MIT Technology Review

This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the year’s most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a few years off. Below, you’ll find a brief description along with a link to a feature article that probes each technology in…

In late 2012, AI scientists first figured out how to get neural networks to “see.” They proved that software designed to loosely mimic the human brain could dramatically improve existing computer-vision systems. The field has since learned how to get neural networks to imitate the way we reason, hear, speak, and write. But while AI…

The conventional story of CRISPR genome editing is one of heroic power and promise with an element of peril. That peril became personified when MIT Technology Review’s Antonio Regalado revealed in November 2018 that a young Chinese scientist named He Jiankui was using CRISPR to engineer human embryos. At least three of them became living…

Deven Karpelman would never have joined TikTok if it hadn’t been for the pandemic. And she certainly never expected to be famous on it. But the app has a way of rewarding good content with views, dropping new creators in front of a broad spectrum of fans. That’s how Karpelman, a 57-year-old who works in…

From “The Potential of Nations,” December 1961: The national potential of a country includes more than its ability to produce raw materials and consumer goods, to provide and maintain public safety, and to protect its population from internal and external enemies. A nation also has a cultural potential when promotion of the sciences and the…

After months of social distancing, it’s not surprising that many people have felt starved for human companionship. Now a study from MIT has found that to our brains, the longings we feel during isolation are indeed similar to the food cravings we feel when hungry. After subjects endured one day of total isolation, looking at…

After a worldwide search that turned up 60 candidates, the MIT Media Lab has announced that Dava Newman, SM ’89, SM ’89, PhD ’92, an MIT professor of astronautics, will become its new director on July 1. Newman, whose work has integrated engineering, design, and biomedical research with an eye to improving human performance in…

Robot design is usually a painstaking process, but MIT researchers have developed a system that helps automate the task. Once it’s told which parts you have—such as wheels, joints, and body segments—and what terrain the robot will need to navigate, RoboGrammar is on the case, generating optimized structures and control programs. To rule out “nonsensical”…

Scientists have known for decades that thunderstorms are often stronger where there are high concentrations of aerosols—airborne particles too small to see with the naked eye. Lightning flashes are more frequent along shipping routes, where freighters emit particulates into the air, than in the surrounding ocean. And the most intense thunderstorms in the tropics brew…

Listening to Angelika Amon teach my cancer biology class in the spring of 2001 felt like diving into the depths of a vivid novel, with dramatic moments and elaborate bursts of detail. She somehow brought each area of the cell to life, spinning the tale of its function into a compelling story. In this pivotal…

Diane Hoskins ’79 grew up with plenty of exposure to “beautiful, incredible buildings,” both in Chicago’s famously photogenic downtown and in the pages of Architectural Record, where her mother worked. It was only natural that she should become an architect herself. For the past 15 years, she’s been co-CEO of Gensler, the world’s largest architecture…

In the fall of 1951, about 20 MIT engineering students received a missive from a planet more than 30 light-years from Earth. Confidential documents and memos, printed on letterhead dated 1,000 years in the future, detailed the discovery of intelligent life on a planet called Arcturus IV and outlined what humans knew about their alien…

Sarah Low ’03 studied architecture at MIT, but now she spends most days either in the operating room or outdoors as a veterinarian. Her area of interest is free-roaming horses, a population that is growing in the United States: the number of federally managed mustangs in the western states is projected to reach 2.8 million…

Early in the pandemic, some headlines argued that covid-19 was the great equalizer—because anyone, no matter their circumstance, could catch it. In reality, it was clear that the virus was affecting some groups of Americans in disproportionate, devastating ways. Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Indigenous communities, and other people of color have been affected the most,…

Early this winter, I took a long walk in the Salt Lake City park in which I had been arrested for bathing in a river when I was homeless. About 30 minutes into that walk, I stood across from the park’s granite meditation temple, thinking: Three and a half years ago, I slept under that…

NASA has just released the first videos and images taken by the Perseverance rover as it landed—as well as the first sounds ever recorded from the surface of Mars. What happened: On February 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed safely on Mars, the end of a journey that began last July. The spacecraft survived its “seven…

Democracies around the world are all mired in one crisis or another, which is why measures of their health are trending in the wrong direction. Many look at the decline of the news industry as one contributing factor. No wonder, then, that figuring out how to pay for journalism is an urgent issue, and some…

