The CNN 10: Ideas

By Brandon Griggs, CNN

For centuries, the conventional wisdom about protecting shorelines from storm surges has been to build a seawall. And if that fails, build a bigger wall.

But in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated much of the New Jersey-New York coastline in 2012, that rigid line of thinking is being tossed on its ear. Instead of erecting ever-bigger barriers – which when breached can trap floodwater, as in a bathtub -- civic planners are embracing bold new ideas that would redesign shorelines to accommodate some managed flooding and minimize destruction.

"The challenge for us over the next several decades is how we learn to live with water and not fight against it," said Samuel Carter, an associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is helping fund a new project to reinvent the coastline of New York and New Jersey.

The project, Rebuild by Design, brings together many of the world's top engineers, architects and others to create innovative ways to minimize flooding and protect shorelines. Among their ideas: building a series of protective breakwaters in New York Harbor that slow the force of waves while serving as living reefs to rebuild the dwindling oyster population; designing "hyperabsorbent" streets and sidewalks that would mitigate storm runoff; digging channels along streets to divert stormwater; and creating buildings that are designed to flood without being damaged.

Ten of the best ideas have been chosen by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan to be further developed into formal designs. These may be eligible for federal Sandy-relief funding and eventually be implemented across New York and New Jersey while serving as a model for flood-protection efforts in other parts of the world.

With sea levels expected to inch higher in coming decades, these kinds of projects will only become more crucial, especially in urban areas.

The idea, Rebuild by Design's planners say, is to come up with collaborative, flexible new solutions tailored to each community instead of just rebuilding and inviting history to repeat itself.

"It's a normal thing for human beings all around the world: When something (bad) happens, they want to go back to where they were (before). But when it comes to Superstorm Sandy, that would be a total failure," said Henk Ovink, co-chairman of the Rebuild by Design jury and a senior adviser for the federal Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.

"Water can be a threat, but it's also a necessity and a resource," Ovink said. "You can embrace water. Working against nature is not a solution."

By Doug Gross, CNN

Spike Lee has an Emmy and two Academy Award nominations. Zach Braff starred in the sitcom "Scrubs," and his film "Garden State" brought praise from critics as well bringing in more than $35 million.

And in 2013, both chose the Internet, instead of Hollywood, to fund their new movies.

By fast-twitch Internet standards, online fundraising is nothing new. More than 5 million people have helped fund over 53,000 projects since Kickstarter launched in 2009. (Rival IndieGogo was launched at the Sundance Film Festival several months earlier). Both have helped launch artistic endeavors that may have never happened otherwise.

But now established entertainers are using the platforms to appeal directly to fans to help fund new projects.

In May, Braff scored $3.1 million on Kickstarter for "Wish I Was Here," which, like "Garden State" he wrote and plans to star in and direct. Lee followed in August, bringing in $1.4 million for "The Sweet Blood of Jesus," known during the campaign only as "The Newest, Hottest Spike Lee Joint."

But they were both swamped by a project to make a movie wrapping up the long-since canceled cable series "Veronica Mars." That one earned $5.7 million -- the third-highest total in Kickstarter history -- and may have done as much as any other project to usher in a new phase in crowdfunding.

"After I saw how the amazing "Veronica Mars" fans rallied around that project in a mind-blowing way, I couldn't help but think , like so many others, maybe this could be a new paradigm for filmmakers who want to make smaller, personal films without having to sign away any of their artistic freedom," Braff said in a video promoting his campaign.

In the end, $5 million isn't exactly blockbuster money. But we wouldn't be surprised if bigger, more expensive, efforts get funded in the next few years.

"It takes the ability to decide what you see, what happens, from the privileged few to the crowd," author Neil Gaiman, whose short story "The Price" is set to become a 3D, animated short film thanks to a successful 2010 campaign, told CNN at the time. "I can't wait until the first $50 million movie is funded through Kickstarter."

By Jose Pagliery, CNNMoney

There's a way to end seasonal clock confusion and eliminate jet lag.

All it would take is doing away with daylight saving and splitting the continental United States in two time zones: East and West, an hour apart.

