The Download

What's up in emerging technology

Business Impact

This Year’s 35 Innovators Under the Age of 35

Meet the young inventors, pioneers, entrepreneurs, visionaries, and humanitarians that will change the world.
Business Impact

The Enduring Legacy of Zork

The innovative text-adventure game still influences technologists 40 years after its creation.
Intelligent Machines

Hackers Are the Real Obstacle for Self-Driving Vehicles

Out-of-work truckers armed with “adversarial machine learning” could dazzle autonomous vehicles into crashing.
Connectivity

This App May Be the Future of Bedtime Stories

A startup is using voice recognition during story time to bridge the digital and real worlds.
Connectivity

The Creator of Android Made a $699 Phone That’s Beautiful but Not Essential

We tried Andy Rubin’s new Essential Phone so you don’t have to.
Rewriting Life

A Cancer “Atlas” to Predict How Patients Will Fare

Researchers use a big-data approach to find links between different genes and patient survival.
Intelligent Machines

AI Is Taking Over the Cloud

Cloud storage company Box is using Google’s vision technology to make its service considerably smarter.
Rewriting Life

Doctors Plan Bold Test of Gene Therapy on Boys with Muscular Dystrophy

How an unusual medical case in the 1990s provided a clue for how to treat a fatal muscle disease.
Intelligent Machines

AI Programs Are Learning to Exclude Some African-American Voices

Voice interfaces, chatbots, and other systems are discriminating against certain minority dialects.

Features

Connectivity

Eliminating the Human

We are beset by—and immersed in—apps and devices that are quietly reducing the amount of meaningful interaction we have with each other.

by David Byrne

Rewriting Life

A New Way to Reproduce

Scientists are trying to manufacture eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Will it end reproduction as we know it?
Connectivity

“Alexa, Understand Me”

Voice-based AI devices aren’t just jukeboxes with attitude. They could become the primary way we interact with our machines.
Content Hub

The Bridge to Digital Transformation: The Move to a Software-Based Network Strategy

Presented in partnership with VMware

Custom Research Report

Finance and HR: The Cloud’s New Power Partnership

In partnership with Oracle

View from the Marketplace

Fight Scale with Scale

Samsung has rebounded from its battery-related challenges by expanding its fault resolution capabilities and is now positioned to revolutionize the manner in which the global smartphone industry mitigates future issues. Samsung’s solution could have massive ramifications for the industry, creating a quality control platform in which the entire industry may participate.

In partnership with Samsung

Custom White Paper

Transform Customer Experiences by Harnessing the Power of AI in CRM

In partnership with Salesforce

Features

Business Impact

A Different Story from the Middle East: Entrepreneurs Building an Arab Tech Economy

Middle Eastern startups are overcoming cultural and other barriers to tap into a growing local taste for technology, from Bitcoin wallets to digital publishing.

by Christopher M. Schroeder

Sustainable Energy

To Feed the World, Improve Photosynthesis

By reworking the basic metabolism of crops, plant scientists hope to forestall devastating food shortages.
Sustainable Energy

For Wind Power, Bigger Is Better

Things are looking up for wind power—way up. Wind is now competitive with fossil fuels in many areas of the world, while the rise of turbines to new heights figures to bring down costs even more.

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More videos

CRISPR Decoded 02:22

Blockchain Decoded 01:58

This Is How You'll Actually Use AR at Home 00:46

Q&A with Tim Cook 02:24

Blood-Delivering Drones 04:23

Why I Left the Hospital System and Started Working in Telemedicine 04:03

Beyond Finance: Considering Business and Social Impact of Blockchains 33:57

Jean Yang: Innovator Under 35 02:18

Kevin Esvelt: Innovator Under 35 03:44

China's Robot Workforce 02:06

Rewriting Life

CRISPR Decoded 02:22

Your two-minute guide to understanding how the revolutionary gene editing technology works.

More Videos

50 Smartest Companies 2017

Explore the 50 smartest companies in depth, including the full list and stories that examine how this group is combining important technologies and smart business strategies to best the competition.

