the authority on the future of technology

august 2008
a day with
www.technologyreview.com twitter p62
Video’s Band-
width Crisis p56
Google
Health
goes live p80
essay:
i am a brain
surgeon p72

The Next
Special Issue

Bubble?
the future
of web 2.0

Social
Networks
Don’t Make
Money
(But they
could)
Page 36

Who Owns
Your Friends?
Facebook
v. Plaxo
Page 44

10 Startups
to Watch
Page 50

Leah Culver,
cofounder of
the file-sharing
startup Pownce
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CONTENTS VO L U M E 1 1 1 , N U M B E R 4

SPECIAL ISSUE: THE FUTURE OF WEB 2.0 20-21

34 Introduction New Oceans of Data
A transoceanic building boom is
The Web is returning to its inherently social roots. fueling Internet growth.

36 The Business of Social Networks ■ www.technologyreview.com/

forward Explore an interactive
The future of the Web is social. But can social- map of the new transoceanic Inter-
networking sites ever make money? net cables.
By B RYA N T U R S TA DT
22 Solar Costs Drop

44 Who Owns Your Friends?

Prices fall as silicon supplies
increase again.
COVER Social-networking sites like Facebook and Plaxo are 24 Startup Profile:
Photo by Stan Musilek fighting over control of users’ personal information. Audience markets noise-
By E R I C A N AO N E canceling chips for cell phones.
■ www.technologyreview.com/plaxo Hear Plaxo’s chief platform archi-
tect, Joseph Smarr, talk about the future of data portability. TO MARKET

50 10 Startups
27–32 Technology
Commercialized
To see the future of the Web, we followed the money. Cheaper solar power, playing
God, mail-order genetic screen-

56 Internet Gridlock
ing, mouse for 3-D navigation,
chip for depth-sensing cam-
Video is clogging the Internet. How we unclog it will eras, do-it-yourself multitouch
have far-reaching implications. display, low-power GPS, every
By L A R RY H A R D E S T Y
TV an Internet TV, cheap gene
sequencer.
PHOTO ESSAY

62 A Day at the Office with Twitter

The ground zero of social networking gone wild is
Twitter. We got a look at their offices days before they
prepared for a move to a more grown-up space.
By KATE GREENE

■ www.technologyreview.com/twitter Watch interviews with Twitter

cofounders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.

8 Contributors 13 Wiki 2.0

10 Letters
14 From the Editor
NOTEBOOKS
12 The Web’s
Dark Energy
Community policing can help
make the Web safe.
By Jonathan Zittrain
12 Curating Yourself
Online
What happens when your data
is not yours alone?
By Esther Dyson
The online encyclopedia is only a
taste of what’s to come.
72
By Jimmy Wales
ESSAY
FORWARD 72 A Messy Art
Managing the fiddle factor in
17 Optical Reality
Innovative optical chips nearing brain surgery. By Katrina S. Firlik
the market promise cheap Web ■ www.technologyreview.com/
bandwidth. brain Firlik shows the latest in
OR technology and explains how
18 Shopping Guide to advances in equipment and tech-
Personal Genomics niques have changed neurosurgery.
New offerings are available, but
so far they offer little to help
people understand health.

2 T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

REVIEWS
80 Your Medical Data
Online
Google and Microsoft are offer-
ing rival programs to let users
manage their own health infor-
mation. But do people really
understand the security risks?
By Amanda Schaffer
■ www.technologyreview.com/
googlehealth Hear about Google
Health’s potential impact and the
privacy issues it raises.
82 Brain Games
Do new game controllers that
purport to interpret brain activity
really work? By Emily Singer
■ www.technologyreview.com/
eeg Find out how EEG works.
84 Founding Father
A new book describes the man
who created modern venture
capital. By Mark Williams
HACK
86 Meraki Outdoor
Mesh networking repeater for
harsh conditions.
By Kristina Grifantini
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
Some energy solutions are worth a look.
Some are worth your time.
Marketplace and Partnering Platform
for Global Leaders in Energy Solutions
12 – 14 November 2008, Congress Center Basel, Switzerland
www.globalenergybasel.com
62
DEMO
88 Sequencing a Single
Molecule of DNA
Helicos Biosciences introduces
the first commercial technology
that sequences DNA without
amplification. By Emily Singer
■ www.technologyreview.com/ My.TechnologyReview.com, the members-only area
demo Hear a company cofounder
of TechnologyReview.com, is a growing community of
explain the importance of single-
molecule sequencing and watch a business leaders, innovators, and tech enthusiasts.
video explaining how it works. Membership is free and allows you to:
• Tag your favorite articles
FROM THE LABS • Participate in online discussions
92 Biotechnology • Manage your personalized content
93 Nanotechnology • Track your Technology Review
94 Information subscriptions and job postings
Technology • Network and trade messages with
other well-connected members
38 YEARS AGO IN TR To register for this free service, visit today!
96 Community Access
Robert Fano knew that com-
puting’s power lay in its ability
to connect people. By Matt
Mahoney
■ www.technologyreview.com/
fano Hear Robert Fano discuss
the origins and development of
MIT’s pioneering Project MAC.
Don’t touch it. Don’t move it.

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 Editor in Chief and Publisher CORPORATE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND China
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De Technologia non multum scimus. Scimus autem, quid nobis placeat. often not shared by MIT.

6 T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
ONTARIO HAS BEEN GRANTED MORE PATENTS
THAN SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, OR AUSTRALIA. Ontario has always done
its part to keep the U.S. Patent Office working overtime. Canada as a whole ranks eighth
in the world in the number of patents granted, almost half of which originated in Ontario.
Many great innovations were developed here, in technology, automotive and life sciences.
And the pace of innovation continues into genomics, robotics and holography. Innovation
comes naturally in Ontario because our 44 universities and colleges produce the highest ratio
of university-educated workers; 58% have a post-secondary education, the highest rate in the
industrialized world. In fact, our spirit of innovation and quality of life also attract renowned
scientists, researchers and engineers from around the world. Our approach to business is
equally innovative. We are committed to commercializing groundbreaking science with generous
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In a knowledge-based economy, Ontario’s belief in innovation is one of a kind. There’s no better
place in the world to do business.

2ontario.com /innovation
1- 8 0 0 - 8 19 - 8 7 0 1

Ontario company Photonix Imaging

have developed a revolutionary 3D imaging
process that creates diagnostic holograms
direct from a digital source.

Paid for by the Government of Ontario.

CONTRIBUTORS

Urstadt last wrote for has become an entrepre- try’s manufactures.’ The
Technology Review on neur. She is also writing Romans found no other
the role of quantitative a novel which, based on use for the steam engine
financial analysts in the the theme of surgery for than to open temple
debt crisis of 2007 (“The cognitive enhancement, doors with it. What’s
Blow-Up,” November/ portrays a future she made the difference in
December 2007). His insists is right around our modern societies is
writing has appeared in the corner. capitalism—and not just
Harper’s, New York, Port- Firlik is the author of any form of capitalism,
folio, and Outside. Another Day in the Fron- but the institution of
tal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon venture capital.”
BRYANT URSTADT Exposes Life on the Inside. Williams is a Tech-
based the anchor piece nology Review contribut-
for our special issue ing editor.
on Web 2.0 on a simple
question: Are social net-
works good businesses?
(“Social Networking Is
Not a Business,” p. 36).
“It was hard to answer
the question,” says
Urstadt. “The response
I got was either ‘Social KATRINA FIRLIK is a
networking is no busi- neurosurgeon and writer.
ness at all,’ or ‘It’s the In this issue’s essay (“A MARK WILLIAMS
next colossal Google- Messy Art: Managing the reviewed Spencer E.
like money-making Fiddle Factor in Brain Ante’s new biography of JUSTIN FANTL pho-
machine.’ Neither side Surgery,” p. 72), she dis- Georges Doriot, the man tographed the offices
seemed to see the other’s cusses the love-hate rela- most responsible for of Twitter, a startup that
point of view. On top of tionship that surgeons creating venture capital- represents the extreme
that, there seemed to be have with new technol- ism as we know it today of social networking:
announcements almost ogy. “The general public,” (“Founding Father,” p. 84). users of its service, in
every day: MySpace she says, “accepts the “Most of us don’t under- short “tweets,” send
adopting OpenSocial; fact that new technol- stand how historically “followers” constant
a Google-led effort to ogy in their lives—cell anomalous our society is updates on their days’
make it simple for third- phones, laptops—can in its acceptance of the activities and thoughts
party software to be inte- be accompanied by disruptions wrought by (“Home Tweet Home,” p.
grated into any social little glitches here and technology,” says Wil- 62). During the shoot,
network; AOL buying there. What they may be liams. “The Chinese Fantl says, “I found that I
Bebo; Facebook open- surprised to find out is deliberately stalled their kept looking at the large
ing its platform code; that similar glitches are own industrial revolu- clock positioned at one
Facebook founder Mark inherent in new surgical tion in the 15th century, end of the work space.
Zuckerberg wander- technology as well.” for instance, and in 1793 It seemed to serve as a
ing alone around India Firlik might soon be the Emperor Qianlong constant reminder of
while key players at his offering solutions to would tell the British, how fast things move in
company left and new the very problems she ‘We have never valued the tech world.”
ones came aboard. The addresses here. With ingenious articles, nor Fantl has been featured
story was almost moving the founding of New do we have the slight- in the Communication
too fast to nail down.” Brain Industries, she est need of your coun- Arts Photo Annual.

