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104 articles from Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

Elon Musk’s plans to revive Vine face one big problem: the reason it closed originally

Good news, everyone: Vine is (probably) coming back. The much beloved wacky short-form-video-sharing app had a short life in the limelight from 2012 to 2017, when it was cut off in its prime (as many would have it). That’s helped ensure that it holds a space in many millennials’ hearts as the last glorious stand of the social web before it became tarnished and commoditized and every app...

How to befriend a crow

The crows play hide-and-seek with Nicole Steinke after her older kids head to school. She feeds a family of the birds from her apartment balcony in Alexandria, Virginia, twice daily (usually peanuts, but walnuts and cashews are valued treats). Once there’s no food left, they’ll look for her as she walks around her neighborhood. When one crow finds her, it will call to the others, and they’ll...


SATURDAY 29. OCTOBER 2022


Elon Musk doesn’t know what it takes to make a digital town square

It was in 2009 when the power of Twitter really became evident. As some Iranians tweeted through the country’s elections during a media blackout, the site began to emerge as a critical tool of global activists. Later movements, including the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the Movement for Black Lives, relied on Twitter to disseminate information and gain supporters. If the platform’s new...

I made it big on Twitter. Now I don’t think I can stay.

For a long time, it was worth it to stay on Twitter because Twitter had the power to change your life. I broke big on Twitter more than 10 years ago with a hashtag, #solidarityisforwhitewomen, and Twitter was great for my career. It gave me access to a global audience and allowed me unprecedented access to editors who helped shape my transition from being loud online to being a published author...


FRIDAY 28. OCTOBER 2022


Responsible AI has a burnout problem

Margaret Mitchell had been working at Google for two years before she realized she needed a break. “I started having regular breakdowns,” says Mitchell, who founded and co-led the company’s Ethical AI team. “That was not something that I had ever experienced before.” Only after she spoke with a therapist did she understand the problem:…

Will lab-grown meat reach our plates?

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Would you eat lab-grown meat? Plenty of companies have set out to generate meat products from muscle and fat cells cultured in vats—around 80 at the last count. The promise is huge. But whether these companies can deliver on that promise is...


THURSDAY 27. OCTOBER 2022


What new federal funding will mean for making batteries

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Welcome back to The Spark!  The US is on a climate tech spending spree. Over the past year, federal action has set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for energy and climate. Now, we’re starting to see some of that money actually get handed...


WEDNESDAY 26. OCTOBER 2022


Cars are still cars—even when they’re electric

EVs are being touted as the solution to our climate crisis—but are they? In the fall of 2021, President Joe Biden made a stop in Detroit to promote the Democrats’ infrastructure bill and the electric-vehicle rollout being touted by the administration as a key measure to address the climate crisis. But his visit showed exactly why we can’t just push electrification without addressing the...

Everything dies, including information

Everything dies: people, machines, civilizations. Perhaps we can find some solace in knowing that all the meaningful things we’ve learned along the way will survive. But even knowledge has a life span. Documents fade. Art goes missing. Entire libraries and collections can face quick and unexpected destruction.  Surely, we’re at a stage technologically where we might devise ways to make...

Never say die

Hi. How are you? I have some news. You’re going to die. We’re all going to die.  I’ve been thinking about this not only because we’ve been putting this issue, the Mortality issue, together but also because I’ve hit one of those arbitrary milestones in life. Which is to say I turn 50 this month.  This is mostly pretty cool. Beats the alternative, as they say. But one...

A search engine for shapes

Imagine you’re an automobile manufacturer. You have warehouse after warehouse full of parts. You’d like to use some of those parts in a new model and save on design and production costs. But you can’t find those parts through a text search. You don’t know what they’re called. Often the only record of them is tucked away in a database of 2D drawings or 3D models.  “Our search...

Alan ’72 and Joan Henricks

“MIT was a very humbling experience for me,” says Alan Henricks, one of the first generation in his Midwestern family to attend college. “But at the end of four years, it also gave me self-confidence to go forward in the world.” Doc Edgerton’s legacy. Alan, who went on to a successful career of leadership roles at several technology companies, and his wife, Joan, enthusiastically...

Building the next version of the internet

Kirin Sinha ’14 remembers the first time she worked with augmented reality (AR) as a student at MIT. With a friend and fellow engineer, she built the Ironman desk—a computer system and AI technology that uses holographic projections controlled by hand movements and voice commands. Today, she is the founder and CEO of Illumix, a technology and media company that develops immersive AR...

Building tomorrow’s world in words

On the surface, writing and engineering don’t seem to have much in common. But the link between the two is more than apparent to Suzanne Lane ’85, who’s been director of MIT’s Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (WRAP) program since 2013.  “I made our program’s motto ‘Building tomorrow’s world in words,’” she says. “Writing and communicating is...

Dynamic duo

Robert Downey Jr. got to wear Iron Man’s suit playing fictional MIT alum Tony Stark on the big screen. But he marveled at what he called “real-world technology miracles” when he met up with Professor Hugh Herr, who coleads MIT’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, in July. Downey serves on the center’s executive advisory board. 

How to see inside a tornado

Tornadoes form in 10 seconds or less. So Howie Blue­stein ’70, SM ’72, PhD ’76, a storm chaser for 40-plus years, is working with colleagues to build a new radar system that can scan nearly all of a storm’s volume in 15 seconds—and help forecasters quickly determine its potential to spawn life-threatening conditions. “This is going to allow us to see things perhaps we’ve never...

Ten to One founder aims to change people’s perception of rum

When you think of rum, what comes to mind? A strawberry daiquiri? A piña colada with a cocktail umbrella? Marc-Kwesi Farrell ’03 thinks there is a lot more to rum than that, and he’s on a mission to reinvent the spirit as a versatile, top-shelf drink.  “If you look at rum today, it is saddled with this overly narrow, somewhat caricatured view of what the spirit is meant to...

The bilingual brain

Close your eyes and, for a moment, imagine you know two languages. For any noun you can think of—object, feeling, place—two words exist where a monolingual brain comes up with only one. When speaking, reading, or writing, your brain must decide which of those words to use—an added task on top of the language processing you’re already doing.  Scientists suspect that sorting through...

The perks of being MIT alumni

Your MIT alumni benefits One of the most important MIT benefits alumni can access is the MITAA’s Infinite Connection (IC) web portal. With an IC account, you can search MIT’s online alumni directory and connect with alumni from your region, industry, course, living group, and more. You can also stay connected to other alumni by keeping your personal and professional information...


TUESDAY 25. OCTOBER 2022


This obscure shopping app is now America’s most downloaded

China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about what’s happening in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Welcome back to China Report.  Take a deep breath. The Chinese Communist Party Congress news cycle is (basically) over.  There are many significant things from the high-level political assembly to talk about, mostly around understanding…