October 2012 | www.technologyreview.com p84 Electronic tattoos
p77 Cheap natural gas: boon or boondoggle?
p22 Fred Wilson on why the collapse of venture capital is good Published by MIT
35 REVOLUTIONARY MEET THE MEN AND WOMEN UNDER THE AGE OF 35 INNOVATORS WHO ARE REINVENTING COMPUTING, ENERGY, AND BIOMEDICINE Featured Speakers
Anant Agarwal Idit Harel Caperton Chuck Dages edX World Wide Workshop Warner Brothers emtech MIT October 24–26, 2012 n Cambridge, MA
Finalize your plans today to attend Meet the 2012 Global TR35 TR35, the top innovators EmTech MIT, Technology Review’s annual under the age of 35. Past conference that showcases the new members include Microsoft’s Danah Boyd, Google’s Sergey Brin, and technologies that matter. Tesla’s JB Straubel.
Get to know today’s T R10 top companies in a Technology Review’s annual EmTech MIT is an access whole new light. EmTech showcases the year’s most point to the most innovative people and companies from innovative organizations, including: around the world. It is a place of inspiration, providing an opportunity to glimpse the future and understand the implications of the year’s most significant developments. Steve Herrod Joi Ito Nicholas Negroponte VMWare MIT Media Lab One Laptop Per Child
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• Nathan Myhrvold, founder of Intellectual Ventures, on investing in scalable alternative energy sources Contents VOLUME 115, NUMBER 5
Ren Ng ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR
p. 26
Photograph by Timothy Archibald
25 35 INNOVATORS UNDER 35 CO
ILLUSTRATION BYVER HARRY Our latest group of 35 young innovators features people whose contributions in energy, medicine, computing, and materials will inluence the direction of human afairs. C AM
PBELL By THE EDITORS Name Dr. Dave Barrett Job Title Professor, Mechanical Engineering Area of Expertise Robotics LabVIEW Helped Me Bridge the gap between teaching theory and real- world design experience Latest Project Building a robotic tuna to swim across the Atlantic Ocean
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©2011 National Instruments. All rights reserved. LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. 01197 Contents VOLUME 115, NUMBER 5
8 Feedback REVIEWS 89 75 Facebook: The Real 12 From the Editor Presidential Swing State The election’s outcome could NOTEBOOKS be less about grand vision than 10 Engine Reinvention about online data analytics. Novel engine designs could By David Talbot help meet our growing energy demand. 77 King Natural Gas By Shannon Miller Is cheap natural gas really a bridge to a greener future? 10 Incubating Programmers By David Rotman Today’s gadgets aren’t hackable enough to inspire young innova- 80 ICANN’s Boondoggle tors in computing. How the expansion of Internet By Eben Upton domain names will just create a big mess. 11 Personal Defenses By Wade Roush The individual’s unique immune
system offers new insights into DEMO disease. 84 Stretchable Electronics By Christina Fan A startup creates electronics that conform to skin, arteries, and UPFRONT organs. 15–20 By David Talbot The antivirus era is over; the 84 problem with Google’s glasses; FROM THE LABS giving garbage to data-snooping 88 Biomedicine apps; a no-wait HIV test. 89 Materials GRAPHITI 89 Energy 21 The Carbon Capture Conundrum 90 Information Technology Burying carbon dioxide seems
like an unrealistic recipe for 81 YEARS AGO staving off climate change. 92 Machines Are Playing By Mike Orcutt with Your Mind The fear that our devices are Q&A 15 somehow altering our brains is 22 Fred Wilson nothing really new. The well-known investor says venture capital funds are too big for their own good. By Rachel Metz
BUSINESS REPORT 67–72 The Future of Work Destroying jobs and creating prosperity. How automation is changing the economy.
4 technology review September/October 2012 SMARTER TECHNOLOGY FOR A SMARTER PLANET
ith clients and partners, has WHY TODAY’S been turned into a pattern of expertise. n IBM ure ystem can follo this pattern to SMARTEST SYSTEMS automatically set up a database infrastructure in minutes. The system then monitors ho the database is being used, tuning The good ne s is IT solutions it as conditions change. are no more sophisticated. The bad ne s is they’re also A SMARTER APPROACH TO I.T. more complicated. nd all IBM ure ystems have been this complexity is taking its toll. able to achieve up to t ice the business application performance and up to t ice the application density as conventional approaches.
