MIT Technology Review

In February, the city of Toronto announced plans for a new development along its waterfront. They read like a wish list for any passionate urbanist: 800 affordable apartments, a two-acre forest, a rooftop farm, a new arts venue focused on indigenous culture, and a pledge to be zero-carbon. The idea of an affordable, off-the-grid Eden…

In 2015, Brooklyn resident Shabazz Stuart regularly biked to his job at a local business improvement district. Then his bicycle was stolen—the third case of two-wheeled larceny he’d experienced in five years. The theft sent him back to mass transit while he saved up money to buy a replacement. It also put him on a…

One evening last summer, my family was enjoying a picnic in the park near our house in London when two dogs attacked our blind 15-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Zoey. They pounced on her, locking their jaws. As my husband threw himself on the dogs, I begged the owner to intervene. He refused—until he realized I…

In the 24 years I’ve worked as a materials scientist, I’ve always been inspired by hierarchical patterns found in nature that repeat all the way down to the molecular level. Such patterns induce remarkable properties—they strengthen our bones without making them heavy, give butterfly wings their color, and make a spiderweb silk both durable and…

The term “artificial intelligence” really has two meanings. AI refers both to the fundamental scientific quest to build human intelligence into computers and to the work of modeling massive amounts of data. These two endeavors are very different, both in their ambitions and in the amount of progress they have made in recent years. Scientific…

Have you heard? The tech in biotech is nailing it. Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) can now figure out who has a condition (perhaps better than your doctor can), establish a medical checklist to diagnose you, and help target likely treatments. AI models can help design drugs or find a new purpose for…

In less than a century, computing has transformed our society and helped spur countless innovations. We now carry in our back pockets computers that we could only have dreamed of a few decades ago. Machine-learning systems can analyze scenes and drive vehicles. And we can craft extraordinarily accurate representations of the real world—models that can…

We’re living in a pivotal decade. By 2030, global emissions must fall by half, mostly through massive deployment of commercial solutions such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles. But emerging climate technologies must come to market during this decade too, even if they don’t make much of a dent in emissions right away.…

An online influence campaign carried out by a group that promotes China’s political interests is targeting Western companies that mine and process rare-earth elements, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Mandiant. The campaign, which is playing out in Facebook groups and micro-targeted tweets, is trying to stoke environmentalist protests against the companies in…

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. Big Tech remains silent on questions about data privacy in a post-Roe world In the days after the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, tech companies rushed to show their…

When you climb up a set of stairs to look over Boston Metal’s newest project, it becomes clear just how big a job it is to cut steel’s climate impact. The impressive new installation is a pilot reactor that the startup will use to make emissions-free steel. It’s about the size of a school bus,…

The United States has around 150,000 fuel stations to refill its fleet of fossil-fuel-burning vehicles. Despite the rapid growth of all-electric vehicles in America—400,000 of them were sold in 2021, up from barely 10,000 in 2012—the country has only 6,000 DC fast electric charging stations, the kind that can rapidly juice up a battery-powered car. (It…

In the hours and days after the US Supreme Court announced its ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, tech companies rushed to show their support for employees living in states where the procedure is now outlawed. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, promised to pay expenses for staffers who need to travel out of their home…

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. Facebook is bombarding cancer patients with ads for unproven treatments The ad reads like an offer of salvation: Cancer kills many people. But there is hope in Apatone, a proprietary vitamin C–based mixture,…

The ad reads like an offer of salvation: Cancer kills many people. But there is hope in Apatone, a proprietary vitamin C–based mixture, that is “KILLING cancer.” The substance, an unproven treatment that is not approved by the FDA, is not available in the United States. If you want Apatone, the ad suggests, you need…

Ever since Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, the metaverse—loosely defined as an extensive online world where interactions happen via digital avatars—has gone mainstream as part of “web3,” the internet’s third act in which users move from consumers to creators to residents in online worlds. The entertainment and gaming industries are at the forefront of today’s metaverse…

The term “smart cities” originated as a marketing strategy for large IT vendors. It has now become synonymous with urban uses of technology, particularly advanced and emerging technologies. But cities are more than 5G, big data, driverless vehicles, and AI. They are crucial drivers of opportunity, prosperity, and progress. They support those displaced by war…

NSO Group, the world’s most notorious hacking company, could soon cease to exist. The Israeli firm, still reeling from US sanctions, has been in talks about a possible acquisition by the American military contractor L3 Harris. The deal is far from certain—there is considerable opposition from both the White House and US intelligence—but if it…

The US Supreme Court has ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 legal decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right. Ending federal protection for abortion access across the US will have lasting health, emotional, and financial repercussions for millions of people and casts American reproductive rights back 50 years. The final decision…

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. Yann LeCun has a bold new vision for the future of AI Around a year and a half ago, Yann LeCun realized he had it wrong. LeCun, who is chief scientist at Meta’s…

Around a year and a half ago, Yann LeCun realized he had it wrong. LeCun, who is chief scientist at Meta’s AI lab and one of the most influential AI researchers in the world, had been trying to give machines a basic grasp of how the world works—a kind of common sense—by training neural networks…

In 1959, in a short essay called “The Great Game to Come,” a little-known Dutch visual artist named Constant Nieuwenhuys described a new utopian city—one that he was soon to dub “New Babylon.” “The technical inventions that humanity has at its disposal today,” he presciently stated, “will play a major role in the construction of…

