Reviews p. 74 MAR/APR . Should We Fear Artifi cial Intelligence?
Reviews p. 83 In Defense of Silicon Valley
Business Report p. 65 The Future of Money
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW VOL. 118 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM From the Editor
every year, mit technology review sue (see “Cancer Genomics,” from our selects the 10 technologies we believe 2011 list). Today, when the cost of are the greatest breakthroughs of pre- sequencing a genome can be as low as vious months, those that in the future $1,000, the president of the United will have the broadest impact on com- States can talk at the State of the merce, medicine, and society. Union address about “precision medi- The challenge and fascination of cine” as an imminent clinical reality. editing our publication (and there- No matter that we jumped the gun a fore of creating this list) is that unlike little: we prefer to be early than late. many other technology magazines This year, the 10 breakthrough and websites, we are interested in technologies are similarly broad in all technologies, and most of all in scope. Senior editor Tom Simonite how breakthroughs in one ield may describes Google’s Project Loon (page spur innovations in another. Those 40), an ambitious experiment by the who have attended one of our seven company’s Google X division to bring EmTech events around the world may Internet access to the 60 percent of have watched as I struggled to explain the world that doesn’t have it by loat- how new developments in artiicial ing an armada of balloons with solar- intelligence (see “Deep Learning,” one powered electronics in the upper of our breakthrough technologies from atmosphere. 2013) may be connected to more ei- Elsewhere, we report on cerebral cient use of advanced renewable energy organoids, clumps of tissue that pos- sources through predictive modeling sess certain features of the brain, which (see “Smart Wind and Solar Power,” could “open a new window into how a breakthrough technology from our neurons grow and function, and … 2014 list). change our understanding of every- Our predictions are not always thing from basic brain activities to the right, but even when we’re wrong, we’re causes of schizophrenia and autism” interestingly mistaken. A few years (see “Brain Organoids,” by Russ ago, we correctly intuited that social Juskalian, on page 54). media would be important to televi- Or consider the consumer technol- sion (see “Social TV,” a breakthrough ogy Apple Pay (page 50): Robert Hof technology in 2010). But we didn’t writes, “None of the individual tech- understand that social and broadcast nologies in it is novel, but the extent media wouldn’t merge on TV screens; of Apple’s control over both the soft- instead, people would watch television ware and the hardware in the iPhone— and update their impressions on Twit- which exceeds what Google can do ter, Facebook, or Instagram using their for Google Wallet even on Android smartphones. phones—allowed it to combine those More commonly, we’re not so much technologies into a service demonstra- wrong as simply early: cancer genom- bly easier to use than any other.” Hof ics, where gene sequencing identiies argues that Apple Pay will probably the mutations behind an individual succeed in making mobile payments patient’s speciic cancer in order to broadly used, where previous attempts more precisely identify the drugs most have failed. likely to work, was less practicable But read about all 10 technologies when it cost $30,000 to sequence and write to tell me what you think at
someone’s cancerous and healthy tis- [email protected]. VITTIGUIDO 2
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW VOL. 118 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM Contents
Front Back MARCH/APRIL 2 From the Editor BUSINESS REPORT 8 Feedback 65 The Future of Money 10 Why the payments revolution VIEWS is likely to make the old guard 10 Clever Vehicles Breakthrough even stronger. The way we get the Internet in our cars is all wrong. Let’s fi x it. Technologies REVIEWS 10 The Web as a Right 74 Our Fear of Artifi cial Why access should be Intelligence available to everyone. 2015 Some think machines could get 11 Pliable Plants too smart. Are they right, or just Our climate is changing. We They’ll change the way we paranoid? need crops that can take it. By Paul Ford drive, the way we eat, the 80 Why We Don’t Have UPFRONT way we cure disease. They’ll Battery Breakthroughs The lessons from a technology 13 Who Owns the Biotech change the way we access failure. Discovery of the Century? By Kevin Bullis The bitter fi ght over CRISPR. the Internet and provide 83 The Purpose of 16 Google’s Intelligence drinkable water. Here are Silicon Valley Designer the advances most likely to Startups have been fi ddling The man behind a revolutionary with apps instead of tackling artifi cial intelligence. change the way we see the big problems. Maybe that’s not 20 Forget Hydrogen Cars such a bad thing. and Buy a Hybrid world in the coming decades. By Michael S. Malone Worried about emissions? Hybrids are still the best option. YEARS AGO
21 A Small Step Toward 88 The Internet and Equality Artifi cial Cells A vision of the Internet as a way Microfl uidic cells can now to give power to the powerless. mimic life itself.
