Problems are merely frustrating puzzles which haven’t been solved by anyone yet. The more difficult they are to solve, the more intoxicating they become; no frustration, no reward; no mountain, no summit. Applied telos means discovering and solving impossibly complex questions with explosive creativity.
Can we compute without generating heat?
Computing is limited because it generates waste heat through electrical resistance. Photonic computing uses light instead: photons are massless, fast, and can carry information at far higher bandwidth with less heat. Thermodynamic computing takes a different route, using the natural behaviour of physical systems (heat, noise, probability, and energy states) as part of the calculation, rather than treating them as errors.
Can houses power themselves?
The Shockley–Queisser limit means the maximum theoretical efficiency of a standard single-junction solar cell is capped at roughly 33% under normal sunlight. Multi-junction transparent solar glass offers the means to generate energy through ordinary windows, and if applied as an invisible layer of a building facade with efficient nano-surface engineering, can turn it into a power station within a larger neighbourhood grid.
Can you watch a movie as you write it?
When paired with advanced LLM text encoders, diffusion models can rapidly storyboard photorealistic cinema footage of scenes from an entire script before it is even submitted. Voice models can produce multiplexed audio streams of individuated story characters for table reads (script vocal playback). Advanced video diffusion models can create photorealistic cinema scenes from combining both, bringing an entire movie to life from the page before spellcheck.
Can we engineer the invisible natural world at scale?
Chemistry, physics, and biology all represent reality using written symbols. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer the capability to rapidly explore, deconstruct, and develop these scientific symbols at enormous scale to solve mysteries. Nuisance Sargassum can become an agricultural crop; recreational drugs need naloxone-class antidotes; genetic fingerprints in large data lakes can transform high-impact digital forensic criminal investigation.
Can we travel at Mach 10 underwater?
All power rests on the ability to project mass and force at speed. Engineering portable energy density which inverts Newton’s Third Law of Motion and Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation heavily in our favour can underpin ultrasonic aviation, underwater supercavitation, emergency response, military dominance, and the civilisation of the next five centuries.
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