Scientific American - USA (2019-12)

4 Scientific American, December 2019 Illustration by Nick Higgins

FROM

THE EDITOR

BOARD OF ADVISERS

Leslie C. Aiello

President, Wenner-Gren Foundation

for Anthropological Research

Robin E. Bell

Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty

Earth Observatory, Columbia University

Emery N. Brown

Edward Hood Taplin Professor

of Medical Engineering and of

Computational Neuro science, M.I.T.,

and Warren M. Zapol Prof essor of

Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Vinton G. Cerf

Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Emmanuelle Charpentier

Scientific Director, Max Planck Institute

for Infection Biology, and Founding

and Acting Director, Max Planck Unit

for the Science of Pathogens

George M. Church

Director, Center for Computational

Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Rita Colwell

Distinguished University Professor,

University of Maryland College Park

and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School

of Public Health

Kate Crawford

Director of Research and Co-founder,

AI Now Institute, and Distinguished

Research Professor, New York University,

and Principal Researcher,

Microsoft Research New York City

Drew Endy

Professor of Bioengineering,

Stanford University

Nita A. Farahany

Professor of Law and Philosophy,

Director, Duke Initiative for

Science & Society, Duke University

Edward W. Felten

Director, Center for Information

Technology Policy, Princeton University

Jonathan Foley

Executive Director, Project Drawdown

Jennifer Francis

Senior Scientist,

Woods Hole Research Center

Kaigham J. Gabriel

President and Chief Executive Officer,

Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Harold “Skip” Garner

Executive Director and Professor, Primary

Care Research Network and Center for

Bioinformatics and Genetics, Edward Via

College of Osteopathic Medicine

Michael S. Gazzaniga

Director, Sage Center for the Study of

Mind, University of California,

Santa Barbara

Carlos Gershenson

Research Professor, National

Autonomous University of Mexico

Alison Gopnik

Professor of Psychology and

Affiliate Professor of Philosophy,

University of California, Berkeley

Lene Vestergaard Hau

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and

of Applied Physics, Harvard University

Hopi E. Hoekstra

Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology,

Harvard University

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Founder and CEO, Ocean Collectiv

Christof Koch

President and CSO,

Allen Institute for Brain Science

Morten L. Kringelbach

Associate Professor and

Senior Research Fellow, The Queen’s

College, University of Oxford

Robert S. Langer

David H. Koch Institute Professor,

Department of Chemical Engineering,

M .I.T.

Meg Lowman

Director and Founder, TREE Foundation,

Rachel Carson Fellow, Ludwig Maximilian

University Munich, and Research

Professor, University of Science Malaysia

John Maeda

Global Head, Computational Design +

Inclusion, Automattic, Inc.

Satyajit Mayor

Senior Professor,

National Center for Biological Sciences,

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

John P. Moore

Professor of Microbiology and

Immunology, Weill Medical College

of Cornell University

Priyamvada Natarajan

Professor of Astronomy and Physics,

Yale University

Donna J. Nelson

Professor of Chemistry,

University of Oklahoma

Robert E. Palazzo

Dean, University of Alabama at

Birmingham College of Arts and Sciences

Rosalind Picard

Professor and Director,

Affective Computing, M.I.T. Media Lab

Carolyn Porco

Leader, Cassini Imaging Science Team,

and Director, CICLOPS,

Space Science Institute

Lisa Randall

Professor of Physics, Harvard University

Martin Rees

Astronomer Royal and Professor

of Cosmology and Astrophysics,

Institute of Astronomy,

University of Cambridge

Daniela Rus

Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor

of Electrical Engineering and Computer

Science and Director, CSAIL, M.I.T.

Eugenie C. Scott

Chair, Advisory Council,

National Center for Science Education

Terry Sejnowski

Professor and Laboratory Head of

Computational Neurobiology Laboratory,

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Meg Urry

Israel Munson Professor of Physics

and Astronomy, Yale University

Michael E. Webber

Co-director, Clean Energy Incubator,

and Associate Professor,

Department of Mechanical Engineering,

University of Texas at Austin

George M. Whitesides

Professor of Chemistry and Chemical

Biology, Harvard University

Amie Wilkinson

Professor of Mathematics,

University of Chicago

Anton Zeilinger

Professor of Quantum Optics, Quantum

Nanophysics, Quantum Information,

University of Vienna

Curtis Brainard is acting editor in chief of Scientific American.

Follow him on Twitter @cbrainard

The Tech

Horizon

In 1999 the late Douglas Adams penned a column for London’s

Sunday Times on gripes about the nascent Internet. “Another

problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and ‘technol-

ogy’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined

it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet,’ ” he wrote. “We no longer think

of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs.”

Starting on page 26, our cover story, entitled “Top 10 Emerging

Technologies of 2019,” showcases diverse inventions that our edi-

tors hope one day will become as common as chairs. Like the In-

ternet, these viable technologies could yield disruptive change

with major social and economic benefits. The annual list, now in

its third year in print, is produced in collaboration with the World

Economic Forum. A Steering Group, co-chaired by Scientific

American editor emerita Mariette DiChristina and IBM chief in-

novation officer emeritus Bernard S. Meyerson, reviews dozens of

nominations drawn from the magazine’s board of editors and the

forum’s network of experts before making final selections.

One technology that isn’t on the list but that has emerged in full

force is the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array of radio tele-

scopes that captured the world’s first picture of a black hole—a fi-

ery ring of starlight surrounding a dark center. Astronomers now

believe these mysterious structures are common throughout the

universe, but as quantum physicist Steven  B. Giddings explains

in “Escape from a Black Hole,” on page 50, “their very existence

threatens the present foundations of physics.” New characteriza-

tions of black holes might resolve that conundrum, and the EHT,

along with gravitational-wave detectors (another recent feat of

technology), could finally help scientists test their predictions.

Alas, some game-changing technologies are so commonplace

that we take them for granted, often at our peril. Take GPS, the sat-

ellite-based Global Positioning System. People use it to find their

way to and from locations every day, but it is also essential to the

16 “critical infrastructure sectors” in the U.S., including energy,

health care and finance. And the system is under attack. Hackers

can jam or spoof GPS with shocking ease, journalist Paul Tullis

warns in “GPS Down,” on page 38. Moreover, whereas many coun-

tries have a ground-based backup system that is difficult to tam-

per with, the U.S. has never built one—something to think about

if you happen to be reading this at an American airport.

There are many other reminders in the issue about the impor-

tance of technology to nearly every aspect of modern life, from

lab equipment that helps emergency responders understand

when and where dangerous wildfires erupt (“Fire Tornadoes,” by

Jason  M. Forthofer, on page 60) to debates about whether or not

artificial-intelligence systems could ever be truly conscious

(“Proust among the Machines,” by Christof Koch, on page  46).

I am also reminded, as Scientific American heads into its 175th

year of publication, how technology underlies the history of this

magazine. Our founding editors dubbed us “the advocate of indus-

try and enterprise, and journal of mechanical and other improve-

ments.” So here’s to all those Promethean scientists who, over the

decades, have harnessed the elements of nature in pursuit of a bet-

ter world and let us tell such wonderful stories along the way.

© 2019 Scientific American