Personal Cooling Tech

Air conditioning is the real nootropic. Brisk air encourages deliberation and sharpens attention. How many lectures have you slept through in a hot room? How many workdays have you dragged along in sweaty torpor with hot, swollen feet? We need cooling tech that extends comfort and bracing chill to wherever it is desired. I want construction sites in Alabama to feel like a Marriott ballroom. I want to walk to work without needing a sink shower and a change of clothes. I want to render Florida fit for human habitation.

Though indoor spaces are often well-equipped for heating and cooling, consider a well-worn argument in the thermostat wars- people who are cold can put on a jacket, but people who are hot can only disrobe but so much. A sweater and thick socks can make you comfortable in a drafty room or on a cold commute between heated spaces, but no similarly simple solution is known for cooling.

The time is right to develop new cooling technologies. Each of us now walks around carrying several ounces of rechargeable batteries every second of the day. The current wave of innovation in batteries should make sleek, portable cooling systems possible within a few years. Consider a normal-looking jacket made from a thermoelectric-cooled textile, shoes with a slightly compressible heel that pumps a coolant, tiny capillaries that can artificially “sweat” without feeling damp to the touch, new phase-change materials like an ice that takes days to melt, or that can be re-frozen by applying a voltage, dyes that reflect and emit light to cool.

You could stroll around the Mojave desert at noon in a three-piece suit and not sweat a drop. What would that do for your mindset? For civilization?