Technology Review's Briefings are primers on key emerging technologies that promise to be transformational in their impact.
Personalized Medicine
The dream of personalized medicine was one of the driving forces behind the 13-year, $3 billion Human Genome Project. Researchers hoped that once the genetic blueprint was revealed, they could create DNA tests to gauge individuals' risk for conditions like diabetes and cancer, allowing for targeted screening or preëmptive intervention. Genetic information would help doctors select the right drugs to treat disease in a given patient. Such advances would dramatically improve medicine and simultaneously lower costs by eliminating pointless treatments and reducing adverse drug reactions.
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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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