See the Collection

From Our Current Issue

July/August 2017

Our editors pick the 50 companies that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model.

A Reality Check for IBM’s AI Ambitions

IBM, number 39 on our list of the 50 Smartest Companies, overhyped its Watson machine-learning system, but the company still could have the best access to the kind of data needed to make medicine much smarter.

General Electric Builds an AI Workforce

As part of its shift toward high-tech businesses, the 125-year-old company, number 40 on our list of the 50 Smartest Companies, is threading artificial intelligence throughout its operations, starting with its scientists.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

These breakthrough technologies will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are here now; others will take a decade to develop. But you should know about all of them right now.

See the List

Business Impact

How technology advances are changing the economy and providing new opportunities in many industries.

All Topics

  1. Can WeChat Thrive in the United States?

    Though the messaging app dominates in China, few Americans have even heard of it.
    by Emily Parker

  2. The Enduring Legacy of Zork

    The innovative text-adventure game still influences technologists 40 years after its creation.
    by Elizabeth Woyke

  3. The 5 Smartest Companies Analyzing Your DNA

    These companies are leading the charge in consumer and medical genetics.
    by Emily Mullin
More from Business Impact

Internet of Things: A World on the Move

Sponsored by Siemens

  1. If Only a Simple Gadget Rating Could Save Us from Cyberattack

    Suggestions that a security score be awarded to connected devices is a lovely idea that would be almost impossible to implement.
    by Jamie Condliffe

  2. Botnets of Things: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

    The relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.
    by Bruce Schneier

  3. Personal AI Privacy Watchdog Could Help You Regain Control of Your Data

    If regulators aren’t going to help consumers make sense of what companies are doing with their data, maybe artificial intelligence can.
    by Mike Orcutt
More in Internet of Things: A World on the Move

November 6-9, 2017

Cambridge, MA

Discover the emerging technologies that will change the world.

Meet the people and companies shaping our future. From next-generation brain interfaces to the impact of social media on society and much more, this is the tech conference you must not miss.

Register Now

Connectivity

What it means to be constantly connected with each other and vast sources of information.

All Topics

  1. This App May Be the Future of Bedtime Stories

    A startup is using voice recognition during story time to bridge the digital and real worlds.
    by Rachel Metz

  2. The Creator of Android Made a $699 Phone That’s Beautiful but Not Essential

    We tried Andy Rubin’s new Essential Phone so you don’t have to.
    by Rachel Metz

  3. Growing Up with Alexa

    What will it do to kids to have digital butlers they can boss around?
    by Rachel Metz
More from Connectivity

AI Meets CRM: Transforming Customer Experiences

Sponsored by Salesforce

  1. Transform Customer Experiences by Harnessing the Power of AI in CRM

    Companies are using AI to build personalized and dynamic experiences to engage both internal and external audiences.
    by MIT Technology Review Custom

  2. Artificial Intelligence for Everyone: A Next-Generation Experience

    Organizations today are challenged with mining, analyzing and putting to good use the vast amounts of data now flooding in from multiple checkpoints. How to utilize that data to get closer to internal and external customers?
    by MIT Technology Review Custom

  3. Customer Data Meets AI

    A new day is dawning for the customer experience, driven by the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automated technologies to CRM data. The potential exists to transform the customer’s experience by providing service in a more predictive and intuitive way than ever before.
    by MIT Technology Review Custom
More in AI Meets CRM: Transforming Customer Experiences

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Innovations, Ideas, and Insights

Provided by BBVA

  1. Our Extended Sensoria. How Humans Will Connect with the Internet of Things

    Mark Weiser predicted the Internet of Things in a seminal article in 1991 about how people would interact with networked computation distributed into the environments and artifacts around them.
    by Joseph A. Paradiso

  2. Interstellar travel and post-humans

    The stupendous time-spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture.
    by Martin Rees

  3. Robotics, Smart Materials, and their Future Impact for Humans

    We are on the cusp of a robotics revolution in which the boundaries between artificial intelligence and biology are blurring.
    by Jonathan Rossiter
More in Innovations, Ideas, and Insights