MIT Technology Review

Michael Worobey hasn’t always been certain about where covid originated. During the pandemic, the University of Arizona professor has studied how the virus changes over time, and was among a group of 18 influential scientists who signed a letter in May calling for further investigation to help prove or disprove the theory that SARS-CoV-2 emerged…

From cars to planes, the future of transportation is already here—and is changing rapidly. Software engineering is increasingly central to both the development and maintenance of all kinds of vehicles. That means more people need to start thinking like systems engineers. Dale Tutt, vice president of aerospace and defense industry for Siemens Software, says this…

Our 35 Innovators Under 35 competition for 2022 is now open for nominations. You can nominate great candidates from now until 10 p.m. EST on January 24, 2022. We’ve been publishing a list of young innovators for more than two decades now. The list always includes fascinating stories of young people working to employ technology…

At long last, physicists from Harvard and MIT have found the killer application for quantum computing: a Mario Bros. GIF made from qubits. The qubits (quantum bits) can also be arranged in a Space Invaders design, or Tetris, or any other shape—your geometrical wish is the qubits’ command. The GIFs were offered up by QuEra…

The next wave of aerospace is just around the corner, and a lot of that innovation is happening thanks to new, faster methods of development. “What’s happening now is that companies are trying to understand how they take the lessons from Agile software development and apply those to Agile product development,” explains Dale Tutt, vice…

Data is growing at a meteoric rate. In fact, the total amount of data generated by 2025 is set to accelerate exponentially to 175 zettabytes.1 And over the next two years, enterprise data is expected to increase at a 42% annual growth rate. Hidden within these vast volumes of data are insights into consumer behavior,…

In 2018, when Google employees found out about their company’s involvement in Project Maven, a controversial US military effort to develop AI to analyze surveillance video, they weren’t happy. Thousands protested. “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” they wrote in a letter to the company’s leadership. Around a dozen…

In Facebook’s vision of the metaverse, we will all interact in a mashup of the digital and physical worlds. Digital representations of ourselves will eat, talk, date, shop, and more. That’s the picture Mark Zuckerberg painted as he rebranded his company Meta a couple of weeks ago. The Facebook founder’s typically awkward presentation used a…

Germany’s coronavirus case numbers have reached their highest levels since the early days of the pandemic, with warnings that covid is “spreading dramatically” and requires a “quick and unified response.” At the same time, the Netherlands is imposing partial restrictions to control rising case levels, including an 8 p.m. curfew on stores and restaurants, and…

Companies across all industries are faced with the urgent need to transform the way they do business, including financial services, but changes abound with governance, security, and culture. A shift in mindset and perspective away from “the way things have always been done” is key to a successful digital transformation and to providing the frictionless…

The draining 996 work schedule—named for the expectation that employees work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—has persisted in Chinese companies for years despite ongoing public outcry. Even Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma once called it a “huge blessing.” In early October this year, it seemed the tide might have been turning. After hopeful signs of increased government scrutiny in August, four aspiring…

Last month, the primary source for the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files, revealed her identity in an episode of 60 Minutes. Frances Haugen, a former product manager at the company, says she came forward after she saw Facebook’s leadership repeatedly prioritize profit over safety. She then appeared before lawmakers in the US and the UK to talk…

E. coli thrives in our guts, sometimes to unfortunate effect, and it facilitates scientific advances—in DNA, biofuels, and Pfizer’s covid vaccine, to name but a few. Now this multitalented bacterium has a new trick: it can solve a classic computational maze problem using distributed computing—dividing up the necessary calculations among different types of genetically engineered…

In the spring of 2021, MIT Technology Review announced a fellowship focused on exploring the different ways in which technology and data were being used to address issues of inequality during the pandemic. With the assistance of the Heising-Simons Foundation—a Los Altos and San Francisco, California-based family foundation that supports projects focused on climate and…

The increasing overlap between the world’s arms trade and the secretive surveillance industry risks damaging US national security and will create the potential for even more abuse unless more accountability is introduced, according to a new study. The research, from the American think tank the Atlantic Council, offers one of the most thorough accountings ever…

Every 10 years, US astronomers and astrophysicists release a new report to guide the next decade of astronomy and astrophysics research. Today the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published the latest, setting a new trajectory for modern space exploration. Dubbed Astro2020, the decadal survey draws from hundreds of white papers and several years…

