future

Note: Turns out the future is difficult to predict. The below was written in August 2005. Steven did indeed graduate from Cornell, then moved to Portland to start SixLinks.org with Jeff Gunther. Quantum Imagery is still in the programming business, doing customer software development for organizations in Portland and across the world.

What sort of self-jinxing company writes about what the future holds? Not us, that's for sure. But we can say a bit about some places Quantum Imagery might end up going. Any of the following seem good:

Clean Energy Production
This is probably at the top of the future "to-do" list. Energy production from fossil fuels simply isn't going to last too long, and we (especially we mega-consumers in the USA) are going to need some solutions that work, are cheap, and aren't going to destroy the planet in short order. Solar's good. Wind's good. Hydro is good. But none of these can currently meet all of our energy needs. While partly this is a matter of policy (Germany's forward-thinking solar policies have it running on ~10% renewable energy), some of it is a matter of cheap, durable technology. That's what we can help with.

Bioremediation
It's generally accepted that the planet earth is in worse shape then it was a few thousand (or hundred) years ago. But while that's great as a motivation for self-flagellation, it doesn't fix anything. Bioremediation is the process of identifying the worst problems, and figuring out ways to fix them without making something else worse. John Todd has some absolutely amazing work in this area. We could see ourselves doing some of this as well, but it's a bit lower on the list.

Nanotechnology
Ooh, look! A buzzword. Nanotechnology. Sounds neat. But more importantly than that, it is neat. Nano isn't going to solve the world's problems on its own, but it is going to allow us to find new solutions. Stronger, lighter, more biodegradable materials. Maybe cheaper too, once they're scaled up. In fact, Nanotechnology can fit into either of the other two ideas above as well. Odds are, there's some nano in our future, but not for its own sake. We'll leave that in other capable hands.

Programming and Software Design
"But wait", you say. "I thought you were 'transtioning away' or some such nonsense." We are, but we're also clear-headed enough to know that as computers become more and more fundamental to technology and society, the need for programming isn't going to go away, it's going to increase. Besides, we're not transitioning because we don't love coding (we do), but because there are more important problems in the world to solve than building yet another e-shopping cart. Try as we might, it's a good bet there'll still a decent number of coffee-driven hacking sessions up ahead.