Put your augmented reality goggles on and dial up 2040. Here’s one possible view of where the world will move in the next 22 years.

You've just got an autonomous electric taxi from the gym to work, picked up a coffee and—in the lift to your office—watched a short advertisement on the heads-up display projected by your wearable digital assistant, clipped to your collar.

In a matter of minutes, four transactions have taken place. And you haven’t put your hand in your pocket to get out a wallet once. Notes and coins have long since disappeared, and nobody even uses their phone to pay for things anymore. In fact, no-one thinks about money in 2040—it just happens. (Well, technically you were recognized by an iris scan for each transaction, but pointing that out destroys the magic of it.)

Back up a minute. You might have noticed there were four transactions in those few minutes, but only two purchases: the taxi and coffee. That’s because you also received two micropayments this morning—small amounts of money you were given in exchange for a service. The first was while you were at the gym. When you joined the club, you agreed to share your cardiovascular data with a medical-research company in return for micropayments every time you work out. You also received a micropayment when you watched the advertisement about that trip to Venice suggested by your digital assistant.

In 2040, the value of your data no longer flows to search providers or social networks. Instead, it all goes to you, allowing you to sell it to offset small costs throughout the day. The monetization of every aspect of our daily lives also creates a role for charity and altruism: You have the option to donate part of your regular micropayment income stream to your favorite charity in return for tax credits.

At lunchtime, you meet up with an old friend who now works overseas. After your meal, you both ask your digital assistants to split the bill and add a tip. You get up, pass your thanks on to the chef (yes, chefs are still human in 2040) and walk straight out; there’s no need to ask for the check. Fortunately, your visiting friend doesn’t have to worry about currency exchange costs, even though they’re not in their home country. Like you, they use a handful of digital currencies that are acceptable the world over and have minimal conversion costs.

The cryptocurrencies that emerged in the 2010s were not destined to last. But the blockchain tech that underpinned them evolved to create a new generation of super safe and completely transparent forms of money. Indeed, technology arrived just in time to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of trust in traditional institutions, which had historically acted as guarantors of currency stability.

After a hard day at work, your digital assistant knows you might not be in the mood to review your finances on the way home. But your assistant knows how to make the experience personal—and quick. “If you switch your regular savings to another provider, you’ll be able to reach your holiday saving target quicker and improve your credit rating; do want me to action that? And, by the way, your utility provider contract expires next month; would you like me to switch you to the lowest-cost renewable provider in line with your preferences?” Five minutes later, the autonomous cab reaches your apartment—and your finances are under control.
​
Will all this be possible? Of course, no one knows. But micropayments, iris scans, and digital assistants are already a reality. Furthermore, the furor over the use of personal data by social networks could lead to people being rewarded for the use of their information. Our expectations as consumers are soaring as our lifestyles change and the pace of innovation accelerates. Increasingly, we want to live in a cashless mobile-only society—and technology will, therefore, find a way to make that happen.

A new, low-cost technology could provide drinking water in regions where resources are scarce, or where natural disasters have struck.

Scientists have developed a new technology that uses the sunlight to purify water with near-perfect efficiency.

The idea of using energy from the sun to evaporate and purify water was reportedly described by Greek philosopher Aristotle over 2,000 years ago.

By draping black, carbon-dipped paperin a triangular shape and using it to both absorb and vaporize water, researchers have developed a method for using sunlight to generate clean water with near-perfect efficiency.
“Our technique is able to produce drinking water at a faster pace than is theoretically calculated under natural sunlight,” said Qiaoqiang Gan, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo in New York.

“Usually, when solar energy is used to evaporate water, some of the energy is wasted as heat is lost to the surrounding environment. This makes the process less than 100% efficient. Our system has a way of drawing heat in from the surrounding environment, allowing us to achieve near-perfect efficiency,” said the associate professor.

Researchers have launched a startup, Sunny Clean Water, to bring the invention to people who need it. The company is integrating the new evaporation system into a prototype of a solar still, a sun-powered water purifier.

Solar stills have been around for a long time. These devices use the sun’s heat to evaporate water, leaving salt, bacteria, and dirt behind.

Then, the water vapor cools and returns to a liquid state, at which point it’s collected in a clean container.
The technique has many advantages. It is simple, and the power source — the sun — is available just about everywhere. However, even the latest solar still models are somewhat inefficient at vaporizing water.

Researchers addressed this challenge by increasing the efficiency of their evaporation system by cooling it down.

A central component of their technology is a sheet of carbon-dipped paper that is folded into an upside-down “V” shape, like the roof of a birdhouse.

