The Pill That Prints: How Internal Bioprinters Are Rewriting Medical Reality

By Futurist Thomas Frey

In 2025, a small capsule changed the course of medicine. Researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) unveiled a swallowable bioprinter—small enough to pass through the gastrointestinal tract, guided by external magnets and triggered by a near-infrared laser—to deposit living bio-ink directly onto internal tissue damage. They call it MEDS (Magnetic Endoluminal Deposition System). This device doesn’t just deliver medicine—it prints living scaffolds where the body is broken, redefining what “non-invasive” means.

We tend to view surgery, stents, pills or drug infusions as the high point of modern intervention. But what if the next frontier isn’t cutting or injecting—but printing inside you?

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The Concrete Battery Revolution: When Walls Become Power Plants

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Imagine driving past a building and not just seeing its windows, doors, and facade—but glimpsing the stored energy humming inside its very walls. In a radical shift from mere structure to energy infrastructure, MIT researchers have developed a new form of concrete—electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec³)—that stores and discharges electricity, elevating walls, sidewalks, and foundations into living batteries. Their latest prototype improves energy density ten-fold over prior versions.

This is more than a clever trick. It’s a tectonic redefinition of how we build, live, and power the future.

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The Missing Person Problem Is Solved

By Futurist Thomas Frey

For decades, one of the most agonizing human experiences was a disappearance. A lost hiker who never returned. An elderly parent with dementia wandering away from home. A child abducted from a neighborhood park. Each year, these cases triggered frantic searches that consumed thousands of volunteer hours and drained local budgets. Too often, they ended in heartbreak.

By 2040, this problem is solved—not through more human effort, but through the relentless efficiency of AI-driven drone swarms.

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Voice and Ambient Intelligence: The Rise of Invisible Infrastructure

By Futurist Thomas Frey

For decades, technology was something we looked at, touched, and interacted with directly. Computers had screens. Phones had buttons. Smart devices came with apps. But a new era is emerging—one where the most powerful technologies fade from sight entirely.

This is the age of ambient invisible intelligence—systems woven seamlessly into our environments, operating in the background to track, sense, and respond in real time. Unlike earlier waves of innovation that demanded attention, these systems demand almost none. They’re simply there, embedded in the fabric of daily life, silently shaping experiences, decisions, and even economies.

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Smart Glasses: The Next Form Factor for Smartphones?

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The smartphone may go down as one of the most transformative devices in human history. It collapsed cameras, calculators, maps, radios, books, and computers into a device small enough to slip into a pocket. But as revolutionary as it has been, the smartphone is not the final form factor of personal technology. Something new is waiting to replace it—and all signs point to smart glasses.

Already, companies like Meta, Apple, and others are racing to perfect wearable devices that overlay data onto the real world. But what if smart glasses are not just the next interface for calls and texts, but the gateway to something far more radical: recording, storing, and replaying the entire human experience?

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How Age Reversal Could Solve the Global Underpopulation Crisis

For decades, headlines warned us about overpopulation. From Paul Ehrlich’s dire Population Bomb predictions in the 1960s to endless talk of resource exhaustion, the narrative has been one of too many people crowding into a finite world. But here’s the plot twist: the real threat isn’t overpopulation—it’s underpopulation.

New data is rewriting the story. The United Nations once projected global population to peak at 10.9 billion by 2100. But The Lancet recently published a study showing the peak will likely come earlier—9.7 billion by 2064—before dropping back down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. That means billions fewer people and a global demographic implosion decades sooner than expected.

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The Year of Superintelligence?

Every era has its defining question. Ours may be this: What happens when intelligence itself becomes a resource that outpaces us—by orders of magnitude we can barely imagine?

Elon Musk recently put it bluntly: “I think we’re quite close to digital superintelligence. It may happen this year, maybe it doesn’t happen this year—next year for sure.” Whether you take his timeline literally or not, the very fact that leading voices in AI and quantum research are openly discussing artificial superintelligence (ASI) means the world is entering a point of no return.

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AI-Engineered Nanolattices: Stronger Than Steel, Lighter Than Foam

The strongest materials of the last century were discovered with hammers, furnaces, and patience. The strongest materials of the next century will be discovered with prompts. In labs where lasers etch features thinner than a red blood cell and algorithms hunt Pareto fronts, researchers have now taught artificial intelligence to design a carbon nanolattice that carries the compressive punch of carbon steel while weighing about as much as Styrofoam. That is not a metaphor. It’s a new class of matter—architected by code, born in light, and refined in heat—that could remake aerospace, mobility, construction, sport, and any place where every gram and every Newton matter.

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Futurist Thomas Frey’s Top 20 Famous Quotes

Thomas Frey is a renowned futurist, engineer, and speaker, known for his insightful commentary on technology, society, innovation, and the future. His quotes often blend optimism with caution, drawing from his extensive experience at IBM, founding the DaVinci Institute, and speaking to global audiences.

Here’s a curated list of 20 of Futurist Thomas Frey’s most quoted and widely circulated lines, gathered from his keynote talks, writings, interviews, and media articles. These are the ones that have resonated most strongly with audiences and been repeated in articles, social media, and professional circles:

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The Electron Shower That’s Shocking Microchip Manufacturing Into a New Era

In the clean, silent depths of a vacuum chamber, a storm is raging—one that could tear up the foundations of microchip manufacturing as we know it.

It’s called the “electron shower,” and it’s the secret weapon behind a new technology that’s finally cracked a problem that has held back next-gen electronics for decades: how to build ultra-thin, ultra-precise films on delicate insulating surfaces without frying them—or embedding microscopic landmines in the form of unwanted particles.

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New Model Uncovers How Cellular Senescence Is Triggered and Reversed in Worms

Researchers have induced a senescent-like state in worms by modifying the activity of the transcription factor TFEB. Under normal conditions, worms experience regeneration and signs of rejuvenation after fasting followed by refeeding. However, when TFEB is absent, this recovery fails to occur. Instead, the worms’ stem cells enter a state that closely resembles cellular senescence.

This senescent condition is characterized by several hallmark features: DNA damage, enlarged nucleoli, elevated levels of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS), and activation of inflammatory signals—all traits commonly observed in aging mammalian cells.

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Artificial Lightning and Electrolysis: A Greener Path to Ammonia Production

Researchers at the University of Sydney have developed a transformative method for producing ammonia using electricity and plasma—mimicking the effect of artificial lightning. This innovation offers a cleaner, decentralized alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch process, which currently dominates global ammonia production but carries a heavy environmental cost.

Ammonia is a critical ingredient in fertilizers and plays a vital role in supporting nearly half of global food production. However, conventional ammonia production relies on high heat, high pressure, and fossil fuels, making it one of the most carbon-intensive industrial processes in existence.

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