What if you could pay back your taxes by binge watching ads? Or hand out speeding tickets to other drivers? Well, if designer Soren Iverson had his way you could. All thanks to his unhinged ideas that he has been posting daily for over a year now.
I like to call myself Craig “The Idea Man” Shames but this dude actually deserves the moniker as he has been iterating on an every day basis with actual screenshots of his ideas brought to life. Having come up with hundreds of ideas and gone viral dozens of times he now has enough material to publish a coffee table book of them called “Can You Imagine?”.
I’ve been following his journey since the beginning and here’s a quick look at some of my favorite ideas of his:
A warning if you are sharing content someone else has already seen
Netflix feature to skip awkward moments when watching a movie with your parents
Have your DoorDash driver collect money that is owed to you
Zillow feature to rate your neighbors
TurboTax feature to find out where your money goes
Tinder feature to see who else people are dating
Burn calories to gain more screen time
iMessage feature to provide someone’s actual ETA
Ring feature to spray your guests with cologne if needed
Finding out the environmental cost of food you order
Mass apply to jobs on LinkedIn
Phone camera locks if you use it too much during an event so you can be more present
Maps feature to unblur areas as you explore them
Uber option to let you drive
Netfilx minimum IQ required to watch certain shows
Control music when you enter a store via Spotify
Spotify feature to lock Christmas music
Facebook feature to remind people it’s your birthday
Leave feedback when you unfollow someone
Google map routes you to the nearest public bathroom
Solve a riddle to reset your password
OpenTable challenge to prove it’s your birthday
Tinder feature to preview your future child
Amazon feature to pay extra to deliver your order first
See how people saved your name in your phone
Apple Health show you how long you have left to live
ChatGPT to summarize long texts for you
Randomly like and auto respond to group texts
Order welfare checks on people who don’t text you back
Verify your identity with weird personal information/things you’ve said
Venmo feature to play annoying sounds until someone pays you back
Google maps feature to update ETAs based on the needs of your passengers and have often they need to stop for bathroom breaks
Zillow feature to see how your future neighbors decorate for the holidays
FaceID like feature to log in using other random body parts
LockedIn instead of LinkedIn. Live streams of people working
Set a text message character limit so you can’t get long texts
Declare email bankruptcy to reset you to inbox zero
Share your Tinder account with your parents so that they can swipe for you
iOS photo bomb feature to send out the same picture to everyone in an area
The hundreds of ideas not listed here are great ideas as well. And best of all he shows no sign of slowing down, continuing to churn out new ideas on a daily basis. So, if you aren’t already doing so give him a follow on X at @soren_iverson. And tell him to leave some ideas for me!
When you think of a modern day gold rush you probably thinking of getting rich quick from crypto or capitalizing on all the AI hype. But in actuality all you might need is some old computers. That’s because scientists have figured out a way to literally turn old electronics into gold.
“A team of researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has made a discovery that they say could turn recycling e-waste into a literal goldmine.
The researchers devised a novel way to extract precious metal from electronic waste, a sustainable method that is based on a byproduct from the food industry.
And it’s pretty lucrative as well. For each dollar spent, the team suggests you could make $50 worth of gold.
Best of all, they say, it’s an incredibly environmentally friendly process. The team found that protein fibril sponges, made from protein-rich byproducts from cheesemaking, can be used to extract the gold from discarded e-waste.
‘The fact I love the most is that we’re using a food industry byproduct to obtain gold from electronic waste,’ said coauthor and ETH Zurich professor Raffaele Mezzenga in a statement. ‘You can’t get much more sustainable than that!’
As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Advanced Materials, the team was able to recover a 450-milligram nugget of 22-carat gold from just 20 old computer motherboards.
To do it, the team denatured whey proteins under acidic conditions and high temperatures to create a slurry of protein nanofibrils. They then dried this gel to create a sponge.
After dissolving the metal parts of the 20 motherboards and ionizing them in a bath, they placed the sponge in the solution to attract the gold ions.
By heating their sponge, the team reduced the collected ions into flakes, and eventually melted them into a tiny gold nugget.