8 CONTRIBUTORS T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
Just what every home needs.
Your very own 170,000 trillion
watt power station.
Solar technology from GE could help produce enough
energy to power thousands of homes with very low
emissions. With a bit of help from that big red power
station 93 million miles away, naturally. It’s one more
example of our blueprint for a better world.
LETTERS
BRAIN TRAUMA IN IRAQ
Emily Singer’s article on brain trauma suf-
fered by U.S. military personnel in Iraq
underscores the fact that even with recent
advances in functional neuro imaging
techniques, brain injuries are difficult
to diagnose, owing to the complexity of
the brain and of the cognitive functions
it enables the healthy adult to perform
(“Brain Trauma in Iraq,” May/June 2008).
The affected veterans deserve help, all the
more so because they are returning to a
workforce in which cognitive ability is
increasingly valued. Neurology appeals
to medical students and other health pro-
fessionals in search of a monumental chal-
lenge, since it demands multidisciplinary
expertise while seldom yielding simple
solutions. Singer’s article suggests that
we need to encourage more health pro-
fessionals to choose this specialty in the
hopes that they will help develop better
diagnostics and therapies.
William E. Cooper
Midlothian, VA
On April 17, the California State Senate
unanimously passed a bill that will ensure
screening of veterans for traumatic brain
injury; it is to be hoped that the bill will
serve as a model for other states. For too
long, the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs has taken a reactive stance to the
problem of TBI. Imaginative research such
as that described in Singer’s piece, coupled
with proactive screening such as that now
legislated by California, will be crucial in
mitigating the awful effects of TBI.
Jerome V. Blum
Los Altos Hills, CA
HOW TO CONTACT US
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7th Floor, Cambridge MA 02142
Fax 617-475-8043
Please include your address, telephone number,
and e-mail address. Letters may be edited for
both clarity and length.
10 LETTERS
THE WONDER OF PHYSICS
When I was a boy, I read almost everything
I could find about the prospects of atomic
energy. Not long after I entered MIT in
1936, Hiroshima became an enduring emo-
tional moment of my life.
Throughout that life, and especially after
retirement, I have been reading about the
advances in knowledge of subatomic physics.
Now, at almost 89 years old, I simply must
live long enough to learn what the Large
Hadron Collider, which was depicted in the
photo essay of your May/June 2008 issue,
first reveals.
Martin Antman
Jacksonville, FL
EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE?
Though entertainingly written, Nick
Bostrom’s essay on the search for extra-
terrestrial life (“Where Are They?” May/
June 2008) suffered from lax logic. From
the fact that “humans have, to date, seen
no sign of any extraterrestrial civilization,”
Bostrom concludes that we must be alone
in the galaxy. But the absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence. There are many
potential explanations for our failure to
detect extraterrestrials, the leading candi-
date being that we have only been listening
for about 50 years. This means Earth’s “light
cone”—the volume of space from which any
signal could have reached us—is only 100
light-years across, or a mere 0.1 percent of
the diameter of our galaxy.
Wade Roush
Boston, MA
As director of the Future of Humanity Insti-
tute, Bostrom does well to whistle in a cos-
mic graveyard and place all his hopes in one
Great Filter—one “probability barrier,” as
he puts it, that determines whether a civi-
lization will become advanced enough to
colonize space. If that Great Filter is safely
behind us, he argues, then the future looks
bright. But the filter that does a civilization
in may not have to be great. If there can be,
instead, many potholes and a few land-
slides along the road from the collapse of
a protostar to the rise of a galactic empire,
then chances are that at least a few of them
lie ahead of us. Peak oil and global warming
come to mind.
Michael J. Sloboda
Hong Kong
Bostrom points to the “vast expense” of
the International Space Station as evi-
dence that advanced civilizations are keen
to explore space. But if the ISS is expensive,
consider the cost of building something
able to escape from our star with an excess
velocity of (even) 1 percent of the speed of
light. And to build it so that it can operate
without resupply for a long time. Perhaps
the resources of a planet small enough to
have inhabitable gravity are insufficient
for such a project, neglecting the number
of times it would have to be replicated for
colonization of a nearby system. Perhaps
the propulsion science to reduce this cost
does not exist outside of science fiction.
David Korenstein
Wayne, PA
DUBIOUS RECOMMENDATIONS
I enjoyed Michael Schrage’s review of the
recommendation engines in use on sites
such as Amazon (“Recommendation
Nation,” May/June 2008). You may be
interested to know that financial trading
sites such as OptionsXpress employ simi-
lar engines. When I buy puts on Caterpillar
and calls on Pepsi, up pops the “Customers
Who Bought This Item Also Bought ...” win-
dow. Other traders can follow my lead and
make the same mistakes I do. The thing is,
the recommendations don’t distinguish the
plays of sly traders from those of dolts.
Since the financial world began implod-
ing last summer and the market has gone
completely haywire, these recommenda-
tions have only gotten wilder. Together we
do not generate the wisdom of crowds. More
like major-league bozosity.
James Wish
Medway, MA
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
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 NOTEBOOKS
R E G U L AT I O N
The Web’s
Dark Energy
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN ARGUES
THAT COMMUNITY POLICING IS
CRUCIAL TO KEEPING THE WEB
SAFE FOR INNOVATION.
PHYSICISTS speak of dark energy, the
label applied to the expansive oomph
permeating the universe. The Internet
has its own dark energy: the legions of
nerds who code for fun, challenge, and
uncertain profit. They do not make a
business plan or solicit lawyers and VCs
before jumping in, and they have no
particular political or
economic power. Yet
they are the ones who
developed the Inter-
net in a backwater and
declined to patent its
protocols. They are
the ones who took the
hobbyist platforms
of the first PCs and
turned them into pow-
erhouses that, together
with the Internet, gave
us one pleasant surprise after another:
the electronic spreadsheet, instant mes-
saging, Internet telephony, Wikipedia.
But two problems threaten the Web’s
dark energy.
First, the trust in reasonable behavior
embedded within our open, generative
networks and utterly reprogrammable
PCs—for example, consider that nei-
ther network participants nor software
authors are accredited or, for the most
part, identified—is too readily abused.
People find their connections disrupted
and their PCs turned into zombies, and
they seek security. Millions of PCs,
12 NOTEBOOKS
especially in corporate and school envi-
ronments, are then locked down.
To deal with this problem, technolo-
gists need to develop better code to help
us deal with bad apples while preserv-
ing an open environment. If a small but
broad fraction of Internet users were
to agree to pass along their PCs’ anony-
mized vital signs and running processes,
we could learn how new code is affecting
those PCs’ performance. We’d also get
a sense of how trustworthy new code is,
partly on the basis of how long it’s been
around and who’s actually using it. This
could help identify annoying applica-
tions that fall short of being outright
viruses, such as
screen savers
that generate
pop-up ads. Such
strategies could
also help detect
Internet filtering
around the world.
The second
threat is that
consumers and
developers are
being charmed
by new, managed technologies whose
vendors assert control and promise
new levels of reliability. We see the rise
of the iPhone, with its walled-garden
App Store, and a new generation of Web
platforms like Facebook Platform and
Google Apps—each of which naturally
reserves the right to kill outside code.
But once outside code can be effortlessly
controlled, regulators can push ven-
dors to do just that. Old-fashioned PC
architecture meant that Bill Gates could
not reasonably have been asked to reach
out and kill, say, peer-to-peer software
running on Windows PCs. And Net
architecture famously makes censorship
difficult (though by no means impos-
sible). But the new platforms are not
so naturally insulated. Thus Facebook
and others can potentially be pressured
to forbid a new round of disruptive but
potentially useful applications.
Nerds writing what could be amaz-
ing code for new platforms need to
push those platforms’ makers to yield
some control. Apple’s, Facebook’s, and
Google’s current business plans don’t
(yet) depend on monopolizing all the
outside apps that run on top of them.
The right market forces can persuade
them to help ensure that the emerging
cool infrastructure will remain hospi-
table to dark energy for years to come.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN IS A PROFESSOR OF LAW AT
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL AND AUTHOR OF THE FUTURE
OF THE INTERNET—AND HOW TO STOP IT.
P R I VACY
Curating Yourself
Online
ESTHER DYSON ARGUES FOR
MORE TRANSPARENCY AND
PERSONAL CONTROL OVER
USER-GENERATED CONTENT.
A FEW weeks ago, a friend wrote to me
with a problem. He said his daughter’s
name—let’s call her Alice Haynes—was
mistakenly appearing on the Internet
as a member of a bowling group on the
social-networking site Meetup. Because
I’m on Meetup’s board, he asked me to
get her name removed. I checked on it;
as far as I could tell, the Alice Haynes in
question was not his daughter, but some
other Alice Haynes in another city.
The episode was a small example of
how issues of online identity and privacy
are changing. In the old days, the issue
was keeping your data secret. Now, the
challenge is making sure your data isn’t
HAR RY CAM P B E LL
mixed up with someone else’s, and con-
trolling it as it spreads out over the Web.
This means managing and curating it.
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 Your presence on the
Web is increasingly dis-
tributed. And your data
is not yours alone; it
also belongs to the mer-
chant who sold you that
red sweater (size 12), to
Juan who took the photo of you on the
beach, and to Susan who said things
about you. Should I have the right to
control what another person says about
me? If I am a Yankees fan, and you have
given some vendor permission to track
you and advertise Red Sox gear to you,
should I have no control over the fact
that you may see Red Sox ads when you
visit my Facebook page? If some other
person with my name does something
embarrassing, how can I keep my iden-
tity separate? (For example, do you want
everyone to have some kind of unique
ID, or does that idea terrify you?)
All these questions reflect a new
dimension of privacy: users’ ability to
control their self-presentation. The dif-
ficulty of doing this intensifies as adver-
tisers and website owners try to make
money from user-generated content.
Joint rights—in this case, those of the
individual and the platform owner to
information or to presentation—invari-
ably lead to tensions, trade-offs, and
conflict. General principles of how to
accommodate both owners are useful,
but individuals have differing inter-
ests and sensitivities. Satisfying them
requires contracts, ideally in the form
of easily checked-off permissions and
restrictions.
Over time, vendors and users together
will develop tools and practices to
deal with these questions. But current
website “privacy” policies don’t suffice.
They’re full of abstractions, euphemisms,
and generalities, such as, “We may, at
any point in time, provide certain Speci-
fied Information to selected Marketing
Partners … .” Why not list for the user the
same specific information that’s being
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
sold to those “marketing
partners”—user name,
address, credit history,
purchasing behavior,
and so on? And then list,
say, the top 10 marketing
partners, and offer the
full searchable list on request? Or allow
the user to decide which advertisers may
“sponsor” her presence on that site? All
these options would allow users to make
informed choices.
ESTHER DYSON IS AN INVESTOR IN AND BOARD MEM-
BER OF 23ANDME, BOXBE, MEETUP, WPP GROUP,
AND YANDEX, AMONG OTHER COMPANIES.
O N L I N E C O L L A B O R AT I O N
Wiki 2.0
JIMMY WALES SAYS HIS ONLINE
ENCYCLOPEDIA IS MERELY A
TASTE OF WHAT’S TO COME.
FROM NEARLY the first moment the
term “Web 2.0” was coined, people have
been speculating endlessly about “Web
3.0.” What does the future hold for the
Web? What is the next big thing?
I think we should slow down. We are
still very much at the
beginning of Web 2.0,
which I define as a
medium marked less
by individual produc-
tion (home pages)
than by collaborative
production (wikis,
social networks, etc.).
Although Wikipedia is
massively popular, it
represents only a frac-
tion of what is possible.
Imagine walking into a traditional
library. Gaze around at all the books. The
shelf with the encyclopedias contains
only a tiny fraction of all the works in the
library. It’s the same with Wikipedia. So
at Wikia, the Web hosting service I set up
in 2004, we are now working on building
the rest of the library. The encyclopedia
(in English, at least) is already fairly com-
prehensive. Now people are moving on
to other types of work: humor, political
activism, gaming guides, and more. Even
this is only scratching the surface. Our
search project will allow mass collabo-
ration on the creation of search results.
Projects that others are working on will
allow mass collaboration on video pro-
duction, music, and more.
Consider—as one imaginary
example—the production of a documen-
tary film about social attitudes to global
warming in different cultures around
the world. For a traditional film crew
to conduct hundreds of “person in the
street” interviews worldwide and edit
them together into a compelling nar-
rative would be incredibly expensive,
requiring months of travel.
But a community of thoughtful people
on the Internet would require only some
organization and leadership, because
the tools are already widely distributed.
The movement from individual video
production (as in most of what appears
on YouTube today) to collaborative
video production is becoming possible
with the development
of collaborative video-
editing tools.
The Wikipedia
model may even
extend to solving
problems afflicting
the Internet itself
(see “The Web’s Dark
Energy” by Jonathan
Zittrain, opposite page).
The spread of worms,
viruses, and spam disrupts the Internet,
but tight security measures threaten
what is good about the medium. Rather
than confronting a stark choice between
anarchy and top-down control, we may
find that communal efforts can yield a
reasonable solution.
JIMMY WALES IS THE COCREATOR OF WIKIPEDIA AND
FOUNDER OF WIKIA, A WEB HOSTING SERVICE.
NOTEBOOKS 13
FROM THE EDITOR
The Next Bubble
ARE WEB 2.0 COMPANIES THE UNLUCKY
BENEFICIARIES OF A SPECULATIVE MANIA?
I
know a little about Web bubbles.
From 1996 to 2002, I was the editor of Red Herring, a mag-
azine the Wall Street Journal dubbed the “bible of the boom.”
We described the startups of the first bubble, explained their
innovations, and chronicled their wonderful capacity for “wealth
creation”—our polite shorthand for the fortunes their investors
and employees made on a speculative stock market.
While we issued stern warnings about financial euphoria, we
profited from it, too. By the middle of 2000 we had some 500,000
enthusiastic readers. Every month, we published two issues of
more than 600 pages, whose editorial content was written by
expensively recruited journalists from Forbes and the Journal, and
whose ads were bought by startups keen to announce their exis-
tence, technology vendors frantic to sell products and services,
and investment banks eager to brag about the public offerings
they had underwritten. It was big business, at least for publishing:
in the first six months of 2000, we earned more than $100 million
in circulation, advertising, and sponsorship revenues.
But when the bubble burst in March of 2000, our advertis-
ing vanished. By the end of that year, we’d reverted to publish-
ing a single, slim issue once a month; then we fired hundreds of
employees and closed our offices in London and elsewhere. By
the end of 2002 we ceased to exist. Today, it’s all gone: the maga-
zine and website now published under the same name by Alex
Vieux, who bought all our assets for a little more than $100,000,
has only a tenuous relationship to the bible of the boom.
Red Herring’s experiences were repeated in centers of technol-
ogy everywhere. To those of us who lived through those times,
the Web 2.0 ventures of 2008 seem painfully reminiscent of the
Web companies of 2000. In his superb 1990 book A Short History
of Financial Euphoria, the late John Kenneth Galbraith describes
the common characteristics of a speculative mania:
“Some artifact or some development, seemingly new and
desirable—tulips in Holland, gold in Louisiana, real estate in
Florida, the superb economic designs of Ronald Reagan—
captures the financial mind or perhaps, more accurately, what so
passes. The price of the object of speculation goes up. … This
increase and the prospect attract new buyers; the new buyers
assure a further increase. …The speculation building on itself
provides its own momentum. … Something, it matters little what,
triggers the ultimate reversal.”
The new development in 2000 was the Web’s alchemical ability
to make markets for books, software, or stocks more efficient. In
14 FROM THE EDITOR
2008, it is the collaborative, social functions of Web 2.0 that excite
investors. The trigger for the dot-com collapse was multibillion-
dollar sell orders for bellwether tech stocks that were processed
simultaneously soon after NASDAQ reached its high of 5132.52
on March 10, 2000, leading to an unprecedented selloff. Today,
the collapse of the housing market and its derivative securities
might close the market for initial public offerings and so discour-
age further investment in Web 2.0 ventures. The Web companies
of both eras, however, reveal the same structural problems: they
have no clearly understood business, but float on investors’ capi-
tal and hope that getting big quickly will lead to profits.
But something is up. As Bryant Urstadt explains in “Social Net-
working Is Not a Business” (p. 36), last March Microsoft bought a
1.6 percent stake in Facebook for $240 million, giving the social-
networking site a notional valuation of $15 billion. Yet according
to Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, Facebook
will lose $150 million this year. Similarly, Google paid $900 mil-
lion in 2006 for the right to deliver ads on MySpace, the largest of
the social networks, for three years—but Google says the results
have been disappointing. So far, no one has much idea what will
do for Web 2.0 what keyword advertising (the source of most of
Google’s 2007 revenues of $16 billion) has done for search.
I am ambivalent about bubbles. On the one had, they are tre-
mendously destructive—of capital, but especially of human labor
and creativity. When I think of how we toiled at Red Herring—
how for years it seemed quite normal to work 14-hour days six or
seven days a week—I wince. I still feel wounded.
On the other hand, speculative manias are an apparently ines-
capable feature of our entrepreneurial capitalism. “America, from
its inception, was a speculation,” Aaron M. Sakolski wrote at the
beginning of his 1932 classic of economics, The Great American
Land Bubble. I know that the railway, automobile, and airplane
industries were all built in fits of speculative excess. Most of the
companies of those eras no longer exist; but the best are still
around. Similarly, I remember that the best of the dot-com com-
panies survived the crash and continue to influence our lives.
When I survey the future of the Web (which we describe in this
month’s special issue, beginning on page 34), I feel confident that
the best of the Web 2.0 companies will weather the inevitable
correction. But I confess that I feel sorry for all the entrepre-
neurs, as young as I was in 2000, who must suffer their bitter
MAR K O STOW
lessons. Write and tell me what you think at jason.pontin@
technologyreview.com. —Jason Pontin
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 CONGRATULATIONS