22 Pipe Dreams Magic Leap by Rachel Metz ...... p 28 ON THE COVER: Which countries have the best Nano Architecture by Katherine Bourzac ...... p 34 international bandwidth? Car to Car Communication by Will Knight ...... p 38 Plus: To Market. Project Loon by Tom Simonite ...... p 0 Q+A Liquid Biopsy by Michael Standaert ...... p 6 24 Steven Chu Megascale Desalination by David Talbot ...... p 48 The former energy secretary Apple Pay by Robert D. Hof ...... p 0 refl ects on his days with the Obama administration. Brain Organoids by Russ Juskalian ...... p 54 Illustration by Elliott Earls Supercharged Photosynthesis by Kevin Bullis...... p 8 Internet of DNA by Antonio Regalado ...... p 0
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW VOL. 118 | NO. 2 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM
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The way the Land of the Rising Sun built and lost its By Peter Fairley dominance in photovoltaics shows just how vulnerable renewables remain to changing politics and national policies. Can Japan Recapture Its So ar o er
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM VOL. 118 | NO. 1
Journalists and researchers wade into ugly corners By Adrian Chen It’s 38 °C on the Atsumi Peninsula southwest of Tokyo: a the earth uake and nu lear disaster at Tokyo le tri Power deadly heat wave has been gripping mu h of apan late this Company’s ukushima aii hi nu lear power plant on ar h of the Internet to expose racists, thugs, and bullies. summer Inside the oi es of a newly built power plant oper as “Three leven ” adioa tive ontamination for ed Have they gone too far? ated by the plasti s ompany itsui Chemi als the AC is more than people to eva uate and terriied millions blasting utside solar panels are onverting the blis more It also sent a sho k wave through apan’s already fragile tering sunlight into megawatts of ele tri ity for the lo al manufa turing se tor whi h is the ountry’s se ond largest Google Glass Is Dead; wo and a half years after Sergey grid Three 8 meter high wind turbines ere ted at the site employer and a ounts for 8 per ent of its e onomy Brin unveiled Google Glass add si megawatts of generation apa ity to ba k up the solar leven of apan’s nu lear rea tors shut down on the Long Live Smart Glasses Twith a group of skydivers jump- panels during the winter day of the earth uake ne year later every rea tor in apan ing from a zeppelin above San itsui’s plant is ust one of thousands of renewable power was out of servi e ea h had to be upgraded to meet height Even though hardly anyone wants today’s head-worn computers, Francisco, the computer you wear on your installations under way as apan onfronts its third summer ened safety standards and then get in a ueue for inspe tions the technology s sure to march on face is falling to its death t’s still not a in a row without use of the nu lear rea tors that had delivered uring my visit this summer apan was still without nu lear inished consumer product t’s not even TATSURO KIUCHI TATSURO The Troll Hunters almost 3 per ent of its ele tri ity In apan people refer to power and only aggressive energy onservation kept the lights By Rachel Metz close to being something people yearn KEBBI YANN 28 29 79
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW VOL. 118 | NO. 1 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM VOL. 118 | NO. 1 Q+A Reviews not getting hired, and we are not getting Shanley Kane promoted, and we are being systemati- cally driven out of the industry. Shanley Kane heads one of the most interesting new publications that cover technology: Model View Culture, a quarterly journal and website ow often are women not given the dence that MOOCs can e pand access and that ofers a remorseless feminist critique of Silicon Valley. he derisive credit that they deserve for the creation What Are MOOCs reduce costs in some corners of higher point of view ta en by the publication was honestly won: Kane wor ed of a company? education. hen they are hired into early roles at Good For? Meanwhile, options for online courses for ive years in operations, technical mar eting, and developer relations the company, people from marginali ed continue to multiply, especially for curi- at several infrastructure companies. rustrated by the une amined groups—including women—don’t get the assumptions of her industry and irritated by the incompetence of same amount of stoc , and they are not Online courses may not be changing colleges ous people who aren’t necessarily see - her managers, she began blogging about technology culture and given the titles. And many times they’re as their boosters claimed they would, but they ing a credential. or-profit Coursera management dysfunction, which led her to found Model View Culture. She not brought into the company until later can prove valuable in surprising ways. and ed , the nonproit consortium led spo e to MIT Technology Review s editor in chief, ason ontin. stages of a company’s development, so by arvard and M T, are up to nearly they miss out on the opportunity to be By Justin Pope million users and more than , part of the founding team. e particularly courses between them. han cademy, Silicon Valley imagines itself open to any- bviously, programmers are important, see underrepresentation of blac found- one with talent, but