Question #261

Could every tree have a digital passport?

Not Yet

Building what's not yet possible.

Not products. Questions. Each one gets a stage, and each one is public whether it works or not. Some become prototypes. Some stay questions.

Question

Written down. Nothing built yet.

Research

Reading, data gathering, talking to people who live with the problem.

Prototype

Working software, in front of real users.

Reality

In daily use by someone who isn't us.

The Not Yet list

PrototypeCommercial mobility

Can a vehicle know whether it can finish its work before it leaves?

Hours, charge, load, route and job economics answered as one decision, before the wheels turn.

PrototypeMaterials

Can every object know its next best destination?

Reuse, repair, donate, sell, recycle or dispose — decided from evidence rather than a bin colour.

PrototypeFood

Can food decide before it's wasted?

A food graph that knows season, storage, substitution and diet, so the answer arrives before the bin does.

ResearchCooperative mobility

Can vehicles become more considerate without becoming autonomous?

Vehicles sharing operational intent — merging, low charge, oversized, stopping — so drivers get a calm suggestion instead of competing for the same gap. Not self-driving. Self-cooperating.

ResearchInterfaces

Can the world's best interface disappear completely?

Today: phone, app, menu, settings, search, answer. The question is whether that becomes context, intent, one answer — and whether the app was ever the point.

PrototypePlants

Can every plant have a living digital twin?

Site, soil, season and history held together, so care advice is about this plant, not plants in general.

PrototypeSound

Can a room be tuned to how it should feel?

Mapping emotional response against soundscape so a space can be designed against evidence, not adjectives.

ResearchConsumer goods

Can packaging describe itself?

A pack that carries its own material record, so recyclability is a fact at the kerbside, not a guess.

No prototype yet

ResearchEarth observation

Can satellites find litter before people do?

Fly-tipping and coastal litter detected from imagery early enough to be cheap to clear.

No prototype yet

ResearchWater

Can every drop of water have a journey?

Source to tap to outflow, recorded well enough that a discharge has an author.

No prototype yet

ResearchKnowledge

Can local knowledge become searchable?

What a village, a club or a trade knows, held somewhere other than in the heads of the people leaving.

No prototype yet

QuestionMapping

Can maps explain decisions instead of directions?

Not the fastest route. The route you can justify afterwards.

No prototype yet

QuestionCreative tools

Can technology help creativity without replacing it?

Tools that raise the ceiling for someone already making something, rather than making it for them.

No prototype yet

QuestionEnergy

Can a battery predict its own failure?

Degradation understood per pack and per duty cycle, not per datasheet.

No prototype yet

QuestionWater

Can drinking water become affordable anywhere?

Low-energy desalination, atmospheric harvesting and leak detection, measured against cost per litre delivered.

No prototype yet

QuestionWater

Can a shower use dramatically less water without sacrificing comfort?

Comfort is temperature, pressure and time. None of those require the volume we currently use.

No prototype yet

QuestionInfrastructure

Can cities quietly explain themselves?

Roadworks, closures, bin rounds and energy use, readable without a council portal.

No prototype yet

QuestionInfrastructure

Can infrastructure become self-reporting?

Bridges, pipes and pavements that raise their own condition before someone reports a failure.

No prototype yet

QuestionMaterials

Can tomorrow's materials solve today's environmental problems?

Substitution only counts if the replacement survives the same duty and the same end of life.

No prototype yet

Human problems

Every question above starts as something ordinary that annoys someone.

  • Nobody knows what to recycle.
  • Drivers don't know if they'll make it.
  • People throw away good food.
  • Gardeners don't know what to plant today.
  • People search ten websites for one answer.
  • Nobody can prove what happened after collection.

Moonshots

Further out. Most of these won't become products. Some will.

Universal decision engine

One architecture that answers the next best action in any domain.

Digital twin for every object

A record per item, not per product line.

Roads that charge vehicles

Energy delivered by the surface, not the stop.

Talking cities

Infrastructure that reports its own condition in plain language.

Water intelligence

Every catchment observable in something close to real time.

Biodiversity accounting

Species presence measured continuously, not surveyed annually.

Human knowledge graph

Skills and local know-how captured before they disappear.

Flying freight

Short-hop autonomous cargo where roads are the bottleneck.

Solve something impossible.

Bring us a problem your software can't solve, or a question for the list. We prototype, we test, we learn, we build — and we say when it didn't work.

Send us a question