The Download

What's up in emerging technology

Connectivity

HoloLens can now guide the blind through complicated buildings

The headset’s ability to map a space and talk people through it may prove more important than the mixing-imagery-with-reality stuff.
Sustainable Energy

NASA’s building new tools to manage water as climate dangers grow

After years of measuring California’s Sierra snowpack from the air, the agency is now developing similar systems for space.
Connectivity

Yes, Alexa is recording mundane details of your life, and it’s creepy as hell

I’m not kicking our smart speaker out of the house just yet, but the consequences of having it in my family’s life are becoming clear.
Connectivity

Now playing: a movie you control with your mind

Richard Ramchurn’s The Moment lets you play film director, using just your brainwaves.
Intelligent Machines

Microsoft is creating an oracle for catching biased AI algorithms

As more people use artificial intelligence, they will need tools that detect unfairness in the underlying algorithms.
Connectivity

How to get blockchains to talk to each other

If blockchains are really going to give us the internet of money, they’ll need to work together.
Sustainable Energy

California is throttling back record levels of solar—and that’s bad news for climate goals

Without big changes, the oversupply of renewables will stall efforts to overhaul the power sector.
Intelligent Machines

The US military is funding an effort to catch deepfakes and other AI trickery

But DARPA’s technologists admit that it might be a losing battle.
Business Impact

Job of the future: Embalming your online persona

The woman organizing our messy digital lives to survive us.

June 4-5, 2018

MIT Media Lab

When robots are your colleagues, which human skills will still matter?

Join the conversion at EmTech Next where we talk about the future of work with the world’s leading experts.

Register Now

Watch Video

More videos

Filtering Drinking Water with Nanofibers 03:17

Blood-Delivering Drones 04:23

How the SEC will affect ICOs 04:05

"Tezos tokens are akin to Amazon AWS credits" 00:25

"Bitcoin is like Coca-Cola" 01:11

Valuing an asset in the crypto world 00:27

Crypto assets versus cryptocurrencies 01:24

How the market is pricing each unit of Bitcoin's transaction volume 00:41

Why now? 01:55

How banks use blockchains 02:03

Sustainable Energy

Filtering Drinking Water with Nanofibers 03:17

Liquidity, an Alameda, California-based startup, has developed a low-cost water filter made from nanofibers that it hopes will reduce water-borne diseases in poor countries.

More Videos

From Our Current Issue

May/June 2018

The future of trust?

Chinese entrepreneurs have some creative responses to the government’s crackdown on crypto

Last September’s official restrictions have unleashed a wave of below-the-radar innovation.

Is the crypto world sexist? That might be the wrong question.

“Inclusion happens when people in power use that power to bring people in rather than keep people out.”

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2018

Dueling neural networks. Artificial embryos. AI in the cloud. Welcome to our annual list of the 10 technology advances we think will shape the way we work and live now and for years to come.

See the Collection

Rewriting Life

Reprogramming our bodies to make us healthier.

All Topics

  1. Gene therapy is saving children’s lives—but screening to discover who needs it is lagging behind

    States in the US have been slow to test newborns for genetic conditions.
    by Emily Mullin

  2. It’s fiction, but America just got wiped out by a man-made terror germ

    At “germ games” held in Washington, DC, pandemic planners get a look at the threat posed by synthetic biology.
    by Antonio Regalado

  3. Does the brain store information in discrete or analog form?

    New evidence in favor of a discrete form of data storage could change the way we understand the brain and the devices we build to interface with it.
    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
More from Rewriting Life
Webcast

Rapid Engineering Design Innovation for a Connected World

Presented by IBM

Briefing Paper

How to Unlock the Power of IoT with Real-Time Monitoring

In association with AppDynamics

Webcast

Optimizing Assets: Using AI to Rethink Maintenance and Repair

Presented by IBM

Executive Briefing

Cloud Development: The Key to Rapid Innovation

In partnership with Oracle

Features

Sustainable Energy

The scientist still fighting for the clean fuel the world forgot

A decade of investment in advanced biofuels led nowhere, but Jay Keasling remains undaunted.

by James Temple

Rewriting Life

A stealthy Harvard startup wants to reverse aging in dogs, and humans could be next

Biologist George Church says the idea is to live to 130 in the body of a 22-year-old.
Connectivity

In blockchain we trust

To understand why blockchain matters, look past the wild speculation at what is being built underneath, argue the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency and its newly published follow-up, The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything.

Sustainable Energy

Can we sustainably provide food, water, and energy to a growing population during a climate crisis?

All Topics

  1. Trump’s coal pandering plan would raise costs, undermine renewables

    Other power producers will immediately challenge the order.
    by James Temple

  2. NASA’s building new tools to manage water as climate dangers grow

    After years of measuring California’s Sierra snowpack from the air, the agency is now developing similar systems for space.
    by James Temple

  3. California is throttling back record levels of solar—and that’s bad news for climate goals

    Without big changes, the oversupply of renewables will stall efforts to overhaul the power sector.
    by James Temple
More from Sustainable Energy