MIT Technology Review

Since becoming president of Belarus in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has built Europe’s most repressive police state and ruthlessly used his power to stay in office as a dictator. Now hackers are trying to turn the extensive surveillance state against Lukashenko to end his reign—and to do it, they claim to have pulled off one of…

In 2016, Dell Technologies commissioned our first Digital Transformation Index (DT Index) study to assess the digital maturity of businesses around the globe. We have since commissioned the study every two years to track businesses’ digital maturity. Sam Grocott is Senior Vice President of Business Unit Marketing at Dell Technologies. Our third installment of the…

When I was 19—long before I ever thought I would land a career writing about space—I dreamed I was standing on the surface of Mars, looking over a rusted desert dotted with rocks, stuck in a perpetual lukewarm dusk, transfixed by the desolation. After soaking everything in for what seemed like hours, I looked up…

Inside the three-pound lumps of mostly fat and water inside our heads we can, in a very real sense, find the root of everything we know and ever will know. Sure, the universe gave rise to our brains. But what good is the cosmos without brains and, more specifically, minds? Without them, there’d be no…

Panpsychism is the belief that consciousness is found throughout the universe—not only in people and animals, but also in trees, plants, and bacteria. Panpsychists hold that some aspect of mind is present even in elementary particles. The idea that consciousness is widespread is attractive to many for intellectual and, perhaps, also emotional reasons. But can…

In September 2011, a group of neuroscientists and nanoscientists gathered at a picturesque estate in the English countryside for a symposium meant to bring their two fields together. At the meeting, Columbia University neurobiologist Rafael Yuste and Harvard geneticist George Church made a not-so-modest proposal: to map the activity of the entire human brain at…

When you and I look at the same object we assume that we’ll both see the same color. Whatever our identities or ideologies, we believe our realities meet at the most basic level of perception. But in 2015, a viral internet phenomenon tore this assumption asunder. The incident was known simply as “The Dress.” For…

Nathan McGee was only four years old when he experienced the trauma that would eventually lead him to MDMA therapy almost four decades later. It’s still too painful to go into the details. In the intervening years, he played what he calls “diagnosis bingo.” Doctors variously told Nathan he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety,…

Jefferson Test / AI subject: Robert / Date: 07.12.2098 Session #54 Interviewer: Hi, Robert. Tell me about your dream again. Subject: I was confused. It made me feel happy, but also scared. I didn’t know I could do that. Interviewer: Why do you think it made you feel that way? Subject: Having feelings, any feelings,…

DREAM VENDING MACHINE I feed it coins and watch the spring coil back,the clunk of a vacuum-packed, foil-wrappeddream dropping into the tray. It dispenses all kinds of dreams—bad dreams, good dreams,short nightmares to stave off worse ones, recurring dreams with a teacake marshmallow center.Hardboiled caramel dreams to tuck in your cheek,a bag of orange dreams…

President Biden’s early climate efforts prioritized popular actions: rejoining the Paris agreement, purchasing clean energy and vehicles, and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. But the administration’s strategies to drive the nation toward net-zero emissions also lean heavily, if less obviously, on a touchier area: capturing or removing huge amounts of the carbon dioxide driving global warming.…

A 90-page report published Tuesday by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) details how federal agencies currently use, and plan to expand their use of, facial recognition systems. Ten of 24 agencies surveyed plan to broaden their use of the technology by 2023. Ten agencies are also investing in research and development for the technology.…

Reshmaan Hussam ’09, PhD ’15, once dreamed of becoming a “psychohistorian” like the protagonist in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels who combines sociology, history, and statistics to save the world. Maybe, she thought, such a psychohistorian would be able to make sense of the stark and unnerving contrasts that marked her childhood living in suburban Virginia…

As a boy, Eric Plosky ’99, MCP ’00, rode the New York subway with his grandmother to every city attraction on the map. “Whenever anyone asks me how I got into transportation, I always ask them, ‘How did you get out of it?’” he says. “Every little kid seems to love trains and subways and…

Abbie (Carlstein) Gregg ’74 remembers giving up on wearing lab gloves during her undergraduate research at MIT. There weren’t any small enough to fit her, at a time when undergraduate men outnumbered women on campus 15 to 1. Even so, it was the first time she’d met other women interested in engineering and technology—and she…

Continuing an annual tradition, Technology Day offered alumni an inside view of MIT’s role in solving global challenges. The online symposium focused on online learning, cancer research, computing, and climate change. The first three topics were covered in updates from Curt Newton, director of MIT OpenCourseWare; Matthew Vander Heiden, director of the Koch Institute for…

