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Each year, MIT’s Technology Review magazine publishes its list of 10 emerging technologies that its editors believe will be particularly important over the next few years. This is work ready to emerge from the lab, in a broad range of areas: energy, computer hardware and software, biological imaging, and more.
The 10 emerging technologies of 2008 are:
- Modeling Surprise
- Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help humans manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.
- Probabilistic Chips
- Krishna Palem thinks introducing a little uncertainty into computer chips could extend battery life in mobile devices–and maybe the duration of Moore’s Law, too.
- NanoRadio
- Alex Zettl’s tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.
- Wireless Power
- Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.
- Atomic Magnetometers
- John Kitching’s tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it’s never gone before.
- Offline Web Applications
- Adobe’s Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.
- Graphene Transistors
- A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.
- Connectomics
- Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the tangled web of neural circuits.
- Reality Mining
- Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn about human behavior.
- Cellulolytic Enzymes
- Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.