Proponents of synthetic biology introduced in molecular biology a number of principles directly inspired from engineering. Their goal: alter living organisms to make them produce new molecules. Numerous applications are expected in the areas of health, energy, materials, environment and agriculture. How will the transition to the industrial phase take place? This, today, is the main issue.
A slew of new product introductions indicate virtual reality technology is coming into its own - but it's a sector that is still waiting for a breakthrough product to win over consumers.
In 2005, the web digitized a new and unexpected field: social relationships. By organizing our social life, the Web 2.0 and social networks have transformed our lives. At the dawn of 2015, digital technologies are about to enter another new and awaited field: our relationship with ourselves. This unlikely encounter between technology and psychology forebodes a radical transformation of our everyday life, a third phase of the digital revolution.
Microfluidics is the science of how we analyse and handle fluids at a micrometric level. MIT's Technology Review regularly cites this technology as being one that could change the world. Why?
With the introduction of Google Glass, an effort to create and market computerized eyewear, Google has captured the imagination of technologists, consumers and even sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, while also raising a number of social and privacy issues. Experts at Wharton say that the Google Glass experiment will be important to watch from a business, marketing and cultural perspective, and they add that no one, including Google, has any clue how the search giant's efforts will play out.
Cloud computing is a much hyped but often misunderstood technology that is gaining traction in different industries around the world. Businesses are integrating the cloud into countless systems, from HR to finance. Full adoption and acceptance of cloud computing, however, are still far away. A recent global survey by Knowledge@Wharton and SAP's Performance Benchmarking team reveals that while the hype and excitement surrounding cloud computing is reaching a fever pitch, many businesses are still expressing concerns over cloud security and IT integration issues. While many people agree that the cloud is revolutionizing business, they still do not fully understand how it works. How will these tensions be resolved? How will the cloud transform businesses in the future? What kinds of benefits will it bring, and is it worthy of the current hype? Knowledge@Wharton discussed those questions and the survey results with David Spencer, vice president at SAP, and Don Huesman, managing director at the Wharton Innovation Group.
Enterprise mobility is poised to fundamentally change the IT landscape. Here's an overview of the opportunities and some early lessons on how to manage the associated security risks, costs, and organizational challenges.
How do we ensure that exponential increases in demand for bandwidth continue to be met both today and tomorrow? What hurdles must be overcome in the race to deploy ultra-high speed networks in the face of a less than favorable economic climate? Reflection on Europe provides fertile grounds for debate over some of the more delicate issues which, at their heart, revolve around new approaches toward network management and a more pragmatic idea of the network neutrality principle.
To understand tsunamis or locate oil slicks, scientists are running ever more complex models in ever more powerful machines. Some are now able to compute nearly ten million billion operations per second. Welcome to the world of HPC (High Performance Calculation) where technical challenge meets major industrial stakes.
Intel's breakthrough vertical chip means that computer capacity will keep increasing, at least for 10 to 20 years. What will all that new firepower mean for technology and society? And what happens after that?
Commercial space travel, breakthroughs in the fight against cancer, a new industrial revolution based on broadly distributed clean energy -even now, despite global warming and overpopulation, the future is still looking bright to some leading futurists. But before you book that trip to the moon, keep in mind that predictions are rarely spot on. When it comes to technology, making the right call is surprisingly rare -even among its inventors.
Green Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is no longer a distant dream. GreenTouch, a global consortium organized by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, is spearheading an initiative to innovate and create technologies that will allow networks to achieve an increase in energy efficiency by a factor of 1000. The hope is that the energy required to power today's communications networks, the internet included, for one day will eventually be enough to last... three years.
Countries endowed with great research institutions know it all too well. In order to stay in the race for innovation in the 21st century, they need to be involved and successful in four fronts, summarized by the acronym "NBIC": nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive sciences. Nanotechnology came back into the spotlight early 2010 following a particularly heated public debate in France, which emphasized the ethical and environmental concerns over an assessment of the potential of this new scientific frontier. Speaking of which, what is the real promise of nanotechnology? What can we say about the astronomical profits that certain big American consulting firms promised industrialists who were ready to embark on the adventure? In short, is nanomania meant to last?
