5 Technologies That Will Change the World

After the Internet bubble burst, people stopped thinking about the transforming powers of technology. And technology companies were forced to stop crowing about how they were set to change the world. Instead, they ate crow -- and concentrated on staying alive.

But technology didn't stop evolving and maturing, no matter what the Nasdaq did. Imaginative researchers and engineers, by their nature, aren't very good at throttling back to a conservative idle.

So while shareholders nursed their battered portfolios and big companies chiseled away at their cost structures and employment rolls, these innovators kept working. They kept trying to develop technologies that would represent giant leaps forward, not just incremental baby steps.

We set off in search of those people who were bold enough to think that the world might at some point be ready to take a giant leap again and to believe that innovative technology can still put serious distance between a leader and the rest of the pack.

In such places as Mooresville, North Carolina; La Jolla, California; Hawthorne, New York; rural Connecticut; and Manhattan's SoHo district, we found companies that are developing or deploying technologies that could change the world. Each will have a different impact -- from smart tags that will allow products to be tracked through the distribution network to bio-simulation software that is speeding the path of safer, more effective new drugs to pharmacy shelves. We sent back these five postcards from the edge.

The ThermoJet printer outside of Scott Campbell's office looks like a big Xerox machine, although at $49,000, it's a bit pricier. But instead of cranking out color prints, the ThermoJet produces 3-D wax models of car parts and body designs for the Penske Racing NASCAR team, headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina.

Penske is obsessed with technology that will help it leave competitors in the dust. (The team has notched more than 45 wins in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.) And Campbell says that 3-D printing, which allows the team to turbo-charge its design process, is just such a technology.

"It used to be a long process to sculpt things by hand," says Campbell, a senior engineer for the Penske team. "Now we design things on the fly and make lots of incremental changes, because we can just print them out and see how they look."

Three-D printing is changing the world of product design. These printers typically shape objects by laying down materials, such as wax or plaster, one layer upon the other. A small model can take as little as an hour to create, and some printers can create objects in full color. Three-D printing is being used to design everything from children's strollers at Graco to running shoes at New Balance and Reebok, allowing designers and engineers to show their work earlier in the process, make changes with less fuss, and get new products to market faster.

The Penske team's printer, made by 3D Systems, a publicly traded California company, churns out models of such things as suspension components and brake caliper mounts, as well as complete car bodies. Once a part has been printed and approved, the model can be sent to a foundry to be cast in steel or titanium and eventually installed on one of Penske's two race cars. (Most NASCAR vehicles are entirely custom-built.) Models from the 3-D printer can even be tested in a wind tunnel -- something that Toyota has done with parts such as side-view mirrors for its production vehicles.

As 3-D printers drop in cost -- Z Corp., an MIT spin-off, offers a low-end printer for $29,900 -- they could even start showing up in places like Kinko's, allowing customers to do not just desktop publishing of documents, but desktop publishing of objects.

Already, the Penske team appreciates the advantage of being able to turn out prototypes -- and make changes -- quickly and cheaply. (A small model of a car costs about $160.) "We're looking for every performance edge we can find with our design and manufacturing techniques," Campbell says. "We don't show up at a race to lose."

Rather than fall victim to simple viruses, the Linux servers in Dr. Richard Ho's labs are supposed to contract more serious diseases.

Several of the computers at the Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D facility in La Jolla, California, suffer from Type II diabetes. Ho, the head of medical informatics at the facility, expects that other servers will eventually come down with debilitating diseases of their own.

"When you're trying to develop a new drug, there's a lot of guesswork involved," Ho says. "You'd work on a new drug candidate in the lab, and eventually test it on animals, and then test it on humans, but you might not have a good idea of what the drug would do at any of those stages."