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOMBAY

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF ACHIEVEMENT

2008 GOLDEN JUBILEE CONFERENCE

‘Looking Ahead: Next 50 Years’

The New York Marriott Marquis

July 18th – 20th, 2008

♦ Globalization – its impact on innovation, entrepreneurship and competition ♦ The New Philanthropy
– New Models of Social Impact ♦ Transformation of Manufacturing through Information Technology ♦
Trends in Technology ♦ Industry Academia Dialogue ♦ The High Price of Energy ♦ Infrastructure Chal-
lenges

Alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology are recognized as thought leaders and have established
a reputation for entrepreneurship, innovation and management. The conference is an opportunity to
network, exchange ideas, while reflecting on past achievements and make recommendations on
building a better future.

With Greetings and Best Wishes From

Alumni, Staff and Students
Be an Insider.
Sign up today for FREE trial issue of
MIT Technology Insider.

Each month the Insider reports on the technologies and

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 FORWARD
HAR DWAR E

OPTICAL
REALITY
New chips promise
cheap Web bandwidth

AN ALL-OPTICAL Internet—fast,
ultracheap, free of bulky electron-
ics—may still be years away, but
big advances in integrated optical
chips are nearing market to help
fuel the Internet’s growth. This
image shows one-centimeter-
square chips built at Infinera in
Sunnyvale, CA. Each chip con-
tains more than 40 optical devices
that are important to manag-
ing the transmission of data on
light beams; due to be commer-
cialized this summer, they can
replace individual components
within Internet hubs. And this fall
Luxtera, of Carlsbad, CA, is com-
mercializing a chip that integrates
100 optical components on sili-
con. Affixed to fiber-optic cables,
the chips can provide superfast
connections between servers in
data centers. “The vision is a path
of integration in a similar way
that electronics was integrated—
from a few, to 40, to someday
hundreds of optical devices on
the same chips,” says Marin
Soljačić, a physicist and photon-
ics researcher at MIT. Within five
C O U RTE SY O F I N F I N E RA/ G E N E LE E

years, optical integration is likely LIGHT LANES These

to have a “substantial impact” on three chips each hold
telecom networks and data cen- more than 40 optical
components etched
ters, he says. “After that, it might on a specially treated
start penetrating your laptop or glass substrate.
desktop.” —David Talbot

17
FORWARD

DeCode Knome
Reykjavik, Iceland Cambridge, MA
23andMe
DNA Direct
Mountain View, CA
San Francisco, CA
B I OT E C H
Navigenics
Redwood Shores, CA
$350,000
BUYER’S About $1,000
GUIDE TO $2,500 $175– Sequencing
PERSONAL Microarrays that test
$3,456
GENOMICS for up to one million
genetic variations
Microarrays that test
for up to one million
(varies by test)
In new offerings, much fasci- genetic variations The sequence of
nation, not yet much utility Various, through your entire genome
subcontractors and an analysis by
a team of scientists;
Information on Information on customers get a
ancestry, genetic genetic predisposi- personalized report
risk of disease,
Genographic tion to 18 diseases, Information on your tailored to their
and characteristics
Project including Alzheimer’s risk for more than particular interests,
such as eye color and type 2 diabetes which could pertain
Washington, DC a dozen conditions
having very well to health, ancestry,
documented genetic or physical traits

$99.95 The microarrays

Like the services
components, such
as cystic fibrosis
detect variations Sequencing detects
linked to disease from deCode and breast cancer
Fragment analy- and 23andMe, myriad genetic
and indicate varying variations that can’t
sis, SNP analy- Navigenics’ tests indi-
amounts of risk; best be identified with
sis, sequencing cate varying amounts
Company for the cautious who Test results can microarrays; if these
want all informa- of disease risk
Cost inform preventive variations are later
tion on the table actions: someone linked to disease,
Technology found to have a customers could
What you get Data on your haplo- mutation linked to gain further insights
This is the most
What it’s group—ancestors Both companies’ breast cancer may
medically oriented
good for with whom you share online interfaces choose prophylactic
of the three micro-
genetic features let you compare mastectomy, and pro-
Extras array analysis com-
spective parents who
your genome with panies—and the You’ll join a rarefied
those of family and both carry a cystic
only one that offers club whose members
friends; 23andMe’s fibrosis mutation may
It can illuminate genetic counseling include genom-
also lets you com- screen their embryos
migratory paths ics pioneers James
pare your ancestry Watson and Craig
taken by your
with that of notables Venter—the first
ancient ancestors DNA Direct pro-
including Bono and humans to have their
Genghis Khan vides the most
usable information genomes sequenced
Proceeds go to field for your personal-
research and a legacy genomics dollar
fund supporting edu-
cation and language-
preservation
initiatives in indige- IN THE PAST year, several direct-to-consumer genetic tests have been
nous communities introduced to capitalize on the falling cost of genomic technologies and
the flood of studies linking genetic variants to disease. The tests generally
use two technologies: microarray analysis, which searches the genome
for specific genetic variations, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms
(SNPs), linked to disease or ancestral groups; and sequencing, which
reads a DNA molecule letter by letter. Getting your genome examined is
great fun. But the understanding of ancestry is still evolving. And broad
genetic screening hasn’t been tested for its clinical utility. —Emily Singer

18 FORWARD T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 I n n o v a t i v e L C O S Te c h n o l o g y
A d v a n c e d A I S Y S Te c h n o l o g y
REALiS SX60 1 . 7 x U l t r a - W i d e P o w e re d Z o o m L e n s
LCOS Projector
2500 ANSI lumens
Home Cinema Mode
Auto Set-up To download your free whitepaper and
HDCP Compliant enjoy a free cup of coffee* on AVI-SPL,
please visit www.avispl.com/techreview8A
Or set up a consultation by calling toll-free 866.299.6835
*Free coffee offer limited to the first 50 respondents.
FORWARD

Trans-Pacific Express
August 2008; 17,000 km
Russia-Japan
n Cab
Cable Network China, Korea, Taiwan,
an, United States
August 2008; 1,800 km
Augus
Russia,
sia,
ia, Japan
apan

Unity North
2010; 10,000 km
Japan, United States

Telstra Australia-Hawaii
September 2008; 9,125 km
Australia, Hawaii
Asia-America Gateway
m February 2009; 20,000 km
ppines,
s, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, EXISTING CABLES
Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thickness represents activated
Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, capacity in December 2007, in
continental United States gigabits per second (Gbps).

500 Gbps
M
Matrix Cable System
stem
stem 50 Gbps
August
u 2008; 1,055 km PIPEE Pacific Cable-1
Late 2
2008;
0 6,900 km 10 Gbps
Singapore,
ng Indonesia
Australia,
all Guam,
m,
PLANNED CABLES
Papua
p NewN Guinea
ine
Undersea cable projects
DATA EARTHQUAKE
Cable name
A 2006 quake in the Luzon Date entering
Strait, south of Taiwan, dam- service; length
aged several cables, disrupting PACIFIC PLOTTING Places connected
Internet access in Asia; new The search wars have a Pacific
projects will add redundancy. theater: Google is an investor in the
■ Nations new to the
undersea network
Unity North cable to Japan. That
could give Google a cost advan-
tage over Microsoft and others
using pricey Pacific data routes.