In fact, the typical IT ith IBM ure ystems, department no spends up computing is not ust getting to days ust to specify, faster and simpler. It’s taking design and procure hard are another important step for a ne IT pro ect even longer for soft are .
What goes into a PureSystem?
Built-in expertise
Integration by design IBM PureSystems can be up and running in under four hours. Simplifi ed experience HAVE BUILT-IN EXPERTISE.
ecently, IBM unveiled a BEYOND CONVERGENCE. to create a radically simplified to ard making our companies, ne class of systems that nlike today’s “converged” IT experience for the end user. cities and planet smarter. make all this complexity far solutions, IBM ure ystems ibm.com/integratedsystems Take the example of a database: less complicated. e call are more than ust prepackaged IBM’s extensive research them IBM ure ystems.™ bundles of hard are and on topics like transaction soft are these systems are LET’S BUILD A processing, honed through integrated by design, using SMARTER PLANET. thousands of engagements built in expertise to balance and coordinate IT resources
1. Based on a 2011 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM. 2. Based upon testing of the IBM PureApplication ystem 1 00 ith time measured from po ering on the system to hen it is ready to support application deployments and based upon testing of the IBM PureFle ystem press tandard models containing one chassis and one compute node ith the time measured from po ering on the system to hen it is ready to support a irtual image deployment. . p to 2 application density based upon simulations of irtuali ed applications on an IBM Fle ystem 2 0 Compute ode as compared to a pre ious generation IBM system. he IBM Fle ystem 2 0 Compute ode is a ailable in IBM PureFle ystem and IBM PureApplication ystem. p to 2 performance of business applications based upon testing of IBM tor i e 000 “ asy ier” on pre ious generation IBM system. IBM tor i e 000 is included in IBM PureFle ystem and IBM PureApplication ystem. IBM the IBM logo ibm.com Pure ystems marter Planet and the planet icon are trademar s of International Business Machines Corp. registered in many urisdictions orld ide. A current list of IBM trademar s is a ailable on the eb at .ibm.com legal copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2012. Published by MIT
Editor in Chief and Publisher CORPORATE ADVERTISING SALES MIT ENTERPRISE FORUM, INC. Jason Pontin Chief Financial Officer Director of Advertising Sales Executive Director Rick Crowley James Friedman Antoinette Matthews EDITORIAL Chief Operating Officer Midwest Sales Director Operations Associate Editor James Coyle Maureen Elmaleh and Special Projects Manager David Rotman [email protected] Rebecca Bell Chief Strategy Officer 303-975-6381 Deputy Editor Kathleen Kennedy Senior Producer, Brian Bergstein New England, Detroit, and Canada Content & Community Executive Assistant Creative Director Barry Echavarria Susan Kaup Leila Snyder [email protected] Eric Mongeon Chairman Manager of Information Technology 603-924-7586 Art Director Jason Pontin Colby Wheeler Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Nicholas Vokey President Clive Bullard Office Manager Kathleen Kennedy Online Editor Linda Cardinal [email protected] Will Knight 845-231-0846 Treasurer Chief Correspondent PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT Northwest James Coyle David Talbot Chief Digital Officer Steve Thompson [email protected] CUSTOMER SERVICE AND Senior Editor, Energy Brent Turner 415-435-4678 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES Kevin Bullis Project Manager Europe National: 800-877-5230 Senior Editor, MIT News Jane Allen Anthony Fitzgerald International: 818-487-2088 Alice Dragoon Senior Software Engineer mail@afitzgerald.co.uk Senior Editor, Business Shaun Calhoun 44-1488-680623 E-mail: technologyreview@ pubservice.com Antonio Regalado Senior Software Engineer France Senior Editor, IT Hunter Dougless Philippe Marquezy Web: www.technologyreview.com/ [email protected] Tom Simonite User Interface/Digital Designer customerservice 33-1-4270-0008 Senior Web Producer Emily Dunkle MIT Records: 617-253-8270 Kyanna Sutton Germany (alums only) MARKETING Michael Hanke Business Editor [email protected] Permissions: Jennifer Martin Director of Events Jessica Leber 49-511-5352-167 and Strategic Partnerships [email protected] IT Editor, Web & Social Media Amy Lammers China 281-419-5725 Rachel Metz Tracy Liu Director of Events Programming [email protected] Biomedicine Editor Laura Janes 86-010-65919566 Susan Young Technology Review India Advertising Services Coördinator One Main Street, 13th Floor Copy Chief Ken Collina Aninda Sen Linda Lowenthal [email protected] Cambridge, MA 02142 Sales and Marketing Associate 91-80-43412000 Tel: 