A leaked scientific report jointly prepared by Israel’s health ministry and Pfizer claims that the company’s covid-19 vaccine is stopping nine out of 10 infections and the country could approach herd immunity by next month. The study, based on the health records of hundreds of thousands of Israelis, finds that the vaccine may sharply curtail…

On Valentine’s Day, Texas plunged into a polar vortex the likes of which hadn’t been seen since 1899. Freezing temperatures led to widespread power outages. Homes more used to the swampy heat were useless against the wind and cold, with pipes bursting and ceilings caving in. Where water, clothing, and food were being distributed, lines…

Trapped inside a long glass tube in a ground-floor lab at Harvard University is a miniature copy of the stratosphere. When I visited Frank Keutsch in the fall of 2019, he walked me down to the lab, where the tube, wrapped in gray insulation, ran the length of a bench in the back corner. By…

NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars. The spacecraft survived its journey through the Martian atmosphere and made a soft touchdown at Jezero crater. Shortly after landing, it sent back this picture from the surface using its Hazard Avoidance Cameras , which it will use when on the move. The image is partially obscured by a…

Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes when he published his theory of general relativity in 1916, describing how gravity shapes the fabric of spacetime. But astronomers didn’t spot one until 1964, some 6,070 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. Geiger counters launched into space detected cosmic x-rays coming from a region called Cygnus…

The popularity of the design, build, and test approach to engineering is fast-waning as today’s engineers face unprecedented pressure to innovate, keep pace with the latest technologies, and design creative solutions to urgent problems. Consider, for example, automated driving systems. Although autonomous vehicles promise to significantly improve mobility, engineers must test these frameworks for critical…

NASA officials have an expression for what it’s like to land a rover on Mars: seven minutes of terror. A million things could go wrong as the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere and attempts to make it to the surface safely. The drama is made all the more stressful by the 11-minute lag in communications…

Valerie Moreno laughed out loud when I asked if her family received regular medical checkups. “Oh my gosh, no!” she said. “We have to be dying before we see a doctor.” The reason why wasn’t a mystery. Valerie, who was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, her dark hair showing a few grays, pulled her…

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates takes a technology-­centered approach to understanding the climate crisis. Gates begins with the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases that people create every year. He slices this pollution into sectors by the size of their footprints—working his way from electricity, manufacturing, and agriculture…

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates lays out what it will really take to eliminate the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change. The Microsoft cofounder, who is now cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and chair of the investment fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, sticks to his past argument…

Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer currently works remotely from Colombia. As an epidemiologist, she has been watching from afar as her colleagues back at the University of California, San Francisco, have started receiving vaccines available to lab workers. The situation is very different where she now lives. Colombia is suffering a massive covid-19 outbreak and is still waiting to…

On Sunday, January 24, with Southern California’s intensive-care units (ICUs) at full capacity, a shuttle bus made the short trip from a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica to an open-plan office in Culver City, carrying business executives from as far away as Israel, Hawaii, and Vancouver. Some had paid upwards of $30,000 to attend a…

Helen Mort couldn’t believe what she was hearing. There were naked photos of her plastered on a porn site, an acquaintance told her. But never in her life had she taken or shared intimate photos. Surely there must be some mistake? When she finally mustered up the courage to look, she felt frightened and humiliated.…

During the first week of February, a winter storm blew through Chicago, leaving piles of snow before subzero temperatures set in. Eve Bloomgarden, an endocrinologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, got a call from a worried patient who was scheduled to receive a covid-19 vaccine that week. She was preparing to brave the weather—and drive for…

The Biden administration announced its third major climate effort on Thursday, February 11, rolling out initiatives to accelerate innovation in clean energy and climate technology. The White House has formed a working group to help set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate (ARPA-C), which Biden pledged to create during the campaign. Its mission will be…

An international team of astronomers has found signs that a habitable planet may be lurking in Alpha Centauri, a binary star system a mere 4.37 light-years away. It could be one of the closest habitable planet prospects to date, although it’s probably not much like Earth if it exists. What’s Alpha Centauri? It’s the closest…

