In September 2017, about two minutes before a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck Mexico City, blaring sirens alerted residents that a quake was coming. Such alerts, which are now available in the United States, Japan, Turkey, Italy, and Romania, among other countries, have changed the way we think about the threat of earthquakes. They no longer…

In its final weeks, the Obama administration released a report that rippled through the federal science and technology community. Titled Ensuring Long-Term US Leadership in Semiconductors, it warned that as conventional ways of building chips brushed up against the laws of physics, the United States was at risk of losing its edge in the chip industry. Five and a half years later, in 2022, Congress...

The surge of climate-tech startups seeking to reinvent clean energy and transform huge industrial markets is fueling optimism about our prospects for addressing climate change. Tens of billions are pouring into these venture-backed companies in just about every field you can imagine, from green steel to nuclear fusion. As I explain in “Climate tech is back—and this time, it can’t afford...

When athletes or soldiers have a concussion, the most beneficial course of action is to simply get them off the playing field or out of the action so they can recover. Yet much about head injuries remains a mystery, including the reasons why some impacts result in concussion while others don’t. But new measuring devices are being developed that could help deliver a wealth of information about...

What is the true value of a honeybee? A mountain stream? A mangrove tree?  Gretchen Daily, cofounder and faculty director of the Stanford Natural Capital Project, has dedicated her career to answering such complex questions. Using emerging scientific data and the project’s innovative open-source software, Daily and her team help governments, international banks, and NGOs to not only...

What if all you needed to lose weight were some good vibrations? That’s the idea behind a new weight-loss pill that tricks the brain into thinking the stomach is full, by stimulating the nerve endings that sense when the stomach expands. The capsule, about the size of a large vitamin, houses a tiny motor that starts vibrating when it hits the stomach, stimulating the organ’s stretch...

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 worst technology failures of 2023 Welcome to our annual list of the worst technologies. This year, one technology disaster in particular holds lessons for the rest of us: the Titan submersible that…

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Welcome back to The Checkup. This will be our last issue of 2023, so this week I’ve been reflecting on our biotechnology coverage over the past year. As I scrolled through our archives, I was struck...

If you think about it, there are so many people we meet on the internet daily whose real names we will never know. The TikTok teen who learned the trendy new dance, the anime artist who uploaded a new painting, the random commenter who posted under a YouTube video you just watched. That’s the internet…

When the Canadian engineer Harold Orr and his colleagues began designing an ultra-efficient home in Saskatchewan in the late ’70s, responding to a provincial conservation mandate during the oil embargo, they knew that the trick wasn’t generating energy in a greener way, but using less of it. They needed to make a better thermos, not a cheaper coffee maker. ARTHUR MOUNT 1...

Welcome to our annual list of the worst technologies. This year, one technology disaster in particular holds lessons for the rest of us: the Titan submersible that imploded in the shadow of the Titanic.  Everyone had warned Stockton Rush, the sub’s creator, that it wasn’t safe. But he believed innovation meant tossing out the rule…

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. Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML  Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences.  There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This has been quite the year for climate news, with weather disasters, technological breakthroughs, and policy changes making headlines around the world. There’s an abundance of bad news, but there are also…

Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences.  There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls of Times New Roman text on a colored background. In the 2000s, before Squarespace and social media, websites were manifestations of individuality—built entirely from scratch using HTML, by users who had some...

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. There was some good climate news in 2023. Really. Scientists are loudly warning that the world is running out of time to avoid dangerous warming levels. The picture is grim. But if you…

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. The new year will be here soon! Typically, it’s a great time for a fresh start. But not always. And today I want to talk about something that’s unfortunately moving in the…

Bad climate news was everywhere in 2023.  It’s been the hottest year on record, with January through November clocking in at 1.46 °C (2.62 °F) warmer on average than preindustrial temperatures. Meanwhile, emissions from fossil fuels hit a new high—36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, 1.1% more than in 2022.  Scientists are loudly warning that the world is running out of...

Google Glass, a prototype augmented-reality headset released in April 2013, had the makings of a hit. It promised intuitive, hands-free access to a smartphone’s most important features—video recording, navigation, and even email. Forget touch screens and buttons: the future of computing was on your face. It was a disaster.  Though beautiful in concept, Glass was…

I composed the following palindromes in honor of the 125th anniversary of MIT Technology Review. They include what I call a “punctuate-it-yourself” (or p-i-y) palindrome on James Mason Crafts. (Volume I, Issue 1 of the Review contained a lengthy profile of Crafts, who served as MIT’s fourth president and held the office from 1897 to 1900.) Usually, when I’m composing a series 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. These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI The internet changed everything—how we work and play, how we spend time with friends and family, how we learn, how we consume, how…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This has been one of the craziest years in AI in a long time: endless product launches, boardroom coups, intense policy debates about AI doom, and a race to find the…

It was a stranger who first brought home for me how big this year’s vibe shift was going to be. As we waited for a stuck elevator together in March, she told me she had just used ChatGPT to help her write a report for her marketing job. She hated writing reports because she didn’t…

After years of committing to sustainable practices in his personal life from recycling to using cloth-based diapers, Asim Hussain, currently the director of green software and ecosystems at Intel, began to ask questions about the practices in his work: software development. Developers often asked if their software was secure enough, fast enough, or cost-effective enough…

One can’t step into the same river twice. This simple representation of change as the only constant was taught by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus more than 2000 years ago. Today, it rings truer than ever with the advent of generative AI. The emergence of generative AI is having a profound effect on today’s enterprises—business leaders face a rapidly changing technology that they need to...