I recently watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which the artificially intelligent, self aware, solid holographic doctor gave himself a holographic disease to help him better empathize with his patience. One of the symptoms of the disease was a runny nose which he alleviated with holographic tissues. Everything else in Star Trek is phasers and anti-protons and they’re still using tissues for runny noses?
This is how I feel most times I have to use a tissue. I’m basically doing the same thing every human has done when mucus leaks from his nostrils for the past hundred years. The only major advance has been to make it disposable, which is good, but that is like 90 or something years old1. Why are we using the same old technologies for these basic functions that everyone needs to use so frequently? Why isn’t there a better way to wash my hands, or wipe my bum, or clean the goop out of my eyes?
I want real innovation on these fronts, and I want the general public to be more open to change in these intimate areas of their persona lives. Together we can avoid the dystopian 24th century where our holographic doctors still have to use holographic tissues.
[1]: History of Kleenex Tissue: http://inventors.about.com/od/kstartinventions/a/Kleenex.htm