This post is likely to contain more conflicts of interest than have ever heretofore been shoved into one box. I work for MIT, the Tracker is based at MIT, Technology Review is both a general interest magazine published at MIT and it serves as the MIT alumni magazine, and I'm an alumnus of MIT. Oh, and I almost forgot–I've written for Technology Review, but not recently.
Despite all of that, I'm about to post a glowing review of the current issue of Technology Review. Do with it what you will.
Under the editorship of Jason Pontin, an Oxford graduate who is also Tech Review's publisher, the magazine has covered a broad range of science and technology, including the technology business and life sciences. (Incidentally, I don't know Pontin, although we have interacted on Twitter.)
The November/December issue provides a good example of what Technology Review is doing.
Here you will find a cover story by Barry Werth addressing the high cost of drugs, a story that doesn't simply report the horror stories but digs into questions about how companies price drugs. You will also find a provocative essay on Internet privacy by Evgeny Morozov that turns into an essay on democracy, and how it and privacy are enmeshed with one another.
Fascinated by driverless cars, like those being tested by Google, among others? Don't come looking here for a celebration of this showy technology; Will Knight writes that "autonomous vehicles have a long road ahead." A story on Wikipedia by Tom Simonite begins this way:
The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10. It is not operated by a sophisticated corporation but by a leaderless collection of volunteers who generally work under pseudonyms and habitually bicker with each other. It rarely tries new things in the hope of luring visitors; in fact, it has changed little in a decade. And yet every month 10 billion pages are viewed on the English version of Wikipedia alone…
Pontin's Technology Review also holds technology conferences, it recognizes technology leaders, young and old, and its front-of-the-book news section is a nice wrap up of stories I generally don't see elsewhere.
It's a magazine worth reading. And I'd say so even without my MIT connections.
-Paul Raeburn
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