617-475-8000 Assistant Managing Editor J. Paige Journey Timothy Maher Japan Fax: 617-475-8043 Akiyoshi Ojima Research Editor CONSUMER MARKETING [email protected] Senior Vice President, Mike Orcutt 813-3261-4591 Audience Development Technology Review, Inc., identifies Ediitorial Assistant Heather Holmes Spain and South America (Online) emerging tech nologies and ana- J. Juniper Friedman Pedro Moneo Laín Marketing Communications Manager lyzes their impact for technology Production Director [email protected] leaders. Technology Review publishes David W.M. Sweeney 34-667-732-894 James LaBelle Technology Review magazine (the old- Contributing Editors FINANCE International Licensing Consultant est technology magazine in the world, Jon Cohen Accountants Chander Rai founded in 1899) and the daily website Peter Fairley Letitia Trecartin TechnologyReview.com; it also pro- Olivia Male Simson L. Garfinkel duces live events such as the EmTech Advertising Services Courtney Humphries Conference. Technology Review is an BOARD OF DIRECTORS [email protected] Christopher Mims 617-475-8004 independent media company owned Reid Ashe John Pollock Media Kit by the Massachusetts Institute of Judith M. Cole David Zax www.technologyreview.com/media Technology. The views expressed in Jerome I. Friedman our various publications and at our Israel Ruiz events are often not shared by MIT. Megan J. Smith Sheila E. Widnall De Technologia non multum scimus. Ann J. Wolpert Scimus autem, quid nobis placeat.
6 technology review September/October 2012
feedback
“What Facebook Knows,” July/August 2012 Belong “There can be no concern for privacy when you Grow voluntarily give up your personal information.” Peter Glassman, Schaumburg, Illinois
Succeed FACE FACTS Michael Wolf’s takedown of Our related cover story on Facebook’s Facebook’s advertising strategy (“The Face- use of our personal data, “What Facebook HIGH S CHOOL book Fallacy”) wasn’t the only piece from Knows,” by senior IT editor Tom Simonite, college preparatory our July/August issue to draw hundreds of inspired Peter Glassman of Schaumburg, program for students letters and comments—but it was the one Illinois, to wonder if we have any right to in grades 8–12 with the most passionate demand our privacy with objections. “Wow, what an regard to Facebook in the incredibly ignorant under- irst place. “There can be no statement of Facebook’s concern for privacy when raw power in numbers,” you voluntarily give up wrote Fremitus in an online your personal information. comment. “To actually And for what? It’s not like think that they will just use giving your personal info to 10-year-old concepts (pop- a bank and they give you a COLLEGE ups and banners) as their credit card in return. What transitional and associate big idea is ludicrous. The does Facebook give you? degree program for biggest reason to go pub- More advertising.” lic is to have cash on hand, young adults July/August 2012 and for what? For buying CHEAPLY GREEN In “The smaller companies that are doing innovative Great German Energy Experiment,” our things. That’s the big idea, someone else’s. chief correspondent, David Talbot, inves- Just like Google and everyone else.” tigated Germany’s ambitious plans to slash AnsonA4 wrote in to thank Wolf for its greenhouse-gas output. One online com- the article and claimed, “It made me think menter, Elidyl, took a look at the cost of deeply about the situation. In the end, those plans and found them downright however, I think you are absolutely wrong cheap. “Talbot writes: ‘Various economic SUMMER about the demise of Facebook. Right now think tanks predict that the country will hands-on experiential the majority of Facebook’s revenues come spend somewhere between $125 billion learning from display advertisements, yes, but that and $250 billion on infrastructure expan- will change in the future. They will start sion and subsidies in the next eight years.’ selling products similar to Amazon—you Another way to look at it: initial projections will be able to buy movies and music, and
advertising will become much more rich. JOIN THE DISCUSSION, OR CONTACT US You’re almost completely ignoring the E-mail [email protected] power and value of the information that Write Technology Review, One Main Street, Facebook already has and is gaining every 13th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142 Serving Students with Nonverbal day. There really is no clear way of stopping Learning Differences and Asperger’s Please include your address, telephone number, Facebook at this point—the information and e-mail address. Letters and comments may 140 River Road | East Haddam, CT 06423 860-873-2700 | www.fa-ct.org they have is too valuable and marketable.” be edited for both clarity and length.
technology review September/October 2012