I thought about this a bit more over the last days, and I think I settled on the two innovations already that I want to include: small heated spaces and heated clothing. The descriptions you requested are being developed behind the click …
I think this would be a really good first R&D project for The Reef’s research facility, because:
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Major benefits! Building operation is 28% of global CO2 emissions (source), and the major part of that is space heating. So there is the potential for high impact some time into the future. (I’ll find better numbers and sources …)
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Interesting for everyone. It’s suitable for a mixed community as both a R&D team and a testing ground. Because to create heated clothing and small spaces that are enjoyable and truly better and even more comfortable than our current stuff, it needs both tech ideas, social interaction design (the norms developing around its use), artistic input, handicrafts work and attention to physical comfort and health. It also needs attention to the physical differences between men and women, starting from the volume-to-surface ratio differences, which in turn will influence the thermal lag time (the time somebody is comfortable in a cool environment without heating). So in total, this is a very cross-interest and cross-gender research activity: there’ll be something interesting for everyone.
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An unclaimed area that can be ours. This set of ideas is so far outside the mainstream of current industrial products that we’ll have quite some years to develop this undisturbed before businesses etc. start picking up on these ideas. This is unlike in other areas, where our R&D contributions would stay largely invisible because there is so much competition already.
Edit: Decided to split the idea into two, added some descriptions to both in the linked document. I consider this task done now, except you find another idea in the linked document that I should describe instead. Or if I should add an illustration or something.