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. How to retrofit a city The scars and pockmarks of the aging apartments and housing units under the purview of the New York City Housing Authority don’t immediately communicate the idea of innovation.…

The scars and pockmarks of the aging apartments and housing units under the purview of the New York City Housing Authority don’t immediately communicate the idea of innovation. The largest landlord in the city, housing nearly 1 in 16 New Yorkers, NYCHA has seen its buildings literally crumble after decades of deferred maintenance and poor…

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 world’s biggest surveillance company you’ve never heard of You may never have heard of Hikvision, but chances are you’ve already been captured by one of its millions of cameras. The Chinese company’s…

Every company is collecting data, whether it’s consumer buying habits, demographic data from third-party sources or insights from weather patterns. That’s good news—it wasn’t long ago that this kind of critical information was mostly ignored. But it’s not enough: companies must now start using that data to run every part of their business. There’s more…

You may never have heard of Hikvision, but chances are you’ve already been captured by one of its millions of cameras. The Chinese company’s products can be found anywhere from police surveillance systems to baby monitors in more than 190 countries. Its ability to make decent-quality products at cheap prices (as well as its ties…

In 1930, the telegraph giant Western Union put the finishing touches on its new crown jewel: a 24-story art deco building located at 60 Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Soon after, over a million telegraphs each day shuttled in and out, carried by a network of cables, pneumatic tubes, and 30 employees in roller skates…

Cyborg locust brains can help spot the telltale signs of human cancer in the lab, a new study has shown. The team behind the work hopes it could one day lead to an insect-based breath test that could be used in cancer screening, or inspire an artificial version that works in much the same way.…

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 delivery apps reshaping life in India’s megacities From 7 a.m. until well past dusk, seven days a week, N. Sudhakar sits behind the counter of his hole-in-the wall grocery store in the…

From 7 a.m. until well past dusk, seven days a week, N. Sudhakar sits behind the counter of his hole-in-the wall grocery store in the south Indian city of Bangalore. Packed floor to ceiling with everything from 20-kilogram sacks of rice to one-rupee ($.01) shampoo sachets, this one-stop shop supplies most of the daily needs…

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 people using humor to troll their spam texts The other night, I received a mysterious WhatsApp message. “Dr. Kevin?” it began, the question mark suggesting the sender felt bad for interrupting my…

The other night, I received a mysterious WhatsApp message. “Dr. Kevin?” it began, the question mark suggesting the sender felt bad for interrupting my evening. “My puppy is very slow and won’t eat dog food. Can you make an appointment for me?” I was mystified. My name is not Kevin, I am not a veterinarian,…

China is fine-tuning its censorship machine, this time proposing changes in how to regulate the billions of online comments posted in the country every day. On June 17, the internet regulator Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published a draft update on the responsibilities of platforms and content creators in managing online comments. One line stands…

Homophobic misinformation circulating about monkeypox on social media is hampering efforts to curb the disease’s spread, research conducted on behalf of MIT Technology Review has found. There have been 2,093 confirmed cases of the virus reported worldwide as of June 17. So far cases have mainly been identified among men who have sex with men,…

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. Running Tide is facing scientist departures and growing concerns over seaweed sinking for carbon removal Running Tide, an aquaculture company based in Portland, Maine, has said it expected to set tens of thousands…

Running Tide, an aquaculture company based in Portland, Maine, has said it expected to set tens of thousands of tiny floating kelp farms adrift in the North Atlantic between this summer and next. The hope is that the fast-growing macroalgae will eventually sink to the ocean floor, storing away thousands of tons of carbon dioxide…

In the mid-2000s, toads were meeting a gruesome end near Ede, an old, leafy town in the middle of the Netherlands. Local residents came to the rescue. For a few weeks each spring, the town erected a set of temporary fences along a kilometer or so of road, in an area where the animals crossed…

When a matter of seconds or even milliseconds makes the difference between a positive or negative customer experience, you can’t afford to leave the performance of business critical software and artificial intelligence up to chance. Join a discussion on how some of the biggest names in the business accelerate the most challenging workloads on their…

Leaders and managers agree that effective management of external contributors, such as freelancers, contract workers, and app developers, is critical to their organization’s success, but not all believe their organization is sufficiently prepared to manage a workforce that will rely more on external workers. The question now is: How can organizations orchestrate this extended workforce?…

The current 5G evolution in network connectivity is expected to drive unprecedented demands for bandwidth, reliability, and security. However, a network of this magnitude and robustness doesn’t pop up overnight and enterprises and consumers are just beginning to realize the myriad use cases a 5G network can support. For example, consider the increased number of…

The skills and capabilities needed to undergo digital transformation are in high demand as every company jockeys to gain a competitive advantage. To address the skills gap, some companies are prioritizing upskilling and reskilling. But to be effective, learning and development itself must undergo a transformation. According to Daniela Proust, global vice president and head…

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. Where to get abortion pills and how to use them If the US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 legal decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right, parts of the…

If the US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 legal decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right, parts of the country will be ready to plunge into a reproductive-rights dark age in which doctors are forbidden from providing any abortions, in some states even in cases of rape, incest, or a fetus…