This 450-milligram nugget was 91 percent gold and nine percent copper. At current rates per ounce, that’s roughly $33 of gold.
According to the team, the energy costs present a mere 50th of the value of the gold that can be recovered, making it an incredibly profitable process if scaled up.
Now, the researchers are looking for ways to market their idea, and for other protein-rich byproducts that could be transformed into sponges.”
Yea, but are they also looking for someone to partner with?!
Is turning electronics into gold the Greatest Idea Ever?
I first heard about the E/ACC movement when Forbes ran a hit piece exposing the real identity of the mysterious leader @BasedBeffJezos. But instead of crushing the movement, the article ignited it, bringing more attention to it. Now it seems there’s no stopping the runaway train that is effective technological acceleration.
According to Wikipedia, “Effective accelerationism, often abbreviated as ‘e/acc’, is a 21st-century philosophical movement advocating an explicit pro-technology stance. Its proponents believe that artificial intelligence-driven progress is a great social equalizer which should be pushed forward.”
And it seems as though the movement has a lot of proponents. Including some of the biggest names in tech.
“Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen says @BasedBeffJezos is a ‘patron saint of techno-optimism.’ Garry Tan, who cofounded the venture firm Initialized Capital before becoming CEO of Y Combinator, calls him “brother.” Sam Altman, who founded OpenAI — the company that finally mainstreamed artificial intelligence — has jokingly sparred with him on Twitter. Elon Musk says his memes are ‘🔥🔥🔥.’
Andreessen, Tan, and several dozen other Silicon Valley luminaries have also begun aligning with a movement that ‘Jezos’ claims to have founded: ‘effective accelerationism,’ or e/acc. At its core, e/acc argues that technology companies should innovate faster, with less opposition from ‘decels’ or ‘decelerationists’ — folks like AI safety advocates and regulators who want to slow the growth of technology.
At first blush, e/acc sounds a lot like Facebook’s old motto: ‘move fast and break things.’ But Jezos also embraces more extreme ideas, borrowing concepts from ‘accelerationism,’ which argues we should hasten the growth of technology and capitalism at the expense of nearly anything else. On X, the platform formally known as Twitter where he has 50,000 followers, Jezos has claimed that ‘institutions have decayed beyond the point of salvaging’ and that the media is a ‘vector for cybernetic control of culture.’
So just who is the anonymous Twitter personality whose message of unfettered, technology-crazed capitalism at all costs has captivated many of Silicon Valley’s most powerful?
Forbes has learned that the Jezos persona is run by a former Google quantum computing engineer named Guillaume Verdon who founded a stealth AI hardware startup Extropic in 2022.”
Now that’s he out in full public view Verdon has been accelerating the movement even more. And personally I think I want to join! While I don’t agree with every aspect of the philosophy such as its attacks on the media I have always been of the same mindset, of wanting to see humanity move forward as fast as possible, regulation be damned.
Instead of banning steroid use in baseball perhaps we should see how good humans can actually become. Instead of banning stem cell research, cloning, or other controversial medical procedures perhaps we should fully embrace them. Pushing everything from Neuralink computer brain interfaces and AI to reusable rockets and synthetic biology forward as fast as possible without living in fear of Terminator like doomsday scenarios or run away gray goo. I want all the geoengineering I can possibly get. All the driverless cars and humanoid robots. All the gene editing.
And now it seems like others do as well. The E/ACC movement is in full swing. And 2024 could be the year it breaks out even more.
The other day a viral tweet from @Culture_Crit got people talking about whether or not humanity would ever produce large-scale architectural masterpieces again.
Well, thanks to the Vegas Sphere the answer is a resounding yes! As you can now drive down the Vegas Strip and see a giant eye ball starring back at you or witness a huge basketball to promote the NBA’s Summer League. All thanks to the world’s largest LED screen, a $2.3 billion vanity project that has the world buzzing thanks to its literal eye-popping graphics and game-changing marketing appeal.