It's not a radical idea. In fact, changing how we view time is a natural part of progress in society. In the Civil War era, every city in the country had its own local time based on the position of the sun. That was too confusing for train schedules, so the country moved to four time zones in 1883.

But we've evolved since then to an even more connected world. Now we all watch the same television channels and trade on the same stock market. Our lives are more integrated, and a more unified time system makes sense.

Allison Schrager, an economist and writer in New York, made the case for a change in an essay she published before we turned the clocks back in November. Here's how Schrager's plan would work: Eastern Time jumps onto Central Time, and Pacific Time becomes Mountain Time. That would give east coast states brighter mornings and west coast states sunnier evenings.

Schrager told CNN she first thought about it when she commuted to Austin, Texas on a regular basis. She noticed everyone in the Southwest did everything at the same time as New Yorkers, they just called it a different time.

"The whole point of keeping time is coordination. The problem is, there's just so much confusion," she said.

That's only made more complex by daylight saving time, a practice that the United States adopted from Europe in 1918 to save energy. Clocks are set forward in summer to extend afternoon daylight.

However, the vast majority of the world doesn't do it, which makes it hard to coordinate the new, temporarily adjusted times between Asia, Europe and the United States. Plus, there's little proof daylight saving actually reduces energy usage.

Eliminating the practice would prevent the jarring feeling we all get in the fall when the clocks reset and it suddenly gets dark at 4:30 p.m.

The downside? It'll take some getting used to.

But it's less confusing than resetting your watch after a five-hour flight that, on paper, took eight hours one way and three hours the other.

By Heather Kelly, CNN

Drones have a bad reputation.

The unmanned flying robots are best known in the United States for their military uses abroad, such as targeted missile strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. And civil-liberties groups have expressed concerns about drones being used by federal and local law enforcement in the U.S. for domestic surveillance – something the FBI has already done.

Drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or systems (UAS), can be as small as toys and as large as airplanes, and are either piloted remotely or programmed to fly automatically. The Federal Aviation Administration permits only some UAVs to operate in U.S. airspace now, although the agency will begin allowing commercial drones starting in 2015.

That's not as scary as it might sound. In fact, it could be a useful thing, for many reasons.

As we've seen in other countries, drones can be a force for good. First responders used camera-equipped drones to search for survivors after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. Conservation groups have used drones to monitor deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The devices can collect data for weather services and scientists, and help any industry working in remote locations, as on oil pipelines.

And that's not counting the corporations that are taking advantage of the buzz over drones to get some free marketing. Amazon recently announced plans to someday deliver small packages via drone, and Dominos said it might deliver pizzas.

"We're finding, and the polls show, that the more the public learns about the potential uses and benefits of UAS, the more they embrace the technology," said Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

In the next three years, civilian UAVs in the U.S. could be a $10 billion industry, according to one estimate.

Gielow believes the biggest impact for the flying technology will be on agriculture, which will account for 80% of the UAV market. Drones could be used to check crops for outbreaks of disease or to monitor remote fence lines for repairs. As one drone industry executive put it, "corn doesn't mind if you watch it."

So while deadly drone strikes in Afghanistan may continue to conjure images of the technology's darker side, UAVs will probably win over some members of a skeptical U.S. public with their many other uses.

By Doug Gross, CNN

The mobile revolution has been won, but the smartphones and tablets that launched it have remained pretty much the same throughout. Specs and design details aside, they're rectangles with rigid glass screens.

All that's about to change.

In 2013, we saw the emergence of flexible display screens as a viable option for personal electronics. And once the technology is perfected, the range of possibilities gets a whole lot broader.

"Foldable electronics, origami electronics like those old Transformers toys -- all kinds of ideas," said Nick Colaneri, director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. "I'm not a design guy, but I've always said that once we made this capability available to the design community, who knows where they'll go with it?"

How about a T-shirt that plays YouTube videos? Or a 90-inch, high-def TV you can fold up and bring to a friend's house for the big game? All are starting to seem like real possibilities.

