Scientific American has its annual deep dive into the top 10 emerging technologies of 2019, picking out a variety of potentially useful game-changers that are on the edge of becoming mainstream. 

• SciAm works with the World Economic Forum to produce the list, and says it “convened an international Steering Group of leading technology experts” to identify a broad number of potential technologies, whittling them down to a list of 10.

The list shows 10 technologies in a mix of states:

• Some are current technologies getting close to mainstream breakthroughs
• Some are at very early stages of development but attracting “a lot of interest from research labs, companies or investors,” says SciAm. 

Here’s the full list -- five are health or medical-related, four are related to environment and energy:

1. Bioplastics Could Solve a Major Pollution Problem
2. Social Robots Play Nicely With Others 
3. Tiny Lenses Will Enable Design of Miniature Optical Devices 
4. A Special Class of Proteins Offers Promising Targets for Drugs for Cancer and Alzheimer’s 
5. Smarter Fertilizers Can Reduce Environmental Contamination 
6. Collaborative Telepresence Could Render Distance (Relatively) Meaningless 
7. Public Health: Advanced Food Tracking and Packaging Will Save Lives and Cut Waste 
8. Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way 
9. DNA Data Storage Is Closer Than You Think 
10. Utility-Scale Energy Storage Will Enable a Renewable Grid

Obviously, the potential of technologies like #4 could result in major changes to our health, especially as we age, while #3 showed me new insight into a field I didn’t know a lot about.

I like the sound of #6: 

• “Imagine a group of people in different parts of the world smoothly interacting as if they were physically together, down to being able to feel one another's touch. The components that will enable such “collaborative telepresence” could transform how we work and play together, rendering physical location irrelevant.”
• While it’s not happening in the next year or two, the XPRIZE Foundation, which gave self-driving cars a huge leap forward in early years, has launched a $10-million competition for competing technologies that will “transport a human's sense, actions, and presence to a remote location in real time, leading to a more connected world.”
• Microsoft and others are also pouring money into tech that’s expected to be commonplace by 2025.

And #9 sounds medical, but it’s actually more about transitioning from storing data on circuitry and magnetic tape, all of which cannot last beyond decades, to DNA, which has been found to be stable for hundreds of thousands of years.

Here’s what it could mean, picking out a few points: 

• “DNA can accurately stow massive amounts of data at a density far exceeding that of electronic devices.” 
• At the density of DNA, “all the world's current storage needs for a year could be well met by a cube of DNA measuring about one meter on a side.”
• “Researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have developed a fully automated system for writing, storing and reading data encoded in DNA. 
• The costs and speed of reading and writing DNA are benchmarks to watch over the years.
• (For some reason, at least two people I spoke to this about said “ew.” "DNA storage" sounds a little personal, and it might need a rebrand if it ever goes mainstream. Marketing teams, do your best.)