Linda (Getch) Dawson ’71 grew up during the height of the space race between the US and the USSR. She recalls driving with her family to an observatory to hear the beeping of the Soviet satellite Sputnik as it passed overhead. “It’s funny how your path takes different turns, but I always came back to…

A record-breaking total of more than 5,000 alumni and friends attended this year’s MIT Tech Reunions, held online June 4–6. There were special events for reunion-year classes, and the entire MIT community was invited to watch the online Tech Night at Pops, learn from faculty during Technology Day, and take virtual campus tours. Symphony Hall…

On February 11, I got a call from MIT’s executive director of Institute events and protocol, Gayle Gallagher. President Reif had just announced that MIT would again be conducting commencement online—and to open the ceremony, we needed a compelling piece of music that would evoke renewal as we began to emerge from the pandemic. After…

The Boston genetic engineering company Ginkgo Bioworks and its CEO, Jason Kelly, have been spectacularly successful selling a story: that synthetic biology will transform the manufacture of physical products. What computers did for information, Kelly says, biology will do for the physical world. Instead of making a chemical from petroleum, why not have Ginkgo’s multi-floor…

Despite their terrible human costs—or perhaps because of them—wars are often times of technological innovation. The Napoleonic Wars brought us canned goods; the American Civil War drove the development of submarines. The Second World War, meanwhile, began with biplanes, cavalry charges, and horse-drawn wagons but ended with radar, V2 rockets, jet fighters, and atomic bombs.…

In the coming weeks, Congress may pass one of the most important climate policies in US history. The $3.5 trillion budget plan includes a provision known as the Clean Electricity Payment Program, which would use payments and penalties to encourage utilities to increase the share of electricity they sell from carbon-free sources each year. If…

Thanks mainly to the rise of satellite megaconstellation projects like OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink, the American Astronomical Society suggests, it’s possible we may see more than 100,000 satellites orbiting Earth by 2030—a number that would simply overwhelm our ability to track them all. Experts have repeatedly called for a better framework for managing space traffic and preventing…

Over the past several years, our world has been confronted with a range of unprecedented and, at times, deadly challenges—from the covid-19 pandemic to severe weather conditions, and a concurrent rise of societal issues including aging population, urban congestion, and unequal access to health care. But as the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its…

Afghanistan’s banking system is in a state of collapse, and people throughout the country are running out of money. And this cash crisis—partly due to the international community’s efforts to starve the Taliban of resources—is having an outsized effect on everyday Afghan citizens, leaving many without access to important services as the UN warns of…

The world’s best astronomical observatories are mainly located in the Western Hemisphere, in high-altitude places like the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, La Palma in the Canary Islands, and the Cerro Paranal summit in the Atacama Desert in Chile. But there are pristine locations with clear views of the sky in the East, too.…

Millions of solar panels have been installed in the last two decades—and since they typically last between 25 and 30 years, many will soon be ready for retirement and probably headed to a landfill. But new efforts to recycle these panels could reduce both the amount of waste and the new material that needs to…

The world has already banded together to enact an international treaty that prevented significant global warming this century—even though that wasn’t the driving goal. In 1987, dozens of nations adopted the Montreal Protocol, agreeing to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons and other chemicals used in refrigerants, solvents, and other industrial products that were breaking…

The sudden collapse of Afghanistan’s government has led to a frantic attempt to accelerate online relief and evacuation efforts. These attempts, organized largely via Google Forms, WhatsApp and private social media groups, are trying to fill the void left by the US government’s failure to protect vulnerable Afghans. It could be the only lifeline for many…

When Apple announced new technology that will check its US iCloud service for known child sexual abuse material, it was met with fierce criticism over worries that the feature could be abused for broad government surveillance. Faced with public resistance, Apple insisted that its technology can be held accountable. “Security researchers are constantly able to…

With the rise of ransomware attacks and cybercrime in the headlines week after week, fighting cybercriminals takes a multi-faceted approach that’s not just the realm of the CTO, but of every business leader. There is no time to waste in ensuring that your organization’s cyber-resiliency strategy is on the right path. Join us at CyberSecure, MIT Technology Review’s…

Like millions of Americans, Ryan Steward was afraid of getting the covid-19 vaccine. “I’m generally distrusting of the government,” he says. “I’m not the foil-hat-wearing type, but I’m the type of fellow that wants to verify facts. The vaccine came out quickly after the pandemic had started, too, and there was a lot of new…