India has officially joined the net-zero pledge club, and its 2070 target presents a reasonable, if challenging, timeline for the country. The commitment was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 1 at the COP26 UN climate conference. While the target date is still decades away, and later than the 2050 goal set by…

While they wrestle with the immediate danger posed by hackers today, US government officials are preparing for another, longer-term threat: attackers who are collecting sensitive, encrypted data now in the hope that they’ll be able to unlock it at some point in the future. The threat comes from quantum computers, which work very differently from…

NASA is exploring a concept for a new fleet of mini-rovers that can work together to solve problems and make decisions as a unit. If one fails or gets stuck somewhere, the others could carry on without it. As part of the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project, NASA engineers are designing compact, mobile…

This is the second article in a series of three. The first focused on the importance of making businesses more future-ready and how to work through common obstacles on the path to digitization. We also discussed how modernizing on-premises infrastructure as part of a hybrid cloud approach can best be managed via hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI),…

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML) are key technologies that help organizations develop new ways to increase sales, reduce costs, streamline business processes, and understand their customers better. AWS helps customers accelerate their AI/ML adoption by delivering powerful compute, high-speed networking, and scalable high-performance storage options on demand for any machine learning project.…

There’s probably no such thing as perfect privacy and security online. Hackers regularly breach corporate firewalls to gain customers’ private information, and scammers constantly strive to trick us into divulging our passwords. But existing tools can provide a high level of privacy—if we use them correctly, says Mashael Al Sabah, a cybersecurity researcher at the…

In March 2020, companies large and small, across industries, and around the world, had to pivot nearly overnight to remote work because of pandemic-related shutdowns. In fact, over a third of US workers reported working remotely during that time, including nearly three-quarters of the highest-income workers. Digital meeting and collaboration tools such as Zoom, Microsoft…

A few years ago, a young man from California’s technology scene began popping up in the world’s leading developmental biology labs. These labs were deciphering the secrets of embryos and had a particular interest in how eggs are formed. Some thought if they discovered that recipe, they would be able to copy it and transmute…

Thousands of delegates will amass in Glasgow, Scotland, in the coming days for the annual UN climate conference, where they’ll spend two weeks squabbling over a lengthy list of action items that add up to a single question: How much faster will the world move to prevent catastrophic warming this century? If history is any…

Algorithms now determine how much things cost. It’s called dynamic pricing and it adjusts according to current market conditions in order to increase profits. The rise of e-commerce has propelled pricing algorithms into an everyday occurrence—whether you’re shopping on Amazon, booking a flight, hotel or ordering an Uber. In this continuation of our series on…

In the coming years, mobility solutions—or how we get from point A to point B—will bridge the gap between ground and air transportation—yes, that means flying cars. Technological advancements are transforming mobility for people and, leading to unprecedented change. Nand Kochhar, vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software says this transformation extends beyond…

Mr. Fu, a driver in Beijing for the food delivery service Eleme, makes about a dozen deliveries per shift. But he could make more—and spill less—if he didn’t have to constantly get his phone out to update his status. “I have to log in every few minutes on the app to avoid being penalized if…

I’m Mat Honan, the new editor in chief of MIT Technology Review. This is the first issue of the magazine I’ve had the pleasure of working on. Maybe you have been reading Technology Review for years, like me. Or maybe this is your first issue. Either way, I’m excited by the opportunity to make this…

February 1969 From “Man, Machine, and Information Flight Systems”: The flight of Apollo 8 to the moon involved obtaining and processing more bits of data than were used by all fighting forces in World War II. The technological achievement in developing advanced rockets for flying to the moon is reasonably well known. Much less understood,…

In May 2020, two months after covid-19 shut down schools and public life around the world, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he was giving $10 million to California’s Oakland Unified School District to purchase 25,000 Chromebooks. Dorsey tweeted that his donation was intended “to give EVERY single child in Oakland access to a laptop…

Freshman year of high school, my boyfriend asked, “What’s it like having her around all the time?” He meant Kim. The bell for third period rang. I shifted against him, a combination lock pressed into my back, lockers slamming around us. Our mouths were still so close. I’d been wondering if he also felt hot…