The document summarizes 12 emerging technologies for 2011, providing for each a problem it addresses, its solution and innovator, and the technology's potential impact. The technologies include social indexing to improve search results, smart transformers to better manage energy demand, gestural interfaces for more intuitive control, and cancer genomics to optimize treatment selection. Other technologies are solid-state batteries for electric vehicles, homomorphic encryption for secure cloud computing, crash-proof software coding, and synthetic cells for tailored organism design.

1. Top Ten Technologies 2011 Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief and Publisher

2. How do we select the winners?

3. Social Indexing

4. The Problem: Search engines struggle to predict what information an individual will find most relevant.

5. The Solution: Bret Taylor, Facebook Weighing search results by looking at friends’ interests and what pages will provoke them to press the “Like” button.

6. The Impact: Search results will be less vulnerable to manipulation, and advertisers can serve finely targeted ads.

7. Smart Transformers

8. The Problem: Smart Grids won’t fulfill their potential until they can reroute the flow of electricity house by house.

9. Alex Huang, NC State University The Solution: A transformer that uses high voltage semiconductors to manipulate AC and DC power, balancing supply and demand within neighborhoods.

10. The Impact: It will be easier to adopt residential solar cells and fleets of electric vehicles; fewer power plants will be needed to handle spikes in demand.

11. Gestural Interfaces

12. The Problem: It’s difficult to interface with the increasingly complex computers in televisions, cars, and kiosks.

13. The Solution: Alexander Shpunt, PrimeSense A camera that senses depth distinguishes a user’s gestures from the background, allowing users to control a computer without buttons or touchscreens.

14. The Impact: Internet-enabled televisions will become easier to use, drivers won’t have to take their eyes off the road to control an entertainment or navigation system, and new applications will emerge.

15. Cancer Genomics

16. The Problem: Not knowing the genetic mutations that make cancer cells different from a patient’s healthy cells makes it difficult to choose the best treatment.

17. The Solution: Elaine Mardis, Washington University New sequencing machines and analytic tools can sequence cancer genomes and indentify mutations quickly and cheaply.

18. The Impact: We will chose existing treatments better, and the technology will speed the development and testing of new drugs.

19. Solid-State Batteries

20. The Problem: Electric and hybrid vehicles will never be more than a fraction of the vehicles on the road without better batteries.

21. The Solution: Ann Marie Sastry, Sakti3 Replacing the liquid electrolyte used in traditional lithium-ion batteries with a solid electrolyte, allowing more energy to be safely stored.

22. The Impact: Electric and hybrid cars will become cheaper, and have longer ranges, making them more competitive with gasoline powered vehicles.

23. Homomorphic Encryption

24. The Problem: Many organizations are reluctant to use cloud computing because of the security risk involved in decrypting data for remote processing.

25. The Solution: Craig Gentry, IBM A type of encryption that allows data to be analyzed without being decrypted.

26. The Impact: More businesses will embrace cloud computing, and fewer online security leaks should occur.

27. Cloud Streaming

28. The Problem: Mobile devices aren’t powerful enough to support computationally intensive applications.

29. The Solution: Steve Perlman, OnLive Video compression technology that lets powerful applications running on remote servers respond to users as if the software was running locally.

30. The Impact: Mobile devices could be used for an even wider range of applications, and it could help close the digital divide in developing nations.

31. Crash-Proof Code

32. The Problem: Critical control software can have bugs, even after extensive testing.

33. The Solution: June Andronick, NICTA Using mathematical proofs to create the core of an operating system that cannot crash.

34. The Impact: Failsafe software in the computers embedded in vehicles and medical devices will save lives.

35. Separating Chromosomes

36. The Problem: Conventional sequencing technologies ignore crucial genetic information.

37. The Solution: Stephen Quake, Stanford A microfludic chip that physically teases apart chromosomes before sequencing or genetic testing.

38. The Impact: Better personalized medicine, as well as the promise of significant biological breakthroughs.

39. Synthetic Cells

40. The Problem: Traditional genetic engineering can be slow, and results in organisms that are sub-optimal for specific tasks.

41. The Solution: Daniel Gibson, J. Craig Venter Institute A genome is designed from scratch on a computer and then yeast cells assemble that genome, allowing the creation of artificial organisms.

42. The Impact: Faster and more efficient production of biofuels, drugs, and other products.

43. jpontin@mit.edu