TO M MY M C CALL; DATA © TE LE G E O G RAP HY R E S EAR C H (WWW.TE LE G E O G RAP HY.C O M)

TELECOM

VAST NEW OCEANS OF DATA

A transoceanic building boom is fueling Internet growth

IF YOU WANT reliable global
Internet connections, have a
limitless appetite for video, or
happen to live in Greenland
or East Africa, here’s some
good news: a construction
surge in transoceanic cable
is under way. The new cables
will connect the world more
closely than ever, add far
more bandwidth, and provide
enough redundancy for data
signals to survive accidents
and outages. For now, the
transoceanic information sys-
tem has enough capacity, but
that could soon change, and
the system has some physical
vulnerabilities. In January, an
anchor tore two cables linking
Europe and Egypt, causing
massive outages. Inadequate
cable service forces some
areas in developing countries
to rely on expensive satellite
connections. And the long-
term upswing in global video
consumption and file sharing
is sucking up bandwidth.
It’s a big change from sev-
eral years ago, when tele-
com companies were going
belly-up from overbuilding
their networks. “Essentially,
the global telecom bust has
become a boom,” says Eric

20 FORWARD T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J A N U A R Y / FE B R U A R Y 2008
 Danice
Late
ate 2008; 2,250 km
Iceland,
la
a
and Denmarkk A WAKE-UP CALL
The fragility of the global network
became clear in January, when a
Greenland Connect
nectt boat’s anchor severed two of three
2009; 4,710
0 km cables connecting Europe and
Canada,
anada,
da, Greenland,
Gree
reenla
and, Iceland Egypt, causing widespread
outages in Egypt, the Middle East,
and India.

TE
E North
N th
Cau
Cau
aucasus
sus Onlin
Online Poti-Varna
Poti-Varn
na
GREENLAND GETS WIRED
200
20
2009;
00
09; 3,1
,100
100 km
Late 2008
La
Late
L 2 08; 1,100 km
Egypt,
Egyp
gy
gyp
yptt,
yp t, France
Ending reliance on spotty and Bulgaria,
lgaria,, Georgia
G
expensive satellite service, Green-
land is getting its first high-speed IMEWEE
cable connection. So are Haiti and 2009
009; 13
13,
13,000
3,0
, km
certain South Pacific islands. France,, Ita
Ittaly
taly,
yL
y, Lebanon, Eg
Egypt, Saud
audi
u Arabia,
a
United Ara ab
a b Emira
Emirates,
Emir
Emiirr
E Pa
Pakistan,
st , IIndia
Mid
Middle
dd E East North
h Africa
cable system
cab s
2009;; 3,850
8 km
Northern
N hern Caribbean Fiber Italy, Eg
Egypt,
gypt, Saud
di Arabia
Late
La
ate
e 200
20
2008
2 08
Ja aica, Haiti,
Jamaica, H
Ha
Haiti Dominican Republic,,
Hai
British
itis Virgi
Virgin
rgin
gin
n Islands
Is
Isla

Colombia-Flo
Colom
Colombia-Flor
m orida
da
a Subsea
S
Fiber P
Project
ject AFRICAN CONNECTIVITY
July 200
2008;
008;
08; 2,400
2 000 km
k Several new projects will help
Unit
i
ited States, Jamaica, Colomb
Colombia
C bridge the digital divide by bring- The East African Marine System
Sy
Syst
ing greater and more reliable 2010;
0 4,900 km
Internet access to African nations, Kenya, United Arab
b Em
Emirates
particularly in East Africa.

Eastern Afr
A rican Submarin
Submari
Subma
marine
arine
ne
ne
Cable S
Systemm
201
010;
10; 10,5
,500 km
Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia,
i Keny
nya, Ta
anzania,
Madagascar, Mozambique,
m e, South
South Afric
Africa
Afri
S
Seacom/Tata TGN-Eurasia
2009; 15,000 km
Seacom: Egypt, Djibouti, India;
Tata TGN-Eurasia: Kenya, Tanzania,
Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa

SURGING DEMAND
Since the telecom boom went bust, global use of bandwidth has shot up more than tenfold.
And by 2014, demand is expected to more than quadruple from current levels (left). At the
moment, most routes, including those across the Atlantic, still have capacity to spare (right).

51.2 Tbps

International Transatlantic
bandwidth usage data capacity
in terabits in terabits
per second (Tbps) per second (Tbps)
Schoonover, senior analyst Potential: 31.9 Tbps
Activated: 7.3 Tbps
at TeleGeography Research, Used: 2.1 Tbps
which provided the data for
the maps and charts in this 11.0 Tbps
graphic. At least $6.4 billion What the
cables carry
worth of transoceanic cable
1.0 Tbps Private: 27%
projects are in the works, with ACTUAL PROJECTED
Switched voice: 1%
even more on the drawing Internet: 72%
2001 2007 2014
boards. —David Talbot

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FORWARD 21
FORWARD

E N E R GY

SOLAR COSTS
HEADING DOWN
Silicon shortages drove up prices,
but supplies are now increasing

IN 2003, the spot-market price of a

kilogram of silicon used for solar
cells was
$24
But by 2007, it was
$400
Silicon, which is derived from quartz, has accounted for up to
one-third the cost of a solar panel since a boom in solar power
drove up the price of raw materials. But an expected jump in sili-
con production should improve solar power’s economics.
—Kevin Bullis SOLAR COMMODITY
Most silicon solar cells use
Cost of silicon as a percentage of Silicon prices (solar-panel makers polysilicon, shown here.
a solar panel’s production cost pay mostly contract prices)
$400 per kg $400
THE PRICE OF SOLAR
■ Spot prices With silicon supplies tight, the price per watt of solar panels
300
■ Contract prices (below) started rising in 2003, ending more than two decades of
steady declines (in 1980, the price was $30 per watt in today’s dol-
200
lars). Most observers agree that solar-power prices will now drop.

100 Average price per watt of solar panels

23% to 33% $60

$4.00 per watt

0
’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07*
*Projected data for contract prices
3.75
Annual shipments of solar Silicon available for solar-panel
panels (most are silicon-based) manufacturing
$3.65
4,000 megawatts 100 thousand tons 3.50
3,733

3,000 75
I MAG E C O U RTE SY O F WAC K E R C H E M I E AG

3.25

2,000 50 Source: Prometheus

Institute (silicon prices
3.00 and share of solar-cell
1,000 cost); PVNews (data
25
for other three charts)

0 0 2.75
’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 '06 '07 '08* '09* '10* '03 '04 '05 '06 '07
*Projections

22 FORWARD T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
FORWARD

S TA R T U P

CLEAR
CALLS
Audience markets
noise-canceling chip
for cell phones

IN 1989, Lloyd Watts headed

to Caltech to get his PhD in
electrical engineering and
join microelectronics pio-
neer Carver Mead’s effort to
understand the human brain.
Watts’s task: studying the
mechanics of the human audi-
tory pathway.
Over the next two decades,
Watts’s work morphed into
a startup called Audience,
which amassed $45 mil-
lion in venture funding. This
year, it rolled out its first
product: a chip for mobile
phones that cancels out a Lloyd Watts
wide range of background
noises—even loud public-
address systems in airports.
The technology could also At Audience, Watts and his Audience with conventional methods.
improve the performance of team were able to distill these URL: www.audience.com Audience is now selling voice-
voice-recognition systems. models into algorithms that Location: Mountain View, CA processor sample chips, for $5
Today’s customer-service and could be wired into a chip. Product: Voice-processor chip that to $7, to makers of cell phones.
sharpens voice quality and filters out
voice-command systems are The system models the fre- Its first customer, Sharp,
noise in cell-phone calls
increasingly sophisticated, quency, duration, and volume is using them in an NTT
Founder: Lloyd Watts
but they can still be defeated of sounds coming into a cell- DoCoMo phone in Japan.
CEO: Peter Santos
by background noise. phone microphone. Then it Stephen Ohr, an analyst at
Number of employees: 50
Working first at Caltech and uses that information to group market research firm Gartner,
Funding amount: $45 million
later at Microsoft cofounder sounds together according to says that companies includ-
Funders: Vulcan Capital, NEA,
Paul Allen’s now-defunct source. Finally, it deletes the Tallwood Venture Capital, and ing AMI Semiconductor,
Interval Research, Watts audio streams that it has iden- VentureTech Alliance Qualcomm, and NXP are all
and other researchers built tified as noise, leaving only the developing similar technolo-
computer models of the inner sound of a speaker’s voice. gies. While Audience has a
ear, or cochlea, including the The technology “literally scientists and doing simu- head start, he says, the mar-
fine hair cells that detect dif- replicates the human hear- lations of the cochlea.” The ket battle will ultimately be
J E N N I F E R HALE

ferent frequencies of sound ing system,” Watts says. “We company says that its system decided by questions such
(some detect high frequen- directly studied the biology, can suppress 25 decibels of as price and manufacturing
cies, others low). working with auditory neuro- noise, versus 6 to 12 decibels quality. —Dean Takahashi

24 FORWARD T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 Congratulations to the following award winners:
01 Azimuth Systems (Customer Impact/Support)
02 Brightcove (Video)
03 Dataupia (Data Management)
04 EveryZing, Inc (Content Management/Search)
05 GotVMail Communications LLC (Enterprise Technology)
06 HubSpot (Innovative Business Strategy)
07 iSkoot (Mobile)
08 Mall Networks (Marketing/Customer Relationship)
09 Punchbowl Software (Usability)
10 StyleFeeder (Collaboration & Social Networking)
11 Veracode, Inc. (Data Protection and Sector Impact)
12 VidSys (Implementation)
13 Visible Measures Corp (Analytics & Business Intelligence)
14 Innovation Hall of Fame Honoree:
Dr. Amar Bose, Chairman & Technical Director, Bose Corporation

special thanks to our sponsors

ROCKETSHIP

www.mitx.org | info@mitx.org
 I am the future
of technology.
MAUREEN ANN RALEY, PHD
DIVISION CHIEF, INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE
DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

Maureen leads the Information and Communications Division of

the Technology Directorate in the Defense Technology Security
Administration (DTSA). She supervises engineers and scientists
who support the DTSA’s mission of preserving U.S. technological
advantages and assuring the health of the U.S. defense industrial
base. As part of an important mission in a government agency,
Maureen needs to keep updated on the latest news across a
variety of technology platforms. She says, “Technology Review’s
in-depth assessment makes me aware of new possibilities that
emerging technologies hold.”
Thomas J. Gustainis

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW READER PROFILE SERIES www.technologyreview.com/reader

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27
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D IAG N O STI C S

MAIL-ORDER GENETIC SCREENING

RECENT YEARS have seen a flood of studies linking genetic vari-
ations to particular diseases, and companies are trying to par-
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28 TO MARKET T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
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Chip for Depth-

Sensing Cameras
CAMERAS that gauge depth could open
up a range of applications, from gesture-
interpreting computer interfaces to 3-D
robot vision. With the DeepC chipset,
manufacturers could soon give any camera
depth-sensing capabilities. DeepC works
with an emitter and detector of infra-
red light, controlling the camera’s shut-
ter so precisely that little light reflected
by distant objects reaches the detec-
tor before the shutter closes. More light
makes it back from nearby objects, allow-
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MOUSE FOR 3-D NAVIGATION

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THE COMPUTER MOUSE was designed to control a pointer on a 2-D

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environments. 3Dconnexion’s new controller has a cap you can lift,
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THE iPHONE popularized multitouch displays—touch screens that
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them to the large screen with the Surface, a multitouch table. Now
engineers at Nortd in New York have created a do-it-yourself, 18-by-27-
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30 TO MARKET T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008 30
 o u r
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TO MARKET

