Technology Quarterly


You're hired

You're hired
Sep 18th, 2004

And the winners are...

Innovation Awards: Our annual prizes recognise innovators in six technology categories. Here are this year's winners

Televisions go flat

Consumer electronics: TVs based on bulky cathode-ray tubes are giving way to flat-panel models. How will the market evolve?

You're hired

Computing: By unloading work on to their customers, firms can grant them more control—and save money in the process

Supercharging the brain

Biotechnology: New drugs promise to improve memory and sharpen mental response. Who should be allowed to take them?

How Google works

Internet searching: With all the fuss over Google's IPO, it is easy to overlook its broader social significance. For many people, Google made the internet truly useful. How did it do it?

Down on the pharm

Biotechnology: Will genetically engineered goats, rabbits and flies be the low-cost drug factories of the future?

Untangling ultrawideband

Consumer electronics: Which technology will prevail in the battle to banish the spaghetti behind your TV and computer?

Touching the atom

Scientists' ability to see individual atoms, and manipulate matter one atom at a time, is due in large part to Gerd Binnig, co-inventor of the scanning-tunnelling microscope


Deus ex machinima?

Computer graphics: Hollywood movies increasingly resemble computer games. Now a growing band of enthusiasts is using games to make films

Science fiction? Not any more

Communications: Taking its cue from “Star Trek”, an American company has devised a clever new form of voice-driven wireless communicator

Home is where the future is

Consumer electronics: What ever happened to the dream of the smart home—and might it finally have taken a step closer to reality?

Pictures as passwords

Computer security: Passwords are a cheap, cheerful and ancient security measure. But might it make more sense to use pictures instead?

Gadgets with a sporting chance

Consumer electronics: New sports equipment, from tennis rackets to running shoes, uses processing power to enhance performance. Is that fair?

Data you can virtually touch

Computer interfaces: Is haptic technology, which allows users to “feel” virtual objects, finally ready to come out of the laboratory?

Last gasp of the fax machine

Office technology: That most exasperating piece of equipment, the fax machine, is on its way out. But it will take a very long time to die


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