Technology Review's Briefings are primers on key emerging technologies that promise to be transformational in their impact.
Electricity
The great electrification projects of the 19th and 20th centuries created a world where (at least in developed countries) electricity is as common as clean water. They also created a world addicted to fossil fuels. Globally, over 40 percent of electricity is generated from coal and another 20 percent from natural gas, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.
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How civilians helped win the Libyan information war.
Google's ambitious book-scanning program is foundering in the courts. Now a Harvard-led group is launching its own sweeping effort to put our literary heritage online. Will the Ivy League succeed where Silicon Valley failed?
A mathematical upgrade promises a speedier digital world.
How civilians helped win the Libyan information war.
The path computing has taken wasn't inevitable. Even today's machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany's codes.
A startup called Nicira is reinventing computer networking with an audacious goal: to make all kinds of Internet services smarter, faster, and cheaper.
Information technology is reducing the need for certain jobs faster than new ones are being created.
The path computing has taken wasn't inevitable. Even today's machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany's codes.
Local programmers and homegrown business models are helping to realize the vast promise of using phones to improve health care and save lives.
Foundation Medicine is offering a test that helps oncologists choose drugs targeted to the genetic profile of a patient's tumor cells. Has personalized cancer treatment finally arrived?
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