The breakthrough came as researchers like those at Colaneri's lab figured out how to build display panels onto paper-thin plastic "substrates" -- thin slices of material that act as semiconductors -- instead of glass.

"We've always said that flexible displays are sort of the beginning toward truly flexible electronics," he said. "The display in a conventional phone or laptop or tablet is the least flexible thing in there, since it's made out of a piece of rigid glass."

The first wave of consumer gadgets using that and similar technologies is under way, with more promised in the near future.

Korean gadget giants Samsung and LG have already rolled out phones with curved display screens. Apple has filed for a patent for an "electronic device with a wraparound display."

At Google, one of CNN's Thinkers, Mary Lou Jepsen, is a pioneer in the field of display screens. She's in the super-secretive Google X lab, so there's no telling what she and others are actually up to. But it's hard to imagine new displays aren't somewhere on the agenda.

"All of the names that you mentioned are certainly sniffing around (the idea)," Colaneri said. "I think all of the names that you've dropped are also among the top-10 list of most paranoid, secretive organizations known to man. They're certainly thinking about it."

By Todd Leopold, CNN

The idea of mind control usually invokes scenes from sci-fi or horror movies, such as "Star Trek's" Vulcan mind-meld, spiritual possession, malevolent hypnosis or malfunctioning implants.

Well, get ready. Human brain-to-brain interfacing – via the Internet, no less – is becoming part real life. And it's not the stuff of horror at all.

In August, a team of researchers at the University of Washington managed to connect their brains using non-invasive technology. Rajesh Rao, a UW computer science and engineering professor, put on an electrode-studded cap and watched a video game, "playing" it with his mind. Across campus, UW psychology professor Andrea Stocco wore a swim-style cap that had a portion equipped with a magnetic stimulation coil.

When Rao thought of hitting a button, a signal was sent online to Stocco's lab, and his finger twitched on his keyboard. It was long-distance telepathy, of sorts.

Rao observes that the demonstration is a progression of known science. Invasive procedures, such as electrical stimulation of brain nodes, have been done for decades; just last year, a company called BrainGate created a robotic arm that, by using a sensor attached to the brain's motor cortex, allowed a paralyzed 58-year-old woman to perform various skills. And non-invasive procedures, such electroencephalograph monitoring and magnetic stimulation, are relatively common.

But human brain-to-brain interfacing is something new – and it's very much a work in progress, Rao says. He and Stocco are now testing on multiple subjects with an eye towards publishing an academic paper next year. The subjects' accuracy varies widely.

"It depends on how good the subject is," he says. "The sender is the one who has to do a lot of work, and some people are better at it than others." The process is like learning a motor skill, he points out, and the more people practice the better they get.

Moreover, not just human abilities are involved; the computer has to recognize the signal as being a motor imagery signal and then separate it from other brain signals. Some people have developed enough focus that the process works up to 90% of the time; others are still at chance levels, Rao says. The signal is crude – enough to jerk a finger, not suddenly create piano playing. It's all pretty rudimentary.

But he has high hopes for the future.

"If you think broadly, I think it opens up a new mode of communication between people," he says. "You can imagine maybe communicating non-verbal types of information, like abstract knowledge, or perhaps communication between people who do not speak the same language."

Even motor skills could be involved: if you're trying to teach someone to play tennis, says Rao, "perhaps you could get a head start through transfer of information directly."

That, of course, is still in the "science fiction realm," as Rao says. And he understands that people might be concerned about horror movie scenarios. But the interfacing requires that both subjects are active participants. It's not like a mad scientist will suddenly start pumping out electromagnetic waves and turn sentient humans into mind-controlled zombies.

Besides, we already have holiday shopping.

By Todd Leopold, CNN

Yes, flying cars and portable jetpacks are still, for the most part, the province of science fiction.

But another popular sci-fi idea, self-driving transportation, is rapidly becoming reality.

It's no secret that Google has been working steadily on an automated car for years. Indeed, it's even testing a few models on the streets of California.

But, more quietly, both auto manufacturers and government entities are also jumping on the bandwagon.

