Simplifying Technology

Preeti Verma Lal

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Many centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci had talked of the joy of flying. Not flying in an aircraft. But flying like a bird — flapping one’s wings and soaring into the blue skies. 

You think Da Vinci was wrong about his flying dream. Not really. In the Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, California, flying is as easy as buying a ticket, wearing a VR headset and flapping your hands. Soon, you dive between skyscrapers in Manhattan at breakneck speed. This is Birdly, by Somniacs, a first-of-its-kind flying simulator which is closest experience to a bird’s flight. This is the not the only tech-magic housed in the museum, which has teamed up with Silicon Valley’s most high-profile tech companies to bring to the public the newest tech in virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. Sprawled over 1,32,000 feet, the museum is divided into galleries including Reboot Reality, Social Robots, Bio Design Studio, Innovation in Health Care, Cyber Detectives, among others. In the lower gallery, a friendly talking robot with spiky hair robot says hello and answers questions in whatever language you speak. In Reboot Reality, it is possible to draw a house and walk through it and create art with digital colours that mix, layer and dry exactly like real paint. Using sensors, controllers and actuators, one can design, create and programme robots. Not just robots, you can also pick DNA helix and create a human of one’s own choice. 

In the Innovation in Health Care section, the future of medical science is unravelled — a dog’s sense of smell might help detect cancer; how a sleeping bag can keep children in poor countries warm; how the new nanopatch technology will edge out vaccines, and 3D printing will change healthcare by creating skins and organs.

In the museum, the impossible and the unheard seem possible in near future. For example, efforts to engineer mosquitoes to stop the spread of disease. Tinkering with bio-organisms to create new things. Grow bricks and blocks using mushroom technology (reuse agricultural waste to create building material). 

To beat the hackers and spammers, step into the Cyber Detectives section and learn about internet safety. Use computer locking and use gigantic keys to open it.  Test your cyber security mettle in a full-fledged game. 

Rated as one of the nation’s premier science and technology museums, the museum with an orange wall makes advanced technology simple and interactive. Here, you not only can fly. You can also create robots, bricks. And humans.