Technology

Why China’s dominance in commercial drones has become a global security matter

June 26, 2024
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Whether you’ve flown a drone before or not, you’ve probably heard of DJI, or at least seen its logo. With more than a 90% share of the global consumer market, this Shenzhen-based…

Inside the US government’s brilliantly boring websites

June 26, 2024
The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface. This public design system aims to make government websites not only good-looking but accessible and functional for all. Before the internet, Americans may have interacted with the federal government by stepping into grand buildings adorned with impressive stone columns and gleaming marble…

Learning from catastrophe

June 26, 2024
The philosopher Karl Popper once argued that there are two kinds of problems in the world: clock problems and cloud problems. As the metaphor suggests, clock problems obey a certain logic. They are orderly and can be broken down and analyzed piece by piece. When a clock stops working, you’re able to take it apart,…

Toys can change your life

June 26, 2024
In a November 1984 story for Technology Review, Carolyn Sumners, curator of astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, described how toys, games, and even amusement park rides could change how young minds view science and math. “The Slinky,” Sumners noted, “has long served teachers as a medium for demonstrating longitudinal (soundlike) waves and…

Do you want to play a game?

June 26, 2024
For children, play comes so naturally. They don’t have to be encouraged to play. They don’t need equipment, or the latest graphics processors, or the perfect conditions—they just do it. What’s more, study after study has found that play has a crucial role in childhood growth and development. If you want to witness the absolute…

Puzzle Corner history

June 26, 2024
When Allan Gottlieb ’67 began editing the Puzzle Corner column in 1966, he was a junior at MIT, majoring in math. Little did he know then that he was undertaking a project that would last for nearly six decades. If you missed our previous celebrations of Allan, read our 2015 profile, “Puzzle Corner’s Keeper,” and…

Stress test

June 25, 2024
Elizabeth Sajdel-Sulkowska was just three months old when Nazi soldiers set fire to her family’s home in the midst of the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, as the Polish resistance attempted to seize control of the city from the Germans. When that revolt ultimately failed, the city was razed, and there was no time to…

Depression is different for women. One-size-fits-all drugs aren’t helping.

June 25, 2024
The trauma of an accident, an assault, abuse, or even simply losing someone we love can have long-term effects. For some, it can trigger mental illnesses. But what if, in the hours after the experience, you could take a pill that made you less likely to fall ill? And what if there were such a…

Fighting fatphobia

June 25, 2024
“I felt too fat to be a feminist in public.” The startling admission appears in the opening paragraph of Kate Manne’s new book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. With that single frank and sobering sentence, Manne, an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell, captures the pervasiveness of anti-fat bias—and its stifling impact.   Manne had…

SuperLimbs for astronauts

June 25, 2024
It’s hard not to laugh at NASA’s blooper reel of astronauts falling and bouncing in slow motion on the moon. But coping with inertia where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth is no laughing matter when you’re wearing a constricting space suit and need to finish an exhausting task. So mechanical engineering professor Harry Asada…