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A TRADITIONAL GPS
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tem from Geotate, however,
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 The
Future of
Web 2.0
THE WEB IS RETURNING
TO ITS SOCIAL ROOTS.
BUT IS IT GETTING AHEAD
OF ITSELF ONCE AGAIN?
IN THE BEGINNING, the Web was social. When Sir
Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web at
CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, in the early 1990s,
his motivation was to improve communications,
mainly among researchers. On his website, Sir
Tim writes, “I found it frustrating that in those
days, there was different information on differ-
ent computers, but you had to log on to different
computers to get at it. … Finding out how things
worked was really difficult. Often it was just easier
to go and ask people when they were having cof-
fee.” As the Web became popular with people other
than scientists, it was often used for “personal Web
pages”—a very social use of the Internet. But some-
thing peculiar happened when the Web was com-
mercialized. Because the people who built the first
Web businesses were mainly the venture capital-
ists, consultants, and entrepreneurs of Silicon Val-
ley, the first dot-coms were largely concerned with
using the Web to improve the efficiency of exist-
ing markets for products and services like books,
groceries, stocks, and software. Alas, afloat in a
sea of venture capital and the cash from prema-
ture public offerings, too many such companies
were themselves highly inefficient: their strategies
were, in essence, to get big quickly by giving goods
34 FEATURE STORY
away for a fraction of their value. After the Internet
bubble burst in 2000, all but the most profitable
of these experimental ventures vanished. Since
then, Web 2.0, with its emphasis on collaboration
and communication, has become overwhelmingly
social—a nice return to the Web’s foundations. An
entire generation of young people has come of age
using the Internet as its dominant medium for
socializing. But although tens of millions around
the world use social networks like Facebook and
MySpace, the future of the Web is obscure. Many
people, this editor included, fret that the second
Web reminds them of the first, just before the
bursting of the bubble. In this issue of Technology
Review, we examine how social networks might
make money (page 36); why the ownership of per-
sonal data on Web 2.0 sites is so fraught an issue
(page 44); and how the Internet will support the
swelling tide of rich media that people are shar-
ing (page 56). We also identify 10 Web 2.0 startups
that we think are particularly promising (page 50),
and visit the offices of one of our favorite new ven-
tures, the microblogging service Twitter (page 62).
Finally, we ask some of the founders of the Web
and its contemporary innovators to tell us: “What
will be the future of the Web?” —Jason Pontin
Photograph by S TA N M U S I L E K
Leah Culver,
a cofounder
of Pownce

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 35
 THE
FUTURE
OF WEB
2.0
Social Networking
Is Not a Business*
WEB 2.0—THE DREAM OF THE USER-BUILT, USER-CENTERED,
USER-RUN INTERNET—HAS DELIVERED ON JUST ABOUT
EVERY PROMISE EXCEPT PROFIT. WILL ITS MOST PROMINENT
EXAMPLE, SOCIAL NETWORKING, EVER MAKE ANY MONEY?
*But It Might Be Soon.
K
ickApps is an 80-person social-networking startup
with its head office in a loftlike space just off Fifth Ave-
nue in New York. In less than two years it has created
the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-
networking sites—“mini-Facebooks” with an aggregate of 300 mil-
lion page views per month. You’ve probably never heard of it.
KickApps gets a fraction of the press coverage of a giant like
Facebook, but its growth has been sufficiently impressive that ven-
ture firms like Spark Capital and Prism VentureWorks have backed
it with $18 million in startup financing, hoping for the payoff of
a monster IPO. Its software allows companies to quickly roll out
social networks with many of the features of Facebook or MySpace.
Its clients—which include local radio stations and newspapers,
national networks like NPR and ABC, and brands like AutoByTel,
Harley-Davidson, and Kraft—want to offer fans a place to gather
and share their love of a team, a product, or anything else.
KickApps’ CEO is Alex Blum, formerly of JumpTV, an online
television service specializing in sports. “We have 35 programmers
working in this office,” says Blum, leading a reporter through a sea
of desks and flat-screen monitors, “and we only have two market-
ing people. We don’t really have to sell our product.”
Like most of the social-networking sites enjoying huge growth,
KickApps is giving its product away, expecting that the communi-
ties built around it will generate ad revenues. It’s a model that stirs
memories of the first Internet bubble: build the user base and hope
36 FEATURE STORY
By B RYA N T U R S TA DT
the money comes—from an IPO, a buyout, or ads. At this point,
KickApps does not reveal revenue figures, or even what kind of
a cut it is taking from the ads. That, too, brings back memories:
staying mum about revenue was always a sign that there wasn’t
much to talk about.
MANY USERS, FEW DOLLARS
Social networking is the fastest-growing activity on Web 2.0—the
shorthand term for the new user-centered Internet, where every-
one publicly modifies everyone else’s work, whether it’s an encyclo-
pedia entry or a photo album. The growth of social networking is
astonishing, and it has spread to sites of all sizes, which are increas-
ingly intertwined as platforms open (see “Who Owns Your Friends?”
p. 44). Even small players are soaring.
Ning, for example, is similar to KickApps but caters to individu-
als. Founded in 2004 by Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and former
Goldman Sachs analyst Gina Bianchini, it has been backed with
$104 million in venture capital by a variety of firms, including Legg
Mason. “We’ve got 267,787 sites,” boasted Bianchini in May. “And
we’re adding 1,500 to 2,000 a day.” ComScore, a firm that measures
Internet usage, reports that the Ning domain, on which all the sites
reside, sees three million unique visitors a month.
Meanwhile, Bebo, a social-networking site more popular
abroad than in the United States, sees more than 22 million visi-
tors a month. (AOL bought it for $850 million in March.) Club
Penguin, a network for kids, sees five million. LinkedIn, a business-
networking site, gets nearly five million unique visits.
But that’s just the smaller players. Facebook, according to Com-
Score’s latest research, saw 33.9 million unique U.S. visitors in
Photographs by J A M I E K R I P K E
 FANCY, THIS
In spring 2007, artist
David Choe painted
the walls at Facebook’s
Palo Alto offices.
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 37

