 0.74°C above the 20^th century average.
2015 - I first heard about CRISPR, the most successful gene editing tool to-date, through the news media.
2015 - I first heard about deep learning, a recent improvement in artificial neural networks, through the news media.
2015 - An Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa killed 11,000 people – more than all previous ebola outbreaks combined.
2015 - A vaccine for ebola was developed.
2015 - Quantum mechanics' spooky action at a distance is supported in a rigorous experiment.
2015 - The first time somebody close to me bought an electric car.
2015 - Warmest year on record²²⁾ with a global average temperature 0.93°C above the 20^th century average.
2015 - I first saw an operating wind farm.
2016 - The international Paris Agreement on climate change goes into effect.
2016 - Warmest year on record²³⁾ with a global average temperature 0.99°C above the 20^th century average.
2017 - I first bought a car with some ( Level 1) autonomous driving capabilities (adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist).
2017 - I started using voice-activated navigation while driving (using Android Auto).
2018 - Recreational cannabis use is legalized in Canada.
2019 - First image of a black hole is taken.
2020 - Gene editing is performed in vivo in a person.
2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the world.
2021 - Received my first mRNA vaccine (for COVID-19).
2022 - I used the most articulate chatbot to date, a deep-learning AI with 175 billion parameters.

I wish I could remember…

When did I first hear of global warming?
When did I eat my first genetically modified food?
When did I first see GPS in action?

Here are promising avenues of research. Will these discoveries turn out to be golden or just fool's gold?

2013 - A chemotherapy that targets cytoskeleton proteins unique to cancer is developed.
2013- Synthetic mRNA, modified to evade the immune system, triggers a pathway to stimulate new growth in a damaged organ (in this case, the heart).
2013 - A new cancer immunotherapy removes T-cells, inserts genes that target the cancer, and re-introduces them to the body where they multiply and attack cancerous cells.
2014 - A new gene therapy shows promise in animal models of curing ALS.
2015 - Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new procedure to increase the length of human telomeres.
2015 - A protein that blocks HIV is discovered. Will it prove safe and effective in humans? Will the researchers succeed in their ambitions to insert it into a host via gene therapy? If not, will it come to market as a drug?
2015 - Has Stanford University found a cure for Alzheimer's disease? They found a protein called EP2 interferes with microglial function and that inhibits “clean-up” in brains. Blocking EP2 reversed Alzheimer's symptoms… in mice. Will this pan out?
2017 - A treatment that induces senescent cells to undergo apoptosis is developed. It increases health and prolongs life in mice. Can it be made to work in humans?
2018 - A new gene therapy fixes apoE4 genes that are implicated in Alzheimer's disease.
2018 - Researchers develop a way to efficiently strip antigens from blood to make it universal (type O-negative). Is it economically viable?
2019 - Gut bacteria are implicated in autism. Will further research bear this out? If so, what kinds of treatments will emerge?
2019 - A bacterium that causes gum disease is implicated in Alzheimer's Disease.
2020 - Researchers develop a nasal "vaccine" against tau protein to fight Alzheimer's Disease.
2020 - Researchers find a drug used for high blood pressure (carvedilol) may be effective against Alzheimer's Disease.
2021 - Researchers develop a bioactive therapeutic scaffold to promote neuroregeneration after spinal injury.

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¹⁾

Mars 3 landed on Mars in 1973 but died after 15 seconds.

²⁾ , ⁶⁾ , ¹¹⁾

Estimated.

³⁾ , ⁴⁾ , ⁸⁾ , ¹⁰⁾ , ¹²⁾ , ¹³⁾ , ¹⁶⁾ , ¹⁷⁾ , ¹⁸⁾ , ¹⁹⁾ , ²¹⁾ , ²²⁾ , ²³⁾

Reliable temperature records began in 1880.

⁵⁾

Prion = infectious protein.

⁷⁾

My Apple IIc had a 1MHz CPU, a 320kB floppy disk, and a 9“ monochrome monitor.

⁹⁾

Exoplanet = extrasolar planet.

¹⁴⁾

Dial-up internet service @ 56kbps until 1999, then broadband thru cable. See Trends in Computing for performance history.

¹⁵⁾

My website received 100 visits in the first 3 months; 1,000 in the first 10; 10,000 in the first 22.

²⁰⁾

By 2012 we had accumulated 90-100 linear feet of paper books.

Since I Was Born

Will they or won't they?

Comments