THE ACADEMIC BRAHMINS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have announced their selections for the top 10 emerging technologies of 2008.

The new technologies chosen by MIT's boffins this year are in disciplines ranging from physics, chemistry and biology to medicine, psychology and sociology, but several of them bear directly upon computer science and information technology -- and all of them use IT in their research and development.

The IT related emerging technologies chosen by MIT are:

• Graphene Transistors - Graphene is a form of carbon consisting of layers merely one atom thick. Microchips built with graphene might run orders of magnitude faster than silicon based circuits while generating far less heat and conducting it away more rapidly. Moore's Law might hold a bit longer.
• Modeling Surprise - Take massive amounts of historical data and apply machine learning in the form of Bayesian probability modeling to data about both past the experience and events in real time, and surprises can be made somewhat less surprising. That's the theory. But hey, Spamassassin works.
• Nano Radio - Building tiny radios out of carbon nanotubes might have big impacts on everything from medical diagnostics to computer interfaces and personal communications devices.
• Offline Web Applications -- Combining the centralised data synchronicity of web-based "cloud computing" applications with localised data presence and processing holds promise to realise at least some of the long held IT visions of near real-time collaboration and truly distributed computing.
• Probabilistic Chips -- Building microchip circuits that get close rather than exactly correct results at least some of the time can save power and heat generation, potentially helping to extend Moore's Law in some applications where precision isn't of paramount importance such as scientific computer modeling and multimedia processing.
• Reality Mining - Collecting and analysing data generated during ordinary activities can help map and understand social networks and relationships, adding new tools people can use in their lives and enabling new insights.
• Wireless Power - Using electromagnetic resonance, devices can be powered or their batteries recharged simply by being in proximity to power sources.

MIT's non-IT related emerging technologies selections include:

• Atomic Magnetometers - Building tiny magnetic field sensors that could revolutionise magnetic resonance imaging in medicine.
• Cellulolytic Enzymes - Designing better protein structures for extracting biofuels from cellulose.
• Connectonomics - Tracing neural connection paths to advance knowledge about brain development and disease.

Some of these emerging technologies are real right now, some are in prototype stages, and yet others will require more research and development before they evolve into usable forms, but they're all new and expected to impact our future. µ

L'Inq
Technology Review