its companies are but a very common dysfunction, particu- ers. And in general, we give too much which began as a series of ouTube vid- often more homogeneous in composition larly at technology startups, is privileging credit to individual white male founders eos, is ma ing online instruction a more than other corporations. Why is that? programmers. hen you don’t value other when companies are comprised of many widely used tool in classrooms around The Valley has bought into the idea of s ills, your engineering team becomes people who have devoted their lives to the world. itself as a meritocracy: a world of self- very entitled and even abusive of other ma ing their organi ations wor . ll this activity is beginning to gener- starting, bootstrapping geniuses so much parts of the company. eally important ate interesting data about what MOOCs better and smarter than anyone else in functions, li e mar eting, sales, business ave you seen signs of improvement at the world that they deserve wildly dis- development, inance, and legal, become all in some of these issues that you write few years ago, the most there and at other institutions rushing to actually do. n eptember, M T physicist proportionate opportunities for wealth underfunded and underresourced. e about? enthusiastic advocates incorporate MOOCs began pushing bac , avid ritchard and other researchers and power. The problem is that this is often end up with companies with great ’m not one to be optimistic about these of MOOCs believed re ecting the notion that online courses published a study of Mechanics e iew, the exact opposite of what Silicon Val- technology that are nonetheless dying things, but if pressed can come up with a that these “massive could replace the nuanced wor of profes- an online course he teaches that is based ley actually is: a sexist and racist wealth because they could not execute from a few examples. e are getting codes of con- open online courses” sors in classrooms. The tiny completion on an on-campus course of the same distribution mechanism that relies on nontechnical standpoint. duct at events, and while that seems li e a stood poised to over- rates for most MOOCs drew increas- name. The authors found that the MOOC cronyism, corruption, and exclusion to supericial thing, it does relect awareness A function. Why are there relatively few women in that our events are places where people turn the century- old ing attention. Thrun himself was generally efective at com- the tech industry? s it a so-called pipe- are having bad experiences, where there model of higher education. Their inter- became disillusioned, and he municating diicult material— “Learning in an You think technology companies take a line problem, in that not enough women is ine uality and sometimes very serious active technology promised to deliver lowered dacity’s ambitions ewtonian mechanics—even kind of perverse pride in being unprofes- train as programmers and engineers? r abuse. Another thing have seen over the top-tier teaching from institutions li e from educating the masses to Introductory to students who weren’t M T Physics MOOC We’ve come up with the menacing term “troll” for someone smart suit jacket gleaming bald head and trained bari sionally managed. is it because women leave the industry? past two years is that there is a lot more arvard, tanford, and M T, not ust to providing corporate training. caliber. n fact, the students The technology industry sees itself as in bviously the pipeline is a huge issue. ut social-media organi ation and activism, Cohorts Learn a few hundred students in a lecture hall ut all the while, a great who started the online course who spreads hate and does other horrible things anonymously tone. schberg’s research team had linked the man to a rebellion against corporate America: not too often, our industry focuses on early which is helping to change the way people E ua y Inc uding corrupt, not buttoned-up, not empty. n stages of the pipeline that they have no view tech and its problems. The inal thing on ivy-draped campuses, but free via the age of e perimentation has an On Ca us nowing the least about phys- C ass” on the Internet. Internet trolls are unsettling not just because months long campaign of harassment against a teenage girl fact, a tech company can be as corrupt, control over. ou see venture capitalists that’s good is that this year the ainbow nternet to thousands or even millions been developing. lthough ics showed the same relative The International soulless, and empty as any corporation, tal about the need to get more -year- S oalition did a ton of wor to get around the world. t long last, there some on-campus trials have improvement on tests as much Review of Research of the things they say but for the mystery they represent: what born with a shrunken hand. fter meeting her online the troll but being unprofessional helps us main- old girls into programming, and that’s technology companies to share all their appeared to be a solution to the problem gone nowhere, others have in Open and stronger students. “They may tain the belief that we are somehow dif- so far removed from their direct sphere diversity data, which is forcing a lot of of “scaling up” higher education if it were shown modest success includ- Distance Learning have started with an and kind of