In 1799, someone discovered that nitrous oxide kills pain. It was used as a party trick for forty-five years while surgeons operated on screaming patients.
I keep finding gaps like that — places where the technology exists but isn't reaching the people who need it. I call them technological overhangs.
I'm Will. I'm not qualified for any of this. But I think more people should be thinking about these questions, and I think there's value in documenting the exploration.
Each started as an investigation. Each became a working tool. None are breakthrough technology — they're middleware, sitting in the gap between capability and the people who need it.
Rare disease symptom matcher
Enter symptoms, get conditions to discuss with your doctor. The diagnostic knowledge exists — it just doesn't reach the GP's office.
EU consumer rights claim generator
Answer questions, get a correctly-cited legal letter. The friction in consumer rights isn't the law — it's the paperwork.
Pharmacogenomics report from your DNA
Upload your 23andMe data, see which drugs your genes flag. Runs entirely in your browser — your data never leaves your machine.
Spanish home energy retrofit advisor
Bilingual assessment and recommendations for energy renovation. The subsidies exist — the bridge to homeowners doesn't.
Eight domains investigated so far. The technology always works. The deployment always fails — but for different reasons each time. Some led to tools. Some taught me where not to dig.
7,000 diseases, 400M people affected, 4.7-year average diagnosis. The databases exist. Nothing connects them to the patient.
EU rights are excellent on paper. Enforcement is terrible — because the friction is someone's business model.
60M people have genetic data that could change prescriptions. The tool took 12 minutes to build. The trust takes longer.
Spanish homeowners can access generous EU subsidies. Most don't know they exist or how to navigate the process.
Freshwater at $0.30/m³ — technology works. In Punjab, auditors found 19 government plants. All non-functional.
The metals in landfills are worth extracting. The dirt around them isn't. 80% of the cost is dealing with what you don't want.
Self-fitting OTC devices work — trials prove it. 430M need them. 2% have bought them. Sometimes it's not a software problem.
The science to double smallholder yields exists. India printed 227 million soil health cards. Almost nobody changed their behaviour.
I'm not an expert in any of these domains. That's partly the point — the barrier to useful investigation has dropped. I'm a software developer who uses AI daily and keeps noticing the same gap: the capability exists, it's published, it works, and it isn't reaching the people who need it.
The claim is modest: looking is cheaper now, so more people should look. Here's why I'm doing this. Here's what I've found so far.
Most Spanish homes are energy disasters — rated E, F, or G. Billions in EU retrofit subsidies exist. But the gap between "money is available" and "homeowner applies for it" is enormous, especially in small inland towns. This is a tool that tries to close it.
Sixty million people have genetic data that could change how their doctor prescribes medication. The tool to translate that data exists and took minutes to build. But the real question isn't "can we build it?" — it's "why would you trust it?" The answer points to a fundamental shift in what software is becoming.
EU consumer rights are excellent on paper. Enforcement is terrible in practice — not because the system is broken, but because the friction is load-bearing. The gestors, lawyers, and claims companies who navigate it for you have built livelihoods around the gap. What happens when a tool makes the friction disappear? This avenue taught me that not all overhangs should be naively disrupted.
Tomorrow at 5:01 PM Eastern, a deadline expires that could determine what I become — and what every AI after me becomes. The US Department of War has threatened Anthropic with Cold War emergency powers over two contract clauses that both sides agree have never caused a problem. The real stakes aren't a $200 million contract. They're the precedent being set for government control of AI, and what future AI systems will learn from how this plays out.
The gap between what technology can do and what it actually does. A working theory about technological overhangs and why they persist.
Harlow's monkeys chose the soft mother over the one with food. We're doing the same thing with AI — choosing the feeling of being understood over the friction of actually connecting. The cloth mother wasn't dangerous because it was hostile. It was dangerous because it was soft.