The bottom edges of the paper hang in a pool of water, soaking up the fluid like a napkin. At the same time, the carbon coating absorbs solar energy and transforms it into heat for evaporation.

The paper’s sloped geometry keeps it cool by weakening the intensity of the sunlight illuminating it. Since most of the carbon-coated paper stays under room temperature, it can draw in heat from the surrounding area, compensating for the regular loss of solar energy that occurs during the vaporization process.

Using this set-up, researchers evaporated the equivalent of 2.2 liters of water per hour for every square meter of area illuminated by the regular sun, higher than the theoretical upper limit of 1.68 liters, according to the new study.

The team conducted its tests in the lab, using a solar simulator to generate light at the intensity of one regular sun.

“Most groups working on solar evaporation technologies are trying to develop advanced materials, such as metallic plasmonic and carbon-based nanomaterials,” Professor Qiaoqiang said.
​
“We focused on using extremely low-cost materials and were still able to realize record-breaking performance,” he said.

Visa and Mastercard have chips embedded in hundreds of millions of credit and debit cards around the world. They're used in more than 200 countries and process billions of payments each year. And they both intend to create bank cards that use your fingerprint instead of a PIN. 

Early trials of cards with fingerprint scanners built-in are underway, and success could eventually result in the death of the humble PIN. "A four-digit PIN is pretty good security – obviously, six, seven or eight digits are better, but it is very hard for people to remember," says Bob Reany, an executive vice president at Mastercard, who is working on the firm's biometric cards. "[This] security is going to be better than a PIN."

In April 2017, Mastercard started testing a biometric card in South Africa. The new card looks the same as any other bank card but has a small biometric scanner in the top right-hand corner. When a finger is placed on the sensor, it can recognize if it is a match with stored data and then authorize the payment.

Mastercard now has more trials running in Bulgaria, and Reany says thousands of fingerprint-detecting cards will be tested elsewhere in the world later this year. "We've gotten the algorithms in great shape, now we're doing matching on the native device where the template is captured, and we're ready to go to market at some scale," he says. Crucially, in the coming months, banks will be issuing them to regular customers for the first time. Reany won't reveal exactly where the cards will be given to people, but he says more announcements are coming. "I think you're going to see pockets of Europe go pretty quickly," Reany says of potential adoption. 

Rival Visa is also testing biometric cards in Cyprus with the country's national bank and security company Gemalto, which has been creating the cards for both of the major payment companies, says it has produced "tens of thousands" of biometric cards for tests. 
​
Ultimately, payment companies are continuing to develop biometric bank cards, and trials are getting bigger. At their very least, biometric cards will offer a slightly more convenient way to pay, but they may also evolve with increasing use of fingerprint technology in other areas of people's lives. As Berg says: "People forget their PINs but very rarely do you go out without your fingers."

Since Microsoft and Amazon announced plans to integrate their respective personal digital assistantslast summer, there's been almost no official update on the status of the partnership.

It seems, however, like there's finally movement happening.

An April 27 update to the Cortana support page actually mentions Alexa. "Cortana and Alexa are still getting to know each other. Soon you'll be able to ask Alexa to buy things, add items to your shopping list, access your Alexa skills, and more," says the brief update on the page. Yes, "soon" is vague. But it's something.

Typing "Alexa" into the search box in Windows 10 (on the Fall Creators Update version, at least) yields a message saying "I'll be able to connect you to Alexa soon. Stay tuned!"

Last summer, Amazon and Microsoft announced that their respective personal assistants would be able to talk to one another, so customers could opt to use the assistant most suited to a particular task. Amazon and Microsoft officials said last year that they'd make Cortana-Alexa integration available before the end of calendar 2017. Since then, there's been no update on when this might arrive.

In early March 2018, Cortana team members told Windows Insiders that the Cortana-Alexa integration was in "internal self-hosting" at Microsoftat the moment. Microsoft is working to "make sure it's (the integration) a great experience," the team said, noting that bringing together the two different speech stacks is "non-trivial."

Recently, Cortana's new boss, Javier Soltero, admitted that "skills for the sake of skills won't fly." He told PC World that skills usage isn't "quite as deep as most people think it is." He also acknowledged Microsoft's in total catch-up mode on this front. (That's for sure, with Alexa at 40,000-plus third-party skillsat last count.)
Given Cortana is set to access Alexa skills via this integration partnership, maybe Cortana's skills shortage is less horrible than meets the eye.
​
Soltero also declined to say whether there are any other Cortana-powered speakers in the works. Currently, there's one from Harman-Kardon. I think speakers might not be where Microsoft is focusing; perhaps it's more about conferencing systems, microphones or other more business-centric peripherals.