Automakers are already equipping cars with sensors that know, for example, when you're about to plow into the car in front of you and can brake accordingly. David Levinson, a civil engineering professor at the University of Minnesota who writes the Transportationist blog, believes partially automated cars could be hitting the market by the end of the decade.

"My guess is that there will be some stuff on the market by 2020 that will be automated in that you could probably do hands-off driving on freeways in specific situations," he says.

However, he quickly cautions, that prediction comes with a number of caveats. Automakers are concerned about liability – after all, who's at fault if an automated car gets in an accident? There's also the matter of equipping roadways and signage with helpful technology, something car manufacturers don't expect in the short term. (Let's face it: It's hard enough to get potholes fixed.)

Finally, self-driving cars will likely take a generation to reach critical mass, says Levinson. Just as electrics and hybrids are only now becoming part of the everyday fleet, expect the number of automated vehicles to grow slowly in their early years, while people get rid of their previous vehicles.

Nevertheless, they could provide a huge benefit to society. Delivery services such as FedEx and UPS could automate their vehicles. Urban dwellers, who already use services such as Uber and Zipcar, would have more options to get around. And self-driving cars would be safer, thanks to the kinds of sensors that are becoming widespread today, such as auto-braking and blind-spot recognition.

Of course, such advances take both political and financial will. Technology already exists to automate aspects of rail; systems in Europe and Asia (such as Japan's bullet trains) are run by machine. Congress even passed a 2008 law pushing for the installation of positive train control (PTC), a technology that helps recognize dangerous conditions, but U.S. systems have been slow to implement it.

Such a system could prevent deadly railway crashes that appear to have been caused by human error, such as a July high-speed derailment in Spain that killed 79 people and the crash of a commuter train this month in New York City.

"We should be doing more automation," says Levinson. "It's a lot easier to automate rail systems that it is to automate cars and highways."

But, gradually, we're getting there, he says. Throw in other innovations – 3-D printing, which could eliminate the need to have certain items shipped; telecommuting, which is already creating "virtual offices"; and alternate energy sources, which may reduce dependency on fossil fuels – and 20th-century transportation styles may finally end up in the rear-view mirror.

By Heather Kelly, CNN

Wearable sensors might have been considered strange a few years ago, but now we're used to devices like FitBits and sensor-filled smartphones monitoring our movements, tallying calories, observing sleep patterns and even tracking heart rate, blood-sugar levels and other vitals.

The next step will be tiny sensors under our skin, coursing through our bloodstreams and implanted in our brains to collect valuable information about our health. Doctors already implant devices such as pacemakers in our bodies, but sensors are a more advanced and delicate technology that requires additional research.

"What is lacking are electronics in direct intimate contact with the body, sensing or actuating. We are presently mostly inserting electrodes but not genuinely electronics," said Paul Berger, a professor of electrical and computer-engineering physics at Ohio State University who has worked with implantable sensors. "This area has huge growth opportunities."

Another researcher, Michael Strano, and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a hydrogel that can be implanted under the skin like a tattoo and used to monitor nitric oxide levels. Next, they hope to expand the technology to work on glucose.

Other sensors can monitor implants as they heal or detect early signs of organ rejection after a transplant. A sensor in the human brain could even help people control a prosthesis or use assistive technologies such as wheelchairs.

"The most revolutionary aspect will be the ability for patients to analyze and understand biochemical signaling and metabolism within their bodies and how this is influenced by their diet, lifestyle and environment," Strano said. "It will be enormously enabling."

Researchers need to puzzle out many issues before this technology can go mainstream, including power supply, wireless data transmission and rejection or degeneration over time by the human body. Even so, some versions of implantable sensors are already in use: We use them to help track our pets.

Being able to constantly collect data about someone's health could keep hospital costs down by catching diseases early and helping the ill or elderly manage their own health between doctors' visits. Over time, something as simple as a smartphone app could detect anomalies in a patient's health data and automatically contact their doctor.

Taken together, massive amounts of health information uploaded from sensors to the cloud could be an important tool for researchers mining big data to learn more about diseases and treatments. Algorithms could sift through the information for clues about what keeps us healthy or makes us sick.

