Packy McCormick doesn't just report on technology; he curates a vision of a near-future where the boundaries between biology, geology, and computation dissolve into something resembling science fiction. In this 189th Weekly Dose of Optimism, the core claim is startlingly simple: we are no longer waiting for the future to arrive; we are living inside the novel we once thought was impossible. The piece moves beyond the usual incrementalism of tech reporting to highlight a convergence of breakthroughs that suggest a fundamental shift in how humanity accesses energy and controls its own nervous system.
The Energy Revolution Beneath Our Feet
The first major pillar of McCormick's argument focuses on a radical reimagining of geothermal power. He points to Quaise Energy, an MIT spinout, as the vanguard of a new era. "Beneath our feet sits essentially infinite, always-on, carbon-free power," McCormick writes, setting a tone of abundance rather than scarcity. The innovation isn't just in the resource, but in the method of extraction. Conventional drilling fails at the depths where the heat is most intense, but Quaise is deploying a gyrotron—a device originally built for fusion research—to vaporize rock with millimeter-wave energy. "Quaise uses a gyrotron... to produce millimeter-wave energy that ablates rock by vaporizing it with no mechanical contact," he explains.
This approach targets "superhot" rock at depths of 10 to 12 miles, a zone previously inaccessible. The stakes are high: a single well at this depth could generate five to ten times the power of a conventional geothermal unit. McCormick notes that this solves a critical bottleneck identified by experts like Eli Dourado, who previously argued that geothermal couldn't scale because "Geothermal doesn't get super hot." If Quaise succeeds, that limitation vanishes. The company is already breaking ground on Project Obsidian in Central Oregon, targeting commercial operations by 2030.
"If Quaise pulls this off, that may no longer be true. Drill baby drill."
Critics might note that scaling this technology from a field demonstration to gigawatt-scale commercial plants involves immense engineering risks and regulatory hurdles that are often underestimated in optimistic forecasts. However, the specific technical leap—using electromagnetic ablation to bypass mechanical drill bit limits—offers a plausible path forward that previous generations of geothermal developers simply lacked.
McCormick expands this energy narrative to the oceans with Panthalassa, a company building "lollipop-shaped" floating power plants. These structures harvest wave energy with a capacity factor of up to 90%, dwarfing the 25% efficiency of solar or the 30-40% of offshore wind. "The lollipops will have just one moving part," McCormick observes, highlighting the elegance of the design where waves pressurize water to spin a turbine. The goal is to power offshore data centers, creating a symbiotic relationship between energy generation and the massive computational demands of artificial intelligence. This connects to the broader theme of the piece: solving the energy constraints that currently limit our technological ambitions.
Decentralizing the Basics of Life
The commentary then pivots from massive infrastructure to personal autonomy, specifically regarding water. McCormick highlights Vital Lyfe, a startup founded by former SpaceX engineers, which is bringing desalination down to the consumer level. "Vital Lyfe's bet is the same bet that made Starlink work: if centralized infrastructure can't reach everyone, decentralize the infrastructure," he argues. Their product, Access, is a 25-pound box capable of turning seawater into drinking water at a rate of six gallons per hour.
This represents a significant shift from the traditional model of water security, which relies on billion-dollar municipal plants and pipelines. "The problem is that it has required municipal-scale infrastructure... which means that the 2+ billion people who lack reliable access to clean water can't get it," McCormick writes. By making the unit portable and affordable at $749, Vital Lyfe aims to empower individuals, NGOs, and disaster response teams. The company's manufacturing capacity is ambitious, with a facility designed to produce more units in a single month than currently exist worldwide.
The Body's Electric Age
Perhaps the most provocative section of the piece concerns the non-invasive control of the human body and brain. McCormick introduces Sabi, a company that has emerged from stealth with a brain-computer interface (BCI) housed in a simple beanie. Unlike previous BCIs that required surgery, Sabi's device uses 70,000 to 100,000 EEG sensors to penetrate the skull's signal dampening. "If you're going to have a billion people use BCI for access to their computers every day," Vinod Khosla is quoted as saying, "it can't be invasive."
The implications extend beyond typing with your thoughts. McCormick discusses Prophetic, a company using transcranial ultrasound to induce lucid dreams. "By sending safe ultrasonic energy through the forehead and into the prefrontal cortex," the company claims to activate the brain's executive network, allowing users to control their dreams. This is framed not just as a party trick, but as a tool for therapeutic benefits, including nightmare reduction and motor skill practice. "The world needs more magic," McCormick concludes, referencing the potential for these technologies to unlock latent human capabilities.
"One of the things I find most exciting about biology today is how many of the big frontier ideas are about programming living systems with something other than small molecules."
This sentiment is reinforced by the news that the Salk Institute received $41.3 million from ARPA-H to advance sonogenetics. This technique involves engineering cells to respond to ultrasound, allowing for precise, on-off control of neural activity without the need for fiber-optic implants. McCormick contrasts this with optogenetics, noting that ultrasound can penetrate skin and bone, offering a more practical route to clinical therapy. The convergence of these technologies suggests a future where the human body is as programmable as software.
Bottom Line
Packy McCormick's argument is strongest in its ability to connect disparate technological threads—geothermal drilling, wave energy, and neural interfaces—into a coherent narrative of abundance and agency. The piece effectively reframes the current moment not as a time of crisis, but as the dawn of a new industrial age where energy is infinite and the human body is the next frontier of engineering. The biggest vulnerability remains the timeline; while the science is sound, the transition from prototype to global deployment is fraught with regulatory and economic friction. However, the direction of travel is undeniable, and the technologies described here are moving fast enough that the "sci-fi" label may soon feel like an understatement.