January 2008, nearly double the number from the previous Janu-
ary (but down by about 2 percent from December 2007). MySpace
doubled Facebook’s numbers again, with nearly 72 million unique
visitors in the same month.
Nevertheless, the sites seem largely incapable of generating
revenues commensurate with their popularity.
Last year, Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook
for $240 million, giving the company a dubious valuation of
$15 billion. But Facebook is likely to lose $150 million this year,
according to a January conference call heard by Kara Swisher of
All Things Digital, a Wall Street Journal–affiliated site devoted to
“news, analysis, and opinion about the digital revolution.” That’s
based on projected earnings—before interest, taxes, depreciation,
and amortization—of $50 million and an expected $200 million
in capital expenses, including new servers.
Revenues for MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media fell $100
million short of predictions this year, apparently leading to the
dismissal of the chief revenue officer. And Google met with dis-
appointment after paying $900 million in 2006 to get a piece of
MySpace’s traffic, buying the right to deliver ads for three years
against keywords entered on the networking site. “I don’t think we
have the killer best way to advertise and monetize social networks
yet,” said Google cofounder Sergey Brin in a call with investors
after Google announced its fourth-quarter 2007 results.
Ning does not release numbers about ad sales. All Bianchini will
say is, “The number of networks we have is our leading indicator.”
If Ning’s experience is anything like MySpace’s and Facebook’s,
its leading indicator just indicates a lot of users.
Lookery, an advertising network that buys ad space on Face-
book in bulk, has been reselling that space at 13 cents per thou-
sand times an ad is served, or in ad industry jargon, at a $0.13 cost
per mille (CPM). Facebook sets a minimum CPM of $0.15 for its
“social ads,” which allow advertisers to target ads to Facebook users
and groups according to characteristics like location and age. And
over the last year, MySpace has lowered its banner-ad rate from a
CPM of $3.25 to one of less than $2. By way of comparison, a ban-
ner on Mashable, a blog covering the world of social networking,
has a CPM of $7 to $33, depending on its size. Websites with clearly
defined audiences of executives and technologists who purchase
corporate products and services, such as TechnologyReview.com,
do best of all. Technology Review’s site boasts a CPM of $70.
But even low rates haven’t been enough to lure advertisers and
media buyers to social networking. “A lot of advertisers are very
hesitant to get into MySpace,” says Anthony Acquisti, who over-
sees strategy for emerging media at OMD, an advertising agency
in New York. “We’ve even flat-out told interested brands, ‘You
don’t want to be there.’”
Why not? The problems with social-network advertising revolve
around three main issues: attention, privacy, and content.
38 FEATURE STORY
KickApps is giving its
product away, expecting
that the communities built
around it will generate ad
revenues. It’s a model that
stirs memories of the first
Internet bubble: build the
user base and hope the
money comes.
ATTENTION DEFICIT
In the last week of April, around 400 people who spend their
days trying to figure out how to make money in social network-
ing gathered at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The
conference went by the not very catchy name of EconSM, short
for Economics of Social Media.
The point of the conference was clear enough. As Kara Swisher,
one of the panel moderators, joked on her blog: “I’m in search of
the elusive profit, which I don’t think I’m going to find.”
Almost every player in the game was represented: smaller com-
panies that sent their CEOs, like Alex Blum; investment banks that
wanted to take them public; and companies like Yahoo, AOL, and
Fox Interactive Media, which were in the market for acquisitions.
(Facebook sent no one.) “This is a huge conference,” Blum said.
“All the people we work with are here.”
But they didn’t seem very engaged. Audience members were
jumpy, posting updates to the microblogging service Twitter,
checking e-mail, reading blogs, dipping into the newspaper, and—
occasionally—listening. Specific problems addressed in panel ses-
sions quickly sorted themselves out into a general problem and a
general response. People weren’t paying attention to the ads (as,
indeed, people at the conference weren’t much paying attention
to the panels). One panelist, Seth Goldstein, put it this way: “Right
now, ‘social’ advertising is anything on a social-networking site
that users are pretty good at ignoring.”
Goldstein should know, since his company, Social Media, sells
advertising linked to the applications developed for Facebook
and MySpace—products like Scrabulous and Compare People,
which are hugely popular among the sites’ users. “The trouble,”
says Goldstein, “is we’re putting ads up in front of users, where
they can ignore them. We’ve got to get them between users.”
Goldstein’s comment had the air of a slightly worn sound bite,
but it did acknowledge a problem that outside observers describe
more bluntly. “It’s a really bad place to advertise,” Jason Calacanis,
founder of Webblogs and Mahalo.com, says of social-networking
sites. As he wrote in an e-mail, members of social networks “are
busy in conversations and don’t want marketing messages.”
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 Q&A
THE
FUTURE
OF THE
Compare the situation of social networks with that of Google, WEB
which manages to make money putting ads in front of users.
With about 140 million unique visitors per month, Google
earned $16 billion in 2007, largely from ads that people did pay
attention to. (It may bear mentioning that Facebook recently hired We asked a few technology
innovators, luminaries, and
Sheryl Sandberg away from Google, whose phenomenally suc- users what the Web might
cessful ad program she had led.) Google’s AdWords auction sells be in five to ten years.
ads on a cost-per-click basis: advertisers pay not for a thousand By Kristina Grifantini
viewings but for each individual click on a particular keyword.
Advertisers choose how much to spend over any period of time, SIR TIM
and they can influence the placement of their ads by paying more. BERNERS-
LEE
Bids vary according to keyword, of course, but they were averaging Director of the
around 70 cents per click in the first quarter of 2008. World Wide Web
Consortium and inventor of
Advertising on Google works because visitors come to Google the Web; Cambridge, MA
looking for specific information. If a user who types “scooter” in
“I would like to see the Inter-
the site’s search field is hoping to buy a scooter, the keyword ads
net reach people in rural
that appear at the right of the search results can be more useful areas and help alleviate
than the results themselves. In social networks, on the other hand,
poverty. I would like to see
users show up to find friends; ads are, at best, irrelevant to that goal. more people reaching the
The click-through rates on social-networking sites bear this out. Web from devices big and
small, fixed and mobile. I
While around 2 percent of Google users actually click on a given
look forward to more voice
ad (and the number is much higher when users are conducting
technology—in hands-busy
searches for purchasing reasons), fewer than .04 percent of Face- scenarios such as driving,
book users do, according to a media buyer’s report obtained last and also to increase accessi-
year by the Silicon Valley blog Valleywag. bility (e.g., for people with low
vision). The long tail of video
on the Web is creating a new
USERS IN THE CROSSHAIRS
market of direct access to
When social-media insiders are asked how advertising could cap-
independent films and also
ture users’ attention, they always answer, “Targeting.” has the potential to help with
Targeting is at the core of traditional advertising; apparel manu- literacy issues. I hope for
facturers advertise in Vogue, for example, to reach readers inter- the proliferation of Linked
ested in fashion. In the case of social-networking sites, targeting Open Data: the Semantic
Web ‘done right.’ I hope that
means sifting through the data in your profile to get an idea of what
governments will open their
you’re interested in. Social networks know more about you, your
data stores to all citizens. A
preferences, and your behavior than most businesses, and profiles
mashup sphere will feast
are generally considered, in the words of former Fox Interactive on a wealth of Semantic
Media executive Ross Levinsohn, “digital gold.” Mining that gold Web data and herald the
next wave of progress and
is the best way for a social-networking site to make money—but,
given users’ attitudes toward privacy, the trickiest. creativity on the Web.”
Startups that help advertisers and marketers better target the
users of social-networking sites are fashionable investments for VINT CERF
Vice president and
venture capitalists in North America and Europe. Such startups chief Internet
hope to sell advertisers detailed information about individual evangelist at Google
D O N NA C OVE N EY (B E R N E R S-LE E)
and co-designer of
social networkers. They include the brand-new 33Across (which the TCP/IP protocols and the
architecture of the Internet;
we profile in our list of 10 notable startups, which begins on page
McLean, VA
50) and the more established Finnish company Xtract, which
counts Vodafone, T-Mobile, and Blyk among its customers and “There will be higher-speed
has begun selling its software to advertising agencies and online Internet access by fiber and
wireless media. Seventy
marketers and publishers.
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
percent of all mobiles will be
Internet enabled in 10 years
or less. Gigabit speeds in
wired and wireless modes
will be more widely avail-
able. Many more appliances
(home, work, car, on your per-
son) will be online. IPTV will
offer radical new consumer-
controlled advertising oppor-
tunities. IPv6 will be the
dominant mode of access
and use of the Internet. Multi-
touch and voiced interfaces
will be very common. Devices
will discover each other
when they are local and
interact in a P2P fashion.”
RICHARD
STALLMAN
Main developer of
the GNU/Linux
system and founder
of the Free Software Move-
ment; Cambridge, MA
“No one can see the future,
because it depends on
you. But I see a danger
in the Web today: doing
your computing on serv-
ers running software you
can’t change or study, and
entrusting your data to
U.S. companies required to
give it to Big Brother with-
out even a search warrant.
Don’t risk this practice!”
BJARNE
STROUST-
RUP
Professor at Texas A&M Uni-
versity and designer of the C++
programming language; Col-
lege Station, TX
“The total end of privacy.
Governments, politicians,
criminals, and friends will
trawl through years of accu-
mulated data (ours and what
others collected) with unbe-
lievably sophisticated tools.
Obscurity and time passed
will no longer be covers.”
FEATURE STORY 39
 For social-networking sites, targeting will necessarily entail
getting “between” users, as Seth Goldstein put it. You come to a
social network because you are interested in your friends; ergo, the
thinking goes, in order to get your attention, advertisers need to let
you know what your friends are buying or thinking about buying,
or they must somehow get you to send each other ads. It’s either
a beautiful idea or a creepy one, depending on whether you’re an
ad executive or the user of a social network.
In November 2007, Facebook tried to get between its users
with its Beacon program. Announcing the program in New York,
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declared, “The next hundred
years will be different for advertising, and it starts today.”
Beacon was an advertiser’s dream—and, like many things that are
good for advertisers, very annoying to ordinary folks. Working with
commercial websites like Blockbuster and eBay, Beacon tracked
Facebook users’ purchases and displayed them to their friends.
The problem was that users were enrolled in the program auto-
matically. If a user went to, say, the Blockbuster site and rented a
movie, that information was automatically sent to everyone in
her Facebook network. (That’s what happened to Cathryn Elaine
Harris of Dallas; she is suing Blockbuster for violating the Video
Privacy Protection Act.) Online petitions and negative press ensued,
and the program was clumsily scaled back. On the company blog,
Zuckerberg wrote, “We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this fea-
ture, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We
simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.”
Still, “Beacon is alive and well,” says Chamath Palihapitiya,
Facebook’s vice president of product marketing. “What happened
was unfortunate,” he says. “We took a step back and tried to figure
out how to improve it.” Now it’s an opt-in system, and users can
choose what information to share—or whether to participate at all.
About 30 companies are still with the service, he says.
Most of the industry members at EconSM liked Beacon, wished
it had worked better, and felt it would work eventually; Goldstein
called it a “sign of things to come.” But maintaining the user’s trust
in how data is used is paramount, says Roger McNamee, a venture
capitalist who made early bets on companies like Electronic Arts
and Intuit. “Facebook is so much more personal than Google,” says
McNamee, who invested in Facebook and is a confidant of Zucker-
berg. “It really matters to people how their information is used.”
Not every attempt at targeting has aroused as much protest as
Beacon. In 2007, MySpace launched its HyperTargeting system,
which scans users’ profiles for information about their interests and
demographics. It sorts the profiles into 10 rough categories—such as

THE SOCIAL- October In its first six months, version of Facebook, to con- April Facebook, having expanded
NETWORKING Friendster has attracted about nect students at the university. its reach to hundreds of col-

STORY
Timeline of key events
in the rise of social-
networking sites
2003
March With $400,000 in seed
money, Internet entrepreneur and
former Netscape engineer Jona-
than Abrams launches Friendster.
May Former PayPal executive
VP Reid Hoffman sends out the
first invitations to join business-
networking site LinkedIn.
August Brad Greenspan, Chris
DeWolfe , and Tom Anderson of
community website conglom-
erate eUniverse (later Inter-
mix Media) create MySpace.
1.5 million users. Google offers to
buy it for $30 million, but Abrams
declines, instead raising $13 mil-
lion in venture capital. Friendster
is valued at about $53 million.
November Time declares Friend-
ster one of the “Coolest Inventions
of 2003,” as social network-
ing begins to go mainstream.
December Social-networking
site Hi5, which grew out of a
matchmaking site for South
Asian singles launched in
January 2003, goes live.
2004
January Google rolls out the beta
version of a social-networking site
called Orkut, designed by Google
engineer Orkut Buyukkokten.
February A Harvard sophomore
named Mark Zuckerberg launches
thefacebook.com, the original
May Plaxo, cofounded by Napster
cofounder Sean Parker, receives
$7 million in financing from Cisco
Systems, Sequoia Capital, and
others to build up its net-
work of users of contact-
management software.
June Having spread
to Stanford, Columbia,
and Yale, Facebook
moves its operations
to Palo Alto, CA.
Former NBC executive Scott
Sassa replaces Abrams as CEO
of Friendster in a bid to make
the service profitable; the com-
pany goes through two more
CEOs in the next four years.
2005
January Husband-and-
wife team Michael and
Xochi Birch launch Bebo.
leges and universities, secures
$12.7 million in venture capi-
tal from Accel Partners.
July Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corp. buys MySpace par-
ent company Intermix
Media for $580 million.
September Facebook
adds high-school
networks.
October Marc
Andreessen and Gina
Bianchini launch Ning, a customiz-
able social-networking platform.
2006
April Facebook, now with millions
of active users, raises $27.5 million
in another round of venture capital.
May Facebook expands beyond
schools for the first time, add-
ing workplace networks.
August Google outbids Micro-

40 FEATURE STORY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

 sports and entertainment—that are subdivided into more than 1,000
narrower categories, such as baseball or a specific film. (E-mail and
personal messages are currently not scanned at either Facebook
or MySpace.) Says Adam Bain, president of the Fox Interactive
Media Audience Network, “People are essentially hand-raising
every single day on MySpace and other social-media sites. What
we want to do is take that and put it into easy-to-buy segments.”
Bain says MySpace did extensive research before the launch.
“The users said, ‘I understand I have to live with ads, and I don’t
mind them,’” he says. “The concept of relevance really resonated
with users.” The algorithm is constantly modified by a 150-person
team; it is already on its 12th revision. Although the program has
not yet led to riches, “it has led to an unprecedented amount of
advertisers coming to MySpace,” Bain says. “We’re getting blue-
chip brand names like Adidas, Schwab, and Electronic Arts, Frito-
Lay, Kraft, General Mills, and McDonald’s.”
Are those advertisers as excited as Bain is? “We’ve bought a little
bit,” says Marc Ruxin, director of digital strategy and innovation
at the advertising firm McCann. “It’s been okay.” Well, that’s better
than nothing. Still, it doesn’t exactly settle the question of whether
targeting, even if it avoids the worst of users’ privacy concerns, will
ever be able to punch through the attention barrier.
BAD NEIGHBORS
Another problem that targeting may not be able to solve is the one
posed by what advertisers call “content adjacency.”
Unlike a newspaper or television show, social networking is
a medium whose content is deeply unpredictable. In the sports
pages of a newspaper, an advertiser knows roughly what kind of
material its ads will be running next to. But an enormous, highly
visible brand may not want to risk seeing its ad wind up on a page
such as that run by the actual Facebook group “I’ve Had Sex with
Someone on Facebook,” which at press time had 59,353 members.
Or consider the MySpace profile (turned up after about two min-
utes on the site) of 18-year-old “Nikki AKA Death Angel!,” which
is adorned with the motto “Don’t fuckin fuck with ninjette bitch
we’ll cut ur fuckin head off an give it to ur momma.”
This is not content that commands high rates, although certain
buyers mind less. “Right now, the low-hanging fruit is entertain-
ment, because they’re agnostic about content adjacency,” says
Goldstein. Indeed, Nikki’s badass profile features an ad for the
Warner Bros. film Get Smart. But even entertainment companies
are steering clear of the user-generated communities offered by
Ning and KickApps. “It’s not a controllable universe right now,
with the porn sites and such,” Ruxin says. “It’s a blind buy.”