And while most implantable sensors are focused on health, the technology could have more uses in the future, including environmental monitoring, space exploration and security.

"It turns out that the engineering problem of generating and collecting a signal from within the human body is useful for many other remote sensing applications," Strano said. Who knows? In a decade, we may all be wearing microchips.

By Heather Kelly, CNN

There are things we humans just seem to know -- the simple bits of knowledge we pick up through observation or judgment. To us, this common sense is second nature.

But to a computer, the concept is incredibly tricky. Teaching common sense is one of the biggest challenges facing the development of artificial intelligence.

Now a team at Carnegie Mellon University is training a computer program to think for itself, starting with pictures.

The Never Ending Image Learner ("NEIL" to its friends) looks at millions of images on the Web, identifying and labeling them. For example, it might recognize a famous building, an animal's eye or a color. It then groups images together in categories, and automatically looks for associations between them, without human supervision.

"Images also include a lot of common-sense information about the world. People learn this by themselves and, with NEIL, we hope that computers will do so as well," said Abhinav Gupta, an assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon.

The team decided that images were the best place to start their quest for common sense connections, in part because of the vast selection and variety of images available online.

"No one writes common-sense relationships, such as sheep are white or cars have wheels, and therefore it is hard to gather these relationships from sources such as text," Gupta told CNN.

Each examined image is another puzzle piece. Since July NEIL has analyzed more than 5 million images and come up with 3,000 relationships – a small percentage, but a start. The program might make connections between an object and a location, deducing for example that Ferris wheels are often found in amusement parks, or that a zebras are found on savannas.

The program, funded in part by Google, runs 24/7 on two clusters of computers that include 200 processing cores. Someday soon NEIL may begin analyzing video imagery as well.

"People don't always know how or what to teach computers," said Abhinav Shrivastava, a graduate student working on the project. "But humans are good at telling computers when they are wrong."

By Todd Leopold, CNN

"Reinventing the wheel" has a bad rap.

Add a basket to yoked wheels, and you have a highly useful wheelbarrow. Encase a wheel in vulcanized rubber, and you have sturdy automobile tires. Place a pair of wheels at angles to a sphere, and you have the heart of a basic computer mouse.

It's not just a cliché. We're always reinventing the wheel – and finding new possibilities in the form.

Take two recent ideas that have tweaked the old standby.

Duncan Fitzsimmons, a British designer, saw the wheel as an opportunity. While a student at the Royal College of Arts, he created a folding wheel intended for use with bicycles. After being approached by members of the wheelchair community, he tweaked his design for use in wheelchairs.

The result: the Morph Wheel, a detachable 24-inch wheelchair wheel that, when compressed, turns into a 32-inch-by-12.5-inch oblong ellipse storable in a duffel bag. It's much more portable than standard wheelchair wheels, which can be difficult to fit in small spaces.

David Constantine, a co-founder of Motivation, a charity that supports the disabled community, sees many benefits.

"Something that packs down as small as this would be extremely useful," he said, particularly in developing countries, where wheelchairs can take up a great deal of space in one-room residences.

Then there's the FlyKly Smart Wheel, an electric wheel that's used in place of rear bicycle wheels. The concept is the brainchild of Niko Klansek, a native Slovenian who now lives in New York.

It's a way of combining the convenience of a bicycle with the power of electricity. And yes, electric bikes already exist, but they can be expensive: $1,000 and up. With its 250-watt motor, the Smart Wheel is capable of speeds of 20 miles per hour, recharges itself on downhills and is monitored through your smart phone. And it's for sale for $590.

"There's no need to be worried about getting to your morning meeting or an evening date all sweaty and sore," says the Smart Wheel's website.

The Smart Wheel exceeded its Kickstarter goal of $100,000 by more than $600,000, suggesting that there's enthusiasm for the product – and the idea.

So reinventing the wheel doesn't mean going around in circles, Fitzsimmons says.

"It's really redesigning the wheel to make it just a little bit better," he said. "That's really what you're trying to do when you're designing any product."