The creative possibilities for what you can do with the world’s largest sphere are endless. You can use it to shoot off virtual fireworks, turn it into a giant carved pumpkin for Halloween, show the Earth, Sun, Moon or any other celestial body you want, or even make it look like the Death Star if you really wanted to. People online have been finding plenty of creative ways to parody it as well and you’d have to think that every hacker in the world is trying to mess with it right now.
Personally, I love this idea. Not only does it show that, yes, we are still capable of building amazing things but it also puts Las Vegas and America on equal footing with all the massive vanity projects currently being built in Dubai like the futuristic city Neom and The Line, a one mile wide city that could house one million people.
Ordinarily, I’m not one to visit a place just for a tourist attraction. I’ve never been to the Pyramids, Great Wall of China, or the Taj Mahal. But The Sphere is so cool, so unique, so mind-blowing that I actually would go out of my way to see it. And you will too once you hear what will be going on inside. That’s right there’s more to The Sphere than meets the eye.
“The roots of the Sphere go back to 2015, when the French telecom company Altice bought Cablevision, leaving CEO James Dolan eager to take on a new challenge. He was already the head of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, meaning he understood the limitations of traditional concert venues better than just about anyone. ‘One night after the sale of the cable company, I said to him, ‘What do you want to do next?’ MSG Ventures CEO David Dibble recalls. ‘He said, ‘Let’s reinvent live entertainment.’’
Without giving any thought to what was technologically feasible, Dolan drew a sketch of an enormous geometric structure, essentially a spherical IMAX theater on steroids. Its central purpose would be to house arena-size concerts, but it could also be used for movie screenings and other events. “We had literally no idea how we were going to do it,” says Dibble. “We had no staff. It was just Jim Dolan and me.”
As Dolan and Dibble began looking for investors, and seeking out high-tech audio and video companies they could partner with to make it a reality, Big Tech became infatuated with the possibilities of virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg even changed the Facebook company name to Meta since he was so convinced users were eager to strap on VR goggles and enter the metaverse.
The idea of experiencing virtual reality without cumbersome headgear, which also hinders the communal aspect of attending an event with other people, is what really got the Sphere rolling. ‘We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have VR experiences without those damn goggles?’ That’s what the Sphere is,’ says Dibble.’
VR without the goggles’ essentially became the elevator pitch, though they faced a lot of naysayers in the early days, especially in the world of audio. ‘They all said, ‘No, no. You can’t do audio like this in a big bowl. That’s the worst possible environment for it. It’ll be a caco-phony, just a trash heap of sound,’” says Dibble. ‘We went, ‘OK, thank you for your input. We appreciate that.’
They got a different reaction when they traveled to Berlin and met the people at Holoplot. Their tiny startup was contracted by the German government to project sound around the Deutsche Bahn regional rail stations, and it did this by utilizing the principles of wave-field synthesis. It was remarkably effective. ‘We said to them, ‘All right. You don’t have anything that’s concert-grade right now,’’ says Dibble. ‘But how about we take out an equity investment in you, help you carry your technology forward in a partnership, and start to come up with a concert-grade audio system?’ Long story short, we did it.’
The patented technology they created allows them to beam waves of sound wherever they want within the venue in stunningly precise fashion. This would allow, for example, one section of an audience to hear a movie in Spanish, and another side to hear it in English, without any bleed-through whatsoever, almost like fans are wearing headphones. ‘It can also isolate instruments,’ says Dibble. ‘You can have acoustics in one area, and percussion in another.’
The 16K-by-16K-resolution screen that fills up the ceiling and walls of the Sphere is equally impressive, and required designers to create an entirely new kind of camera to capture images. According to reports, Darren Aronofsky is at work on the first Sphere-only film. “We’re working with a very well-known Hollywood name right now for our first attraction” is all that Dibble is willing to say at the moment. “All that footage we’ve seen that comes back from the field, straight off the camera into the dome is, dare I say it, breathtaking.”