person could be so vile ne afternoon this fall the tormented her obsessively leaving insulting comments about ferent from all Street. of influence. eanwhile, there is attri- these issues into the open. There’s not any delivered more eiciently, the relentless ing a later iteration at an ose September 2014 inished with an ,” ritchard wedish journalist obert schberg sat on a patio outside a her hand on her Instagram page barraging her with acebook tion in every stage of the career path of excuse for pretending that we don’t now. echnologists love to celebrate the women once they get into the industry. cost increases might finally be rolled tate . n , eorgia Tech says, “but they rose with the On ine aster’s hacker and the programmer. What roles ver percent of women will leave by escribe Silicon Valley in one word. bac . ome wondered whether MOOCs announced a first-of-its- ind whole class.” drab apartment building in a suburb of tockholm face to messages even sending her taunts through the mail. rogra in are undervalued by the industry? the halfway point in their careers. e are aybe ’ll go with “corrupt.” would merely transform the e isting all-MOOC master’s program co uter science ritchard still uestions face with an Internet troll trying to answer this uestion. he schberg had come to the man’s home with a television crew system or blow it up entirely. Computer in computer science that, at the efects MOOCs will have 26 Georgia Tech troll turned out to be a uiet skinny man in his s wearing to confront him but now he denied everything. “ ave you regret scientist ebastian Thrun, cofounder of , , would cost ust a frac- dacity and T T for one thing, he doesn’t see the MOOC provider dacity, predicted tion as much as its on-campus how they can have a sustain- a hoodie and a dirty baseball cap—a sorry foil to schberg’s ted what you’ve done ” schberg asked handing the man a page that in years, institutions would counterpart. bout , students have able business model on their own. ut be responsible for delivering higher enrolled. t’s not clear how well such pro- that doesn’t mean MOOCs are merely education. grams can be replicated in other ields, another overhyped technology. deas Martin Fredriksson in a Stockholm underground station in November. Photographs by Anders Lindén. Then came the bac lash. high- or whether the ob mar et will reward about what they offer, and whom they proile e periment to use MOOCs at an graduates with this particular eorgia might help, are evolving as rapidly as the 51 ose tate niversity foundered. aculty Tech degree. ut the program ofers evi- MOOCs themselves. 68 Illustration by Brecht Vandenbroucke 69
1 2 3 4 5 The Troll Hunters Can Japan Q&A: Shanley Kane What Are MOOCs Google Glass
A group using technology Recapture Its Count me among the 50 Good For? Is Dead to expose hatred rather Solar Power? percent of women who left I took a music MOOC from For those with peripheral than reinforce it—I love Japan doesn’t need solar the tech world. Despite 20 Berklee and was touched vision loss, Glass literally it. If elected oi cials are power. It needs clean, years of experience, at 40 by [something shared by] gives sight to the blind. spreading racist or xeno- abundant, reliable, and I was presumed to be too an Iraqi girl who was not Thanks to Glass, my son phobic material online, the cheap energy. Nuclear old to understand the new allowed access to instru- sees and experiences voting public has a right power meets all these ways. I was tired of the ments. She was grateful life more fully. To dismiss to know. criteria. —pobembe frat-boy mentality and out- for the MOOC but had to a device before its use —thisoceanhasteeth right sexism, and moved to remain anonymous. is fully explored is folly. I’d suggest a follow-up academia. Much happier —Mike Reding That’s exactly why it’s an The entire idea of trolling called “Can Japan Rebuild now. —Bette Page “explorer” program. and troll hunting is pure Its Nuclear Power?” to When I read that of 17,000 —embrownconroy BS. It’s just an excuse to analyze the lessons of The barrage of nega- students in one MOOC, silence opposing voices. Fukushima. What led to the tivity about how “hos- only 5 percent completed Google mismanaged the We need to allow people faulty design? What safety tile” the industry is does it, I view that with optimism. story of what Glass could to voice their opinion freely reviews were held, and nothing but discourage That’s 850 students who be. It should have been without being censored. how were they approved? women from pursuing tech completed the course. positioned as a product for We can think it’s wrong for Where around the world careers. I spent most of That’s pretty impressive, surgeons, mechanics, etc. skinheads to spout their have similar errors been my 15 years in the industry given that the certifi cates Then the whole privacy venom, but blocking them made? Optimism can’t sub- under female managers. are virtually worthless and debate would not even does not make their cul- stitute for science, engi- It’s a truism—those that most students were taking have arisen. But that’s not ture go away. neering, and economics. can, do; those that can’t, the course simply to learn. Google’s style. They like —William Ganness —David Korenstein whine. —GlugGlugGlug —Richard Spears moon shots. —Tim Meyer