2007 on the basis of information that

soft in a $900 million deal for
the rights to MySpace search
and search-related advertis-
ing; two weeks later, Micro-
soft negotiates the rights to
serve ads on Facebook.
Microblogging service Twitter,
developed by engineer Jack
Dorsey and Blogger cofounder
Evan Williams, goes live.
September Facebook opens
registration to anyone 13 or over
with a valid e-mail account.
October Internet marketing
research company ComScore
announces that the majority of
MySpace visitors are over 35.
July Twitter raises $5.4 mil-
lion in a round of funding led
by Union Square Ventures.
August News Corp. announces
that MySpace parent company
Fox Interactive Media turned
a profit for the first
time—$10 million on
$550 million in revenue.
Plaxo unveils Pulse,
a service designed
to pull in feeds from
MySpace, Twitter, and
other social-networking sites.
October Microsoft acquires a $240
million equity stake in Facebook; the
deal values Facebook at $15 billion.
November Mark Zuckerberg her-
alds the launch of Facebook’s Social
Ads program as “a completely
new way of advertising online.”
MySpace rolls out its Hyper-
Targeting and SelfServe advertis-
ing platforms, which target ads
users provide about themselves.
Google launches its OpenSocial
platform, allowing developers to
create applications that will work
on a variety of social-networking
sites, including Friendster,
LinkedIn, Hi5, and Ning March Facebook hires Google
(but not Facebook). veteran Sheryl Sandberg as
chief operating officer; Sandberg
December User back-
was a driver of Google’s suc-
lash against Facebook’s
cessful advertising programs
Beacon, a key component
AdWords and AdSense.
of the company’s social-
advertising strategy, AOL pays $850 million to
forces Zuckerberg to issue a acquire Bebo, with its more than
public apology and change the 40 million users worldwide.
feature from opt-out to opt-in. May News Corp. announces
that revenues for MySpace par-
2008 ent company Fox Interactive
January As Google’s advertis-
Media will fall $100 million short
of the $1 billion forecast by the
ing deal with MySpace produces
company for fiscal year 2007.
lower-than-expected revenues,
Google cofounder Sergey Brin Comcast acquires Plaxo; terms
are not disclosed, but specula-
admits, “I don’t think we have the
tion puts the purchase price
killer best way to advertise and
between $150 and $170 million.
monetize social networks yet.”

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 41
 Not everyone is so pessimistic. Andrew Braccia, a partner at
Accel, one of Facebook’s early investors, thinks advertisers will
A GLOOMY FORECAST eventually become more accepting of the “breathing, dynamic”
Can social-networking sites continue to make signifi-
cant inroads into the U.S. online advertising market? nature of social networking and grow to understand that its
The outlook is uncertain. A shaky economy and setbacks unpredictability is part of its allure. And Facebook’s Palihapitiya,
in targeted-advertising initiatives have caused leading
perhaps naively, doesn’t seem to think the adjacency problem
online marketing research firm eMarketer to project
more modest revenue growth for social-networking sites will arise much on his site; Facebook, he says, has “a tremendous
over the next four years than it had previously predicted. amount of user content moderation, with a very simple mecha-
nism for flagging inappropriate material.”
U.S. ad spending on social-networking sites relative to total Users’ ideas of what’s appropriate are hardly the same as adver-
U.S. online ad spending in millions of dollars
tisers’, though. Such arguments may not be enough to sway the
60,000 enormous, image-conscious brands that drive the majority of the
advertising market. And Palihapitiya, deliberately or otherwise,
■ Ad spending on
50,000
social-networking may be missing the point: advertisers dislike rude content not
sites merely because it might reflect badly on their brands, but because
40,000 ■ Rest of online- people reading such stuff are probably not thinking about buying
ad spending
many things that advertisers are selling.
30,000 Still, backers of social networking feel strongly that so many
eyeballs must have value. Braccia points out that while more than 6
20,000 percent of advertising dollars are spent online, 20 percent of media
consumption now happens there. “It’s a significant opportunity,”
10,000
he says. “We’re so young, so in our infancy here.”
“These sites are no different from traditional media properties,”
says Paul Kedrosky, who writes Infectious Greed, a much-read
0
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 blog on venture capital and the Internet. “We’re holding these sites
to an absurd standard. The advertising allocations will follow the
THE GLOBAL VIEW consumer, and right now they’re badly out of whack.”
Social networking is a global phenomenon, and reaching Roger McNamee remains convinced that Facebook is too allur-
users outside the United States will become increasingly
important as advertising dollars flow to Western Europe,
ing, too useful, and too established not to be profitable somehow.
Asia, and beyond. The answer is out there, even if he doesn’t have it. “Someone,” says
McNamee, “is going to have to get creative. I take it on faith that it
Worldwide online social-network advertising spending will emerge. After all, I’m an investor. I’m hopelessly biased.”
in millions of dollars
Marc Canter has a few ideas. Canter, who cofounded
5000
MacroMedia, is now CEO of the company that produces the social-
networking tool PeopleAggregator, which aims to allow communi-
4000 ■ Rest of world ties, tools, search engines, and the rest of Web 2.0 to interconnect in
■ Canada one giant open mesh. He imagines ads of all kinds making up only
■ Asia-Pacific about a third of revenue, with profits coming from a “long tail” of
3000 ■ Western Europe
sources—from Craig’s List–style marketplaces to on-demand music
■ United States
downloads to branded apparel to ad-free premium services.
Chamath Palihapitiya expects Facebook to generate revenue by
2000
selling a variety of such services to users. The site has rolled out a
“gift” program, in which friends spend real money to “give” friends
1000 virtual items, such as an image of a box of tissues with a get-well note.
He also suggests that Facebook may at some point see revenue from
ads served through applications on its site, a growing and potentially
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 major source of income from which it currently gets nothing.
Source: eMarketer Perhaps most optimistic of all is venture capitalist Ron Conway,
the subject of the book The Godfather of Silicon Valley, who has