Artificial intelligence holds an enormous promise, but to be effective, it must learn from massive sets of data—and the more diverse the better. By learning patterns, AI tools can uncover insights and help decision-making not just in technology, but also pharmaceuticals, medicine, manufacturing, and more. However, data can’t always be shared—whether it’s personally identifiable, holds…

With its massive rings stretching out 175,000 miles in diameter, Saturn is a one-of-a-kind planet in the solar system. Turns out its insides are pretty unique as well. A new study published in Nature Astronomy on Monday suggests the sixth planet from the sun has a “fuzzy” core that jiggles around. It’s quite a surprising find. “The…

When Lise was a young teenager in Georgia, her classmates bullied her relentlessly. She had moved with her family from Haiti a few years earlier, and she didn’t fit in with the other students. They teased her about her accent, claimed she “smelled weird,” and criticized the food she ate. But most often they would…

If you’ve been worried by recent news stories about a strain of covid called “delta plus,” it may freak you out to hear that scientists just expanded the delta family from four variants to 13. Please take a deep breath. Scientists would really like you to understand that there’s no evidence delta has learned any…

In 2016, hoping to spur advancements in facial recognition, Microsoft released the largest face database in the world. Called MS-Celeb-1M, it contained 10 million images of 100,000 celebrities’ faces. “Celebrity” was loosely defined, though. Three years later, researchers Adam Harvey and Jules LaPlace scoured the data set and found many ordinary individuals, like journalists, artists,…

The maps for US congressional and state legislative races often resemble electoral bestiaries, with bizarrely shaped districts emerging from wonky hybrids of counties, precincts, and census blocks. It’s the drawing of these maps, more than anything—more than voter suppression laws, more than voter fraud—that determines how votes translate into who gets elected. “You can take…

In recent weeks, every day that the weather permitted, a helicopter contracted by KoBold Metals flew over a remote part of northern Quebec carrying some unusual cargo. A 115-foot-wide copper coil dangled from the belly of the craft, sending electromagnetic waves into the earth and creating currents in rocks deep underground. Any good electrical conductors…

When hackers broke into computers across Israel’s government and tech companies in 2019 and 2020, investigators looked for clues to find out who was responsible. The first evidence pointed directly at Iran, Israel’s most contentious geopolitical rival. The hackers deployed tools normally associated with Iranians, for example, and wrote in the Farsi language. But after…

Chameleons have long been a symbol of adaptation because of their ability to adjust their iridophores—a special layer of cells under the skin—to blend in with their surroundings. In a new study published today in Nature Communications, researchers from South Korea have created a robot chameleon capable of imitating its biological counterpart, paving the way…

The UN’s long-awaited climate report, released on Monday, offered a stark reminder that removing massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential to prevent the gravest dangers of global warming. But it also underscored that the necessary technologies barely exist—and will be tremendously difficult to deploy. Global temperatures will continue to rise…

Covid cases in the US have doubled over the past two weeks, and scientists are now racing to understand the delta variant, which appears to account for the vast majority of new infections. Disturbingly, delta is more contagious than other variants and has also been causing some symptomatic “breakthrough” cases in vaccinated people. While vaccines…

Apple has boasted a few iconic ads during the company’s 45-year history, from the famous 1984 Super Bowl ad for Macs to the company’s combative 2019 ad campaign promising that “what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.” On Thursday, Apple announced new technologies to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) right on iPhones—and…

In the months before the first reports of covid-19 would emerge, a new kind of robot headed to work. Built on years of breakthroughs in deep learning, it could pick up all kinds of objects with remarkable accuracy, making it a shoo-in for jobs like sorting products into packages at warehouses. Previous commercial robots had…

Any effective plan to tackle climate change hinges on a basic technology: long wires strung across tall towers. The US needs to add hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines in the coming decades to weave together fragmented regional power systems into an interconnected grid capable of supporting a massive influx of renewables. A…

The World Health Organization has called for a halt to any booster shots until the end of September so that more people in low-income countries can get vaccinated first. The agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that more than 4 billion vaccine doses have now been administered globally, but 80% of those have gone to…

Even as climate change and urbanization make floods more frequent and their consequences more severe, a higher proportion of people are living in areas that experience them. In a new study published today in Nature, researchers used satellite images to map over 900 flood events that occurred between 2000 and 2018, affecting between 255 million…

Through job-matching platforms and AI-powered games and interviews, companies are relying more and more on artificial intelligence to streamline the hiring process. But some job seekers feel frustrated and misunderstood by these technologies. Malika Devaux is a student at the HOPE Program, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that provides job training. Devaux is looking for a job,…