Emerging Areas of Technology Index, Part 2

(emerging areas of technology that still might have a profound impact on how we conduct our lives)

Additional "new technologies" that are about to affect our lives in revolutionary ways either in the next few years or during the next decade

It is very hard to remember that events now long in the past were once in the future.

—Maitland

In February, 2004, MIT's Technology Review revealed its annual selection of new technologies that are about to affect our lives in revolutionary ways either next year or during the next decade.

The following excerpts, clips, or snips, come from the above review.

Universal Translation: A system that is designed to help doctors communicate with patients and which can be extended to other languages and situations.
Synthetic Biology: Combined with simple bacteria, these networks could advance biosensing, allowing inspectors to pinpoint land mines or biological weapons; add human cells, and researchers might build entire organs for transplantation.
Nanowires: Few emerging technologies have offered as much promise as nanotechnology, touted as the means of keeping the decades-long electronics efforts to miniaturize in full develop and transfiguring disciplines from power production to medical diagnostics.
Bayesian Machine Learning: Research using a once obscure branch of probability theory called Bayesian statistics is generating more excitement than skepticism.
T-Rays: With the human eye responsive to only a narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, people have long sought ways to see beyond the limits of visible light.
Distributed Storage: Whether it's organizing documents, spreadsheets, music, photos, and videos or maintaining regular backup files in case of theft or a computer crash; taking care of data is one of the biggest problems facing computer users.
RNAi Therapy: From heart disease to hepatitis, cancer to AIDS, a large number of modern ailments are triggered by errant genes; or by those of invading organisms.
Power Grid Control: Power grids carry the seeds of their own destruction: massive flows of electricity that can race out of control in just seconds, threatening to melt the very lines that carry them.
Microfluidic Optical Fibers: Tiny droplets of fluid inside fiber-optic channels could improve the flow of data-carrying photons, speeding transmission and improving reliability.
Personal Genomics: The approximate number of DNA "letters" in each person's genome is said to be three billion.