Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending November 7, 2015)

Another chance to catch the most interesting and important articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.

November 6, 2015

Google Aims to Make VR Hardware Irrelevant Before It Even Gets Going
Smartphones have sidelined digital cameras and other special-purpose devices. Now Google thinks mobile phones will shove virtual-reality headsets like the Oculus Rift into the shadows, too.
Data Mining Reveals the Extent of China’s Ghost Cities
Overdevelopment in China has created urban regions known as ghost cities that are more or less uninhabited. Nobody knew how bad the problem was until Baidu used its Big Data Lab to find out.
Marvin Minsky Reflects on a Life in AI
A founding father of artificial intelligence talks about the great breakthroughs of his early years.
Yes, There Is a Technology Bubble, and That’s Okay
Nobel laureate Robert Shiller sees economic benefits to today’s technology-driven economy, but worries that automation poses “the challenge of our time.”
New Wearable Device Can Measure Your Blood Flow
An ultrathin, inexpensive wearable patch can give doctors detailed information about crucial markers of health.
New Sepsis Detector Shrinks the Diagnosis from Days to Hours
Sepsis affects more than a million people every year in the U.S. alone, and diagnosis can take five days. A new tool cuts the time to five hours.
Aquion Founder Jay Whitacre on the “Miracle Technology” in Batteries
The award-winning battery pioneer talks about the future of energy storage and the path to scaling low-cost, nontoxic batteries.