42 FEATURE STORY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

 MYSPACE VS. FACEBOOK
Although Facebook has seen tremendous growth in traffic over the past year, MySpace still attracts more than twice as many
monthly visitors in the U.S. and, as a result, is set to pull in more than twice as much advertising revenue in 2008.
Monthly visitors
80,000,000
70,000,000
60,000,000
50,000,000 ■ MySpace
■ Facebook
40,000,000
30,000,000
20,000,000
10,000,000
4/07 5/07 6/07 7/07 8/07 9/07 10/07 11/07 12/07 1/08 2/08 3/08 4/08
invested in Google, PayPal, and dozens of Web 2.0 companies.
“MySpace projected it would do a billion dollars’ worth of reve-
nue this year. They came up short and did $800 million,” he says.
“Rupert Murdoch only paid $570 million for the whole thing. It’s
been called the best acquisition of all time. I think Facebook is a
couple of years behind MySpace but on the same trajectory. It’s a
hugely monetizable business. I think it’s a slam dunk.”
THINGS FALL APART
The ghosts of vanished giants haunt social networking. So many
formerly great Internet companies are struggling or dead. Con-
sider CompuServe, AOL, Netscape, Napster—even Yahoo. Lycos,
a search engine that was sold to Terra Networks in 2000 for $12.5
billion, was sold to a Korean firm for $95 million four years later.
What CompuServe and many of the others have in common is
that they were portals: gateways to the Web. Facebook wants to
be something similar: more than just a useful and fun social tool
but the first page people open on the Web, and the platform they
use for all their other communication on the Internet.
As would-be portals, however, social-networking sites are vul-
nerable to the one of the problems that brought down those ear-
lier Internet businesses. The portals were “walled gardens” where
inexperienced Internet users congregated for a time but where they
became restless at last—leaving for the wider, wilder Web. Facebook
and MySpace understand this and are now struggling to achieve an
appropriate balance between openness and control.
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
Share of U.S. online social-network
advertising spending 2008
Other social
networks
MySpace
Facebook Widgets
and apps
Source: Compete; eMarketer
They’re also struggling with faddishness. Danah Boyd, a doc-
toral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, studies
social networking as a cultural phenomenon. She describes online
hot spots as though they were popular pubs. “It’s supercool when
all of your friends go there,” she says. “Then all sorts of other people
come in. Even if the pub doesn’t start feeling physically crowded, it
starts feeling socially crowded when your ex is at the other end of
the bar talking to some creep who brought his fellow gang mem-
bers. How long until you say, ‘Enough—I’m outta here’?”
HOME PAGE
Several attendees at EconSM took the same flight home, and any-
one paying attention on that red-eye from Los Angeles to New
York got a lesson on social networking’s place into modern life.
Just before the plane began its descent, a 28-year-old woman
named Erin fainted on the way to the bathroom. She was possibly
overtired, or maybe weirded out by the inhumane crush of economy
class. Even she didn’t really know what happened. By the time we
were on the runway, she had regained her senses. Her first question
to the flight attendant was, “Did anyone get my phone?”
As soon as the attendant handed her her iPhone, she opened it up
and went right to her Facebook account. She wasn’t looking for ads
and she wouldn’t have noticed one, unless it annoyed her by getting
in the way. She wanted to reach her friends, and that was all.
BRYANT URSTADT HAS WRITTEN FOR ROLLING STONE AND HARPER’S.
FEATURE STORY 43
 THE
FUTURE
OF WEB
2.0
Who Owns
Your Friends?
SOCIAL-NETWORKING SITES ARE FIGHTING OVER
CONTROL OF USERS’ PERSONAL INFORMATION.
THE OUTCOME IS LIKELY TO DETERMINE THE
FUTURE STRUCTURE OF THE INDUSTRY.
By E R I C A N AO N E
T
echnology blogger Robert Scoble wanted help moving
contact information for his 5,000 Facebook friends into
his Microsoft Outlook address book. He turned to Joseph
Smarr, chief platform architect at Plaxo, a company in
Mountain View, CA, that synchronizes contact information between
Outlook, other desktop e-mail programs, and a number of Web ser-
vices. Smarr gave Scoble a short program to test out, which automati-
cally paged through Scoble’s Facebook connections and extracted
the names, birthdays, and e-mail addresses of his friends.
There was just one problem. The program triggered alerts at
Facebook, which disabled Scoble’s account. “My identity disap-
peared,” Scoble says. “If I was your friend, I turned gray—all my
information went gray. ” Scoble was transformed from a man with
a small town of Facebook friends into a nonperson.
The incident brought to a head a debate that had been raging
for months behind the scenes at social-networking sites: who con-
trols the data users post on their profiles? Advocates of so-called
data portability, including Scoble and Smarr, say people should be
able to transfer information easily in and out of any Web services
they use. Facebook, on the other hand, says it needs to safeguard
the information it stores so that it isn’t misused, and that means
keeping tight control over users’ information. At stake is not sim-
ply the ease and security with which people move between social-
networking sites but control of the currency that gives those sites
their value: personal information.
Although Scoble’s trouble managing his 5,000 Facebook friends
is an extreme example, similar problems are common. Many users
have five or six online accounts that use social data—perhaps an
e-mail account, an instant-messenger service, a profile on a social
network, a photo-sharing site, and a blog. “Every time you try to
sign up for some new service, it acts like you’ve never used another
44 FEATURE STORY
website before,” says Smarr. “You have to create a new account and
password from scratch. You have to fill in your profile all over again.
You have to find all the people on that site that you know, reconnect
with them, and reëstablish their relationship to you. I think this
adds up to a huge burden, and a lot of people aren’t using or con-
suming from nearly as many of these sites as they could.”
Chris Saad, cofounder and chair of the nonprofit DataPortability
Project, notes that many current methods of transferring data
expose users to huge security risks. For example, it’s a common
practice for social sites to ask users to submit the usernames and
passwords for their Web-based e-mail accounts when they first
sign up; an automated service can then search the network for peo-
ple listed in their address books. “The door is open right now for
any application that scrapes your Gmail address book to go ahead
and scrape your shopping cart as well, or scrape your searches, or
keep your username and password and pretend to be you,” says
Saad. “It’s a nightmare of security, and it’s something we need to
solve sooner rather than later.”
Though most experts perceive a need for an easier, more secure
way for users to share data among social networks, there is little
agreement on a solution. “Is it going to be the closed, walled gar-
den of infrastructure, or the more open, distributed infrastructure
of the Web itself?” asks Smarr. The answer to that question could
determine whether social networks are dominated by a single
company—and these days Facebook has the edge—or whether
users will be able to jump around effortlessly among a slew of flour-
ishing social sites, each with its own strengths and features.
BILL OF RIGHTS
The Plaxo office in Mountain View is large, open, and half-empty,
with, says Smarr, plenty of room for the company to grow. Rows of
Photograph by TOBY BURDITT
 Joseph Smarr
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 45
 workstations at long tables have no barriers between them. At one
workstation, a neon “open” sign lights up in red and blue. It looks,
in other words, like a typical social-networking startup.
Indeed, since its founding seven years ago, Plaxo has in many
ways mirrored the evolution of social networks as a whole—and
their answers to the challenges they’ve faced. (In May, Comcast
agreed to acquire the company.) Initially, Plaxo let new users
import contact information from their existing e-mail accounts.
It then gave them the option of automatically e-mailing their
contacts to ask for updates. Many people, however, perceived
the e-mails as spam—a charge also leveled against the “viral mar-
keting” techniques of other social networks. Two years ago the
company abandoned the tool and publicly apologized for it. Plaxo
then began trying to reinvent itself as a company that helps people
manage their social data, which has become increasingly scattered
among a variety of desktop applications and Web services.
Last summer, Plaxo launched Pulse, a site that allows users to
track friends’ and family members’ online social activities. On a
single page, for example, you can read and comment on a friend’s
Twitter updates and blog entries or look at photos posted to Flickr.
Given Plaxo’s commitment to Pulse, it is not surprising that Smarr
has become a strong advocate of open communication between
social sites. Posted in the Plaxo office is a hard copy of “A Bill of
Rights for Users of the Social Web,” which Smarr coauthored last
fall. The bill of rights reads, in part,
“We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to
certain fundamental rights, specifically:
■ Ownership of their own personal information, including:
–their own profile data
–the list of people they are connected to
–the activity stream of content they create;
■ Control of whether and how such personal information is
shared with others; and
■ Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal informa-
tion to trusted external sites.”
To facilitate the sharing of data across sites, community groups
have developed a series of technical standards. OpenID lets users
sign up once for a username and password that will then work
at any compatible site. OAuth lets Web services share informa-
tion about a user’s social contacts, without granting the services
broader access to each other. RSS and XMPP can both automati-
cally update a site about activity somewhere else, making it pos-
sible to track someone’s postings from a central location.
A number of companies have begun using such tools to make
their data more open. Yahoo recently changed its user accounts
www Watch Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr explain data portability:
www.technologyreview.com/plaxo
46 FEATURE STORY
so that they adhere to the OpenID format. Its customers can now
use their Yahoo credentials to log in to sites that accept OpenIDs.
Twitter is working to make its service compatible with OAuth.
MySpace allows users to share their MySpace data with sites such
as eBay and Photobucket. But at least one major social-networking
site is bucking the trend.
CONTROLLING FACTORS
Less than 10 miles down the road from Plaxo’s offices are Face-
book’s, tucked away on the second floor of a nondescript office
building in downtown Palo Alto. If Plaxo’s offices suggest a com-
pany redefining itself and uncertain of its future, Facebook’s are
those of a highly successful startup being forced to grow up. A graf-
fiti aesthetic dominates. A distorted face painted on the company’s
elevator doors splits apart when they open, revealing other faces
painted within. In the office itself, a triumphant graffiti-style fist
rises beside the Facebook corporate logo.
Despite its explosive growth—it is now the second-largest
social site behind MySpace, with more than 70 million active
users—Facebook is still searching for a viable business model
(see “Social Networking Is Not a Business,” p. 36). As part of that
search, Facebook has taken steps to position itself as the social
glue holding a variety of Web services together. In May 2007, it
launched Platform, which allows third parties to build applica-
tions that Facebook users can install in their profiles. The result
is that other sites can make their social tools available through
Facebook, rather than having to build their own networks. With
this strategy, Facebook hopes to circumvent the need for data
portability: users can take advantage of other sites’ applications
without ever leaving Facebook.
The launch of Facebook Connect this May took the idea of
Platform and flipped it over. Where Platform allows people to
run other applications through Facebook, Connect allows people
to run Facebook through other websites: sites can add social fea-
tures by building in miniature versions of Facebook. As with
Platform, this means that Facebook members can use new social-
networking tools without having to create new accounts or give
control of their information to other companies. The service pro-
vides a kind of data portability, but the data remains subject to
Facebook’s control.
“It’s not just about data portability; it’s actually about privacy
portability,” says Dave Morin, Facebook’s senior platform man-
ager. “When you go somewhere else and take those connections
with you, the trust that’s been established between two people—or
5,000 people, as in the case of Scoble—continues to be maintained
wherever they go.” Scoble wasn’t simply moving his own data
from one place to another, argues Morin; he was moving data that
belonged to his contacts. Scoble’s friends may have given him per-
mission to access their data, but they didn’t give him permission
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 EXPLAI N E D.
FACEBOOK’S COMBINATORIAL CHALLENGE
How the social network’s technology manages a vast, proliferating net of connections.
By Alan Zeichick
F acebook is a wonderful
example of the network
effect, in which the value of a
network to a user is exponen-
tially proportional to the number
of other users that network has.
Facebook’s power derives
from what Jeff Rothschild, its
vice president of technology,
calls the “social graph”—the sum
of the wildly various connections
between the site’s users and
their friends; between people
and events; between events and
photos; between photos and
people; and between a huge
number of discrete objects
linked by metadata describing
them and their connections.
Facebook maintains data
centers in Santa Clara, CA; San
Francisco; and Northern Vir-
ginia. The centers are built on
the backs of three tiers of x86
servers loaded up with open-
source software, some that
Facebook has created itself.
Let’s look at the main facility,
in Santa Clara, and then show
how it interacts with its siblings.
The top tier of the Facebook
network is made up of the Web
servers that create the Web
pages that users see, most
with eight cores running 64-bit
Linux and Apache. Many of
the social network’s pages and
features are created using PHP,
a computer scripting language
specialized for simple, auto-
mated functions. But Facebook
also develops complex core
applications using a variety
of full-featured computer lan-
guages, including C++, Java,
Python, and Ruby. To manage
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
the complexity of this approach,
the company created Thrift, an
application framework that lets
programs compiled from differ-
ent languages work together.
The bottom tier consists of
eight-core Linux servers running
MySQL, an open-source data-
base server application. Roth-
schild estimates that Facebook
has about 800 such servers
distributing about 40 terabytes
of user data. This tier stores
all the metadata about every
object in the database, such
as a person, photo, or event.
The middle tier consists of
caching servers. Even 800
database servers can’t serve up
all the needed data: Facebook
receives 15 million requests
per second for both data and
connections. Bulked-up cache
servers, running Linux and
the open-source Memcache
software, fill the gap. About 95
FACEBOOK
ARCHITECTURE
San Francisco
Web
Filer Memcache
Memcache
proxy
percent of data queries can
be filled from the cache serv-
ers’ 15 terabytes of RAM, so
that only 500,000 queries per
second have to be passed to
the MySQL databases and
their relatively slow hard drives.
Photos, videos, and other
objects that populate the Web
tier are stored in separate
filers within the data center.
The San Francisco facility
replicates the Web and cache
tiers, as well as the filers
with the database objects,
but it uses the Santa Clara
MySQL database tier.
The Virginia data center is
too far away to share MySQL
databases: with 70 millisec-
onds of Internet delay, give or
take, it just won’t work. Thus,
it completely duplicates the
Santa Clara facility, using
MySQL replication to keep
the database tiers in sync.
Cache SF
sync
SC
Santa Clara
Web
Memcache Filer
MySQL
MySQL
Replication
What’s next for Facebook’s
technology? For one thing, says
Rothschild, the company has
discovered that interrupts on
the servers’ Ethernet control-
lers—which let the servers pro-
cess myriad requests arriving at
the same time—are a bottle-
neck, since they’re generally
handled by only one core. So
Facebook rewrote the control-
lers’ drivers to scale on multi-
core systems. Facebook is also
experimenting with solid-state
drives, which could speed the
performance of the MySQL
database tier by a factor of 100.
Given that Facebook is grow-
ing—and that connections grow
exponentially—the site is going
to need that performance soon.
A FORMER SYSTEMS ANALYST, ALAN
ZEICHICK IS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR OF
SD TIMES AND SYSTEMS MANAGE-
MENT NEWS. HE IS ALSO PRINCIPAL
ANALYST OF CAMDEN ASSOCIATES,
AN IT CONSULTING FIRM.
MySQL
Replication VA
Virginia
Web
Memcache Filer
MySQL
FEATURE STORY 47
 Q&A
THE
FUTURE
OF THE
WEB
MENA
TROTT
President and
cofounder of
Six Apart;
San Francisco
“With the popularity of blog-
ging and online video and
photo sharing, we already
know that people want to
publish significant portions
of their lives online. In 10
years, I can easily see some-
one putting 75 percent of
their day online. But it won’t
all be public. The majority
will be for that person’s
eyes only; it will be more a
record for that individual.”
LEAH
CULVER
Cofounder of
Pownce (see p. 51);
San Francisco
“Open standards will always
be the future of the Web.
Developers should be able
to rely on their programs’
running well on multiple
platforms. Simple and open
API standards such as
Microformats, OpenSocial,
OAuth, and OEmbed will
help developers build the
next generation of Web
applications that we love.”
JONATHAN
ZITTRAIN
Professor of law and
cofounder of the
Berkman Center for
Internet and Society at Harvard
Law School and author of The
Future of the Internet—and How
to Stop It; Cambridge, MA
“The future of the Web may
be its past: an abandon-
ment of open standards and
services (like the collective
hallucination that is our dis-
48 FEATURE STORY
tributed e-mail system) and
a return to the gated com-
munities that offered con-
sistency and security—and
also lock-in (see p. 12). To
avoid this future, applica-
tion developers must pres-
sure the makers of cool new
platforms like Facebook and
Google Apps (or the iPhone,
for that matter) to abandon
their ability to kill any apps
at any time for any reason.”
MARC
BENIOFF
Founder and CEO
of Salesforce.com;
San Francisco
“The future of the Web will
all be about developer
empowerment. We have
seen the Web disrupt and
disintermediate content
and commerce, and now
software development is
next. Companies such as
Salesforce.com, Google,
and Amazon are making it
possible to create and run
powerful business applica-
tions in the cloud, and that
will change the economics of
the software industry forever.”
JAMES
PEARCE
Vice president
of technology
at dotMobi;
Dublin, Ireland
“The mobile Web. In 10
years’ time we will look back
at those quaint few years
when our online experi-
ences required us to sit
at a lonely keyboard and
screen. You don’t have to sit
by a hi-fi to listen to music
in the 21st century. Why
should you have to sit at
a PC to use the Web?”
to move it someplace where they couldn’t control it, and where
they couldn’t revoke or alter Scoble’s privileged access.
With Facebook Connect, Morin says, the company hopes to
let users control what happens to their personal information on
all sites they use, simply by adjusting their Facebook settings. If
a user decides she doesn’t like what some other site is doing with
her social information, she can just rescind that site’s access to
her Facebook account. Because Facebook wants to put users in
charge of what happens to shared contact information, says Morin,
it’s cautious about open standards; it wants to make sure they’re
secure before integrating them into its site. In the meantime, he
says, Facebook is content to build its own tools.
THE 800-POUND GORILLA
The tight controls exerted by Facebook may or may not help users,
but they have certainly benefited the company, giving it an increas-
ingly dominant position among social networks. However, that
dominance is now being challenged by a player relatively new to
this arena: Google.
Friend Connect, which Google announced just days after Face-
book announced its own Connect, makes it simple for a site to
add social-network functions by bringing in existing features and
profiles from elsewhere. It competes directly