In labs around the world, researchers are busy creating technologies that will change the way we conduct business and live our lives. These are not the latest crop of gadgets and gizmos: they are completely new technologies that could soon transform computing, medicine, manufacturing, transportation, and our energy infrastructure. Nurturing the people and the culture needed to make the birth of such technological ideas possible is a messy endeavor, as MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte explains in Creating a Culture of Ideas . But in this special section, Technology Review's editors have identified 10 emerging technologies that we predict will have a tremendous influence in the near future. For each, we've chosen a researcher or research team whose work and vision is driving the field. The profiles, on the following pages, offer a sneak preview of the technology world in the years and decades to come.

Wireless Sensor Networks