On January 28, a physician at a hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad received an SMS with the date and time for his first shot of a covid-19 vaccine. He’d been toiling away in the covid ward, where he’d watched many breathe their last since April, and the vaccine was the one thing…

When acting Danish finance minister Morten Bødskov announced last week that Denmark would soon launch a digital “corona passport,” the news spread rapidly around the world. For many, the promise of an app that would enable people to prove they were vaccinated against covid-19 or otherwise immune was exciting: it suddenly put international travel, restaurant…

Update 11:20 a.m. Eastern: The Hope probe is officially in orbit around Mars. Fewer than half of all the spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it. For every celebrated mission like NASA’s Curiosity Rover, there’s a story of failure like the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander, which crashed into the Martian…

If we ever start an extraterrestrial colony on Mars, we’ll need water for a host of essential services, and most obviously for something to drink. But while there’s plenty of water ice at the planet’s poles, the elevation is too high and there’s limited access to sunlight for power. So we’ll want to look for…

A hyper-transmissible form of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 has been found in US sewer systems in California and Florida, confirming its widening presence in the US. Buckets of dirty water drawn from sewer pipes near Los Angeles and outside Orlando starting in late January are among those in which genetic mutations shared by a…

Over the last few years, Section 230 of the 1996 US Communications Decency Act has metamorphosed from a little-known subset of regulations about the internet into a major rallying point for both the right and left. So when Democrats unveiled their attempt to overhaul the law on Friday, the technology world took notice. There have…

While much of the world is engaged in a frantic scramble to get vaccinated against covid-19, there’s one group noticeably absent from the queues of people at vaccine clinics: children. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is still approved for use only in those aged 16 years or older, and the Moderna vaccine is only for adults. Both…

Our dependency on tech has soared during the pandemic. The app analytics company App Annie found that people spent around 4 hours and 18 minutes per day on mobile devices in April 2020. That’s a 20% increase from the year before, equating to an extra 45 minutes per day of screen time. Research shows that…

As machine-learning applications move into the mainstream, a new era of cyber threat is emerging—one that uses offensive artificial intelligence (AI) to supercharge attack campaigns. Offensive AI allows attackers to automate reconnaissance, craft tailored impersonation attacks, and even self-propagate to avoid detection. Security teams can prepare by turning to defensive AI to fight back—using autonomous…

It’s no secret that predictive policing tools are racially biased. A number of studies have shown that racist feedback loops can arise if algorithms are trained on police data, such as arrests. But new research shows that training predictive tools in a way meant to lessen bias has little effect. Arrest data biases predictive tools…

In 1964, mathematician and computer scientist Woodrow Bledsoe first attempted the task of matching suspects’ faces to mugshots. He measured out the distances between different facial features in printed photographs and fed them into a computer program. His rudimentary successes would set off decades of research into teaching machines to recognize human faces. Now a…

On December 23, as part of a publicity push to encourage people to get vaccinated against covid-19, the University of Pennsylvania released footage of two researchers who developed the science behind the shots, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, getting their inoculations. The vaccines, icy concoctions of fatty spheres and genetic instructions, used a previously unproven…

Most image-recognition systems are trained using large databases that contain millions of photos of everyday objects, from snakes to shakes to shoes. With repeated exposure, AIs learn to tell one type of object from another. Now researchers in Japan have shown that AIs can start learning to recognize everyday objects by being trained on computer-generated…

On Tuesday, February 2, Jeff Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as Amazon’s CEO later this year (though he will stay with the company as he transitions into a role as executive chairman of Amazon’s board). In his statement, Bezos noted that he was looking forward to having “the time and energy I…

Before his 190-square-foot apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district was connected to the internet, Marvis Phillips depended on a friend with a laptop for his prolific letter-writing campaigns. Phillips, a community organizer, wrote each note by hand and mailed them, then his friend typed and sent the missives, via email and online comment forms, to…

SpaceX weathered through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic last year to become the first private company to launch astronauts into space using a commercial spacecraft. It’s poised to build on that success with another huge milestone before 2021 is over. On Monday, the company announced plans to launch the first “all-civilian” mission into orbit…

In December 2018, researchers at Google detected a group of hackers with their sights set on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Even though new development was shut down two years earlier, it’s such a common browser that if you can find a way to hack it, you’ve got a potential open door to billions of computers. The…