MIT Technology Review’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008

One of my favorite reads is MIT’s Technology Review because they truly write about emerging technology. While not all of the technologies make their way into widely used applications, the magazine’s Top 10 list serves as a bellwether on the direction of technology. This year’s list, includes:

1.Modeling Surprise
2.Probabilistic Chips
3.Nanoradio
4.Wireless Power
5.Atomic Magnetometers
6.Offline web applications
7.Graphene Transistors
8.Connectomcs
9.Reality Mining
10.Cellolytic Enzymes

Nanoradio sounds interesting. According to Wikipedia, it’s the implementation of radio on the nanoscale. Researchers at Berkeley were able to make a Nanoradio using carbon nanotubes to act as the antenna, tuner, and amplifier of a radio. It uses mechanical vibration rather than RF waves to capture the signal.

Commercial applications have attached themselves to the name. According to this company’s website it is the convergence of wireless with fixed telephony.

Best regards,
Hall T.