A high-tech mouthguard that might help prevent concussions
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When athletes or soldiers have a concussion, the most beneficial course of action is to simply get them off the playing field or out of the action so they can recover. Yet much about head injuries remains a mystery, including the reasons why some impacts result in concussion while others don’t. But new measuring devices…
Meet the economist who wants the field to account for nature
What is the true value of a honeybee? A mountain stream? A mangrove tree? Gretchen Daily, cofounder and faculty director of the Stanford Natural Capital Project, has dedicated her career to answering such complex questions. Using emerging scientific data and the project’s innovative open-source software, Daily and her team help governments, international banks, and NGOs…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/26/1084603/gretchen-daily-economist-environment-accounting/
This vibrating weight-loss pill seems to work—in pigs
What if all you needed to lose weight were some good vibrations? That’s the idea behind a new weight-loss pill that tricks the brain into thinking the stomach is full, by stimulating the nerve endings that sense when the stomach expands. The capsule, about the size of a large vitamin, houses a tiny motor that…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/22/1085841/vibrating-weight-loss-pill-pigs/
The Download: 2023’s worst tech failures, and the end of online anonymity in China
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The worst technology failures of 2023 Welcome to our annual list of the worst technologies. This year, one technology disaster in particular holds lessons for the rest of us: the Titan submersible that…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/22/1085878/the-download-worst-tech-end-online-anonymity/
Gene editing had a banner year in 2023
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Welcome back to The Checkup. This will be our last issue of 2023, so this week I’ve been reflecting on our biotechnology coverage over the past…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/22/1085809/gene-editing-had-a-banner-year-in-2023/
Is this the most energy-efficient way to build homes?
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When the Canadian engineer Harold Orr and his colleagues began designing an ultra-efficient home in Saskatchewan in the late ’70s, responding to a provincial conservation mandate during the oil embargo, they knew that the trick wasn’t generating energy in a greener way, but using less of it. They needed to make a better thermos, not…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/22/1084532/passive-house-energy-efficient-harold-orr/
The Download: recreating the early internet, and 2023 in climate data
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences. There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/21/1085803/the-download-early-internet-climate-data/
2023 is breaking all sorts of climate records
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This has been quite the year for climate news, with weather disasters, technological breakthroughs, and policy changes making headlines around the world. There’s an abundance of bad news, but there are also…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/21/1085795/2023-climate-records-data/
Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML
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Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences. There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls of Times New Roman text on a colored background. In the 2000s, before Squarespace and social media, websites were manifestations of individuality—built entirely from scratch using HTML, by…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/21/1084525/internet-whimsy-html-energy/
The Download: good climate news, and promising pixels
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. There was some good climate news in 2023. Really. Scientists are loudly warning that the world is running out of time to avoid dangerous warming levels. The picture is grim. But if you…
China’s judicial system is becoming even more secretive
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. The new year will be here soon! Typically, it’s a great time for a fresh start. But not always. And today I want to talk about something that’s unfortunately moving in the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/20/1085741/china-judgements-online-transparency-government/
These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented reality by storm
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Google Glass, a prototype augmented-reality headset released in April 2013, had the makings of a hit. It promised intuitive, hands-free access to a smartphone’s most important features—video recording, navigation, and even email. Forget touch screens and buttons: the future of computing was on your face. It was a disaster. Though beautiful in concept, Glass was…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/20/1084518/micro-leds-micro-oleds-augmented-reality-ar/
Two-way reflections on MIT Technology Review’s 125th
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I composed the following palindromes in honor of the 125th anniversary of MIT Technology Review. They include what I call a “punctuate-it-yourself” (or p-i-y) palindrome on James Mason Crafts. (Volume I, Issue 1 of the Review contained a lengthy profile of Crafts, who served as MIT’s fourth president and held the office from 1897 to…
The Download: the AI Edition
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI The internet changed everything—how we work and play, how we spend time with friends and family, how we learn, how we consume, how…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/19/1085710/the-download-the-ai-edition/
Four trends that changed AI in 2023
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This has been one of the craziest years in AI in a long time: endless product launches, boardroom coups, intense policy debates about AI doom, and a race to find the…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/19/1085696/four-trends-that-changed-ai-in-2023/
Developing climate solutions with green software
After years of committing to sustainable practices in his personal life from recycling to using cloth-based diapers, Asim Hussain, currently the director of green software and ecosystems at Intel, began to ask questions about the practices in his work: software development. Developers often asked if their software was secure enough, fast enough, or cost-effective enough…
The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are…
Get ready to fight misinformation in 2024. Eric Schmidt has advice.
This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. We’re already at that time of year when we start looking ahead to what’s coming in 2024. For Technocrat readers (and the rest of the…
The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush
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We’re all teeming with microbes. We’ve got guts full of them, and they’re crawling all over our skin. These tiny, ancient life forms have evolved with us. And over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important they are to our health and well-being. They help extract nutrients from our…
Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation
The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history. And election campaigns are using artificial intelligence in novel ways. Earlier this year in the US, the Republican…