The venue can seat 17,600 fans, and 10,000 of them will be in specially designed chairs with built-in haptics and variable amplitudes: Each seat is essentially a low-frequency speaker. There’s also the option to shoot cold air, hot air, wind, and even aromas into the faces of fans. ‘There’s a noise-dampening system that we used in the nozzles of our air-delivery system that NASA found really interesting,’ Dibble claims. ‘They were like, ‘Do you mind if we adapted that for the space program?’ We went, ‘No, knock yourself out.’
Construction began in 2018, just as Dolan and Dibble began imagining using the Sphere for video-game tournaments, corporate events, conferences, and movie premieres. But booking a major rock band to open the venue became a major priority. U2 quickly came to mind because of their long history of incorporating new technologies into their stage show.”
As someone who spent time in New York while James Dolan was ruining the Knicks it pains me to find out that he’s the visionary behind the project. But I have to give credit where credit is due and The Sphere almost makes up for him ruining the World’s Most Famous Arena. Because not only is it a game-changer on the outside, transforming the Vegas landscape, but inside as well with all of the new technology its shows are going to incorporate from “VR without the goggles” to letting different sections of an audience simultaneously hear the same content in different languages.
From top to bottom, inside and out, this whole project is so insane. 2 billion dollars well spent and how often can you say that? Normally what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but The Sphere is so cool that we need to let everyone know about it!
A quick look at everything I’ve been thinking about lately:
We’re designing smarter and smarter cars that can change colors, drive themselves, and keep us entertained along the way. But when left unused they still get dangerously hot which can kill pets and kids left inside and create a major nuisance for people who live in hot climates like my own Phoenix, Arizona. So, maybe the next major automotive innovation we make should be to design cars that never got hot inside, no matter how hot it is outside.
We’re also designing smarter and smart clothing that can also change colors, light up, or change its composition to warm us up or cool us down. But I wish that we also had clothing that remembered. Such as, when you last wore it and who you were with so that you never wear the same outfit twice when going out on dates with the same person or when showing up in the office twice in the same week. And when you last washed it so you never have to rely on the smell test to know if something left lying around is clean or dirty. Or when shopping at a thrift store how many times the used article of clothing you’re looking at was worn by the previous owner. Information that would help us make better decisions and look good doing it.
Do you remember cash for clunkers? The program to get people to trade in their old cars. Or similar gun for cash programs? Well, if we want people to eat healthier what if we started a cash for junk food program? Sorry, licorice nibs its been nice knowing you but it’s time to go.
Vitamin deficiency is becoming a real issue. The other day a story came out that said 40% of young girls are deficient in iron. The problem is that most people have no idea how vitamin deficient they are at any given time or in what. We need a vitamin level detector.
Thanks to AI and new tools like Magic Eraser we are getting better and better at fixing photos after we take them. However, the one thing I wished we could do, that as far as I can tell we haven’t figured out to do yet, is fix dogs not looking in photos. Instead of bending over backwards to get to them look, we should be able to just snap the photo, and fix that easily in post-production.
I wish there was a way to force people to maintain their attention. Not Adderall which improves your focus. But something that literally maintained your concentration. So, that men could maintain their erections during sex. Or you could get someone to become interested in something that they otherwise wouldn’t care about like learning a new subject because you can now get them to pay attention to it. So much of our experience is tied to what we choose to pay attention to. So shouldn’t we have some control over that?
The other day Elon Musk said that since you can learn so much by yourself online nowadays that colleges and universities are basically just social clubs at this point. Which made me wonder if we should start just pure social clubs throughout society. Imagine a church without the church where you just gather together with other like-minded individuals to listen to interesting talks. Essentially, in person podcasts. And then with those same people played intramural sports, attended social mixers, went hiking, and traveled together?
The uberification of life thanks to the sharing economy meant that everyone wanted to start a business that was the Uber of this or the AirBnB of this. But that never extended to books. Probably because of the fact that we already have libraries. But what if we disrupted the library? And made it so that individuals owning books could lend out their personal collections? Same for disrupting Netflix with a network of individuals sharing their DVD and Blu-Ray collections.
What’s the point of reminding someone that they are under oath when they’re on the witness stand if we can’t actually tell when someone is lying? Shouldn’t witnesses be getting lie detector tests while on the stand?
I think it would be cool in today’s AI driven world if generative artists posted an AI generated picture and people had to guess what the prompt was that they typed in to create the photo.
In Ancient Greece public debates were in vogue. And if Twitter is any indication people once again love to debate each other publicly. Which is why I think we should popularize debates. Maybe turn intellectual battles into a sport with a set scoring system?
A new building complex could soon be joining the long list of larger than life projects in Saudi Arabia: a cubed skyscraper, a third of the size of Manhattan, that could allow you to literally travel to other destinations virtually. Say hello to the world’s first immersive destination. Say hello to The Mukaab.
“As if Saudi Arabia doesn’t already have enough giga-scale construction projects on its plate, Riyadh-based newspaper Arab News reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has unveiled plans to construct a gigantic downtown development in the country’s capital called New Murabba. At over seven square miles in area, it will be about a third the size of Manhattan.
Somehow, that’s not even the most fantastical detail of this supposedly soon-to-be ‘world’s largest modern downtown.’ Behold the crowning jewel of New Murabba: the Mukaab, a gargantuan, hollow cubed skyscraper that reaches nearly a quarter mile long in each direction.
Basically, picture the Empire State Building, except it’s a cube that’s as wide as it is tall — and that the massive structure also contains an additional tower in the center that itself will rival the height of many skyscrapers.
The Mukaab alone is meant to provide nearly 22 million square feet of floor space, which pretty much blows every building in the world out of the water. Everything from tourist attractions and hotels to residential areas and commercial spaces is planned to be packed inside.
So far — other than its bonkers size and accompanying tower — the interior boasts the typical makings of a vaunted skyscraper project. But its designers also intend the Mukaab to be the ‘world’s first immersive destination’ — and trust us, you can’t possibly guess what that entails.
By ‘immersive,’ the designers mean an entire digital and virtual world augmented by a sea of holographics, claiming to ‘let you live on Mars,’ and other destinations.
Visitors can also be immersed in the deep sea, as well as what looks like the floating Hallelujah Mountains out of ‘Avatar,’ according to a promotional video. In other words, it sounds like they’re intending to make this thing a giant, almost VR planetarium.”
The VR planetarium aspect is what I find the most interesting. Depending on how well it works and how immersive it truly is the idea of “literally” traveling to Mars or Pandora is quite appealing. Especially when it’s over 100 degrees in the Arabian desert.
Every year I wonder if this will finally be the year. The year that I finally run out of ideas. And every year the answer is no. 2022 was no different. Here’s a quick look back at some of my greatest ideas of the past year:
Reading Clubs: Instead of book clubs we should have reading clubs. Where instead of getting together to discuss the same book (that maybe wouldn’t interest everyone) we get together to discuss the latest book that we’re reading and inform others why they should be reading it too.
Geriatric Park: A theme park designed with old people in mind giving them the opportunity to do everything they never got to do during their lives.
Modular Movies: Using AI to update movies after they come out to keep references topical, ensure that the jokes are never outdated, and that the dialogue is always current with the latest slang.
Casino Gym: What if we had a casino gym? Like a progressive slot machine jackpot that accumulates until someone randomly wins it all, a casino gym would operate in the same manner with money accumulating while people work out (their sweat literally getting converted into cash) until someone randomly wins it all. And since you have to be present to win people would be more inclined to work out more often and for longer amounts of time. There would be no membership fees with all the revenue and the money for the jackpot being generated by people paying to use the machines that feed into the master jackpot.
Jobtors: My recent experience with a realtor made me think that we should have even more people who help us with life’s big decisions. And other than buying a home or getting married the biggest decision you’ll ever make is deciding what career to pursue and where to work. Which is why I think that in addition to realtors we should have jobtors. People who make it their full time job to find you a job.
Hateraid: A resource to help us keep track of our feigned hatred so we know who to hate on and cancel at any given time. Featuring verified scouting reports and links to all the latest news about a person or topic Hateraid would update in real-time to keep people informed of someone’s current social status.
Roast Debate: We should add one more debate to the docket during a presidential election: a roast debate. Where the two candidates, or more during primaries, roast each other, showing off their wit and true personalities.
Lottery TV Show: Instead of paying to enter the lottery everyone is automatically entered and the winner selected on live TV. The money is raised via advertising dollars during this TV special which would generate more money than the Super Bowl and remove the tax on the poor. While making it a true lottery.
Fixing the NBA: Let’s reverse things making two point shots worth three points (since they are more heavily guarded) and three points shot worth 2 points (since everyone can make them now). Let’s also make the Slam Dunk Contest more interesting by turning it into an Olympics style floor program that lets you showcase all your skills during set routines so it doesn’t matter if you miss one dunk.
The Highbrary: A library/bookstore at the top of a mountain that you can only reach by hiking to. Would give you a goal when hiking and something to do once you reach your destination.
This isn’t everything that’s trending or likely to make an impact in the future. The Metaverse and OpenAI are worth mentioning but they’ve been mentioned already. This is just the newest stuff. Just remember that you heard it here first:
Insane number of new ideas floating around online that I’ve come across recently. Here’s a quick look at some of my favorites:
While I would be in favor of turning the Pro Bowl into a flag football game there’s an even better idea to still have a real football game the week between the AFC/NFC championship games and the Super Bowl: a game between the two worst teams with the #1 pick on the line. And the fact that you still have to prepare to play a game several weeks after your season should have ended might wind up being a pretty good deterrent against tanking.
Speaking of all-star games Major League Baseball should add more skill competitions to their festivities in addition to the Super Bowl. Such as fastest baserunner, pitching accuracy, longest long toss, and a bunting competition.
And speaking of baseball as their collective bargaining agreement negotiation sessions drag on and threaten the start of the 2022 season wouldn’t it be great if you could pay to see a live-stream of the negotiations?! If you’re not going to give us baseball games at least give us some baseball themed content.
As for the Olympics how about a chyron to show which Olympic figure skating pairs are romantically involved. Inquiring minds need to know!
Cereal boxes come with a toy inside. Dog food boxes should as well.
The time you spend commuting to work should count towards your 8 hour work day. Something they currently do in Luxembourg.
Instead of offering priority boarding, airlines should offer priority deplaning.
Add comments feature to Zillow.
When someone asks you how old you are your answer is always wrong unless you add nine months to account for the time you spent in the womb.
A COVID test that tells you who you got it from.
You should be able to list how desperate you are on dating apps.
Every weekend should be a three day weekend until COVID is over.
Smoke detector that shuts off when you yell, “I’m just cooking!”
Library book QR code that shows you the other people in your neighborhood who just took the same book out so that you can discuss it with them.
Unhinged dating app. It’s just people from Twitter.
Instead of Happy Hours bars should have Sad Hours where it’s okay to cry.
Universal Studios style theme park for HBO shows.
Restaurant that only serves cold pizza for breakfast.
“The only button a microwave needs is +30 seconds.” – Steve Jobs
Another good idea that someone else had recently was my friend Brian’s idea for a Shark Tank style show about pitching new ideas. Instead of actual entrepreneurs pitching real products and services to serial investors this show would focus on imagined products and unfulfilled fantasies pitched to people while they eat cereal. Okay, not exactly. But the judges would be stand up comedians who roast the people on the show and their silly ideas.
Considering how many people have ideas there would never be a shortage of content. And we could follow the journey of the good ideas that get selected for further development to see if any of them go on to become real products. The two shows could even tie in together with an idea that got pitched on this show eventually winding up on Shark Tank itself. I just don’t know what to call this show. So the first winner can be whoever comes up with a name for it!
If you love hearing about new ideas that could change the World then you’ve come to the right place. Whether I’m discussing my own ideas or highlighting other people’s ideas there will be no shortage of things to discuss.
My hope is that this site will not only bring awareness to these ideas and start a dialogue about them but also become a springboard for getting them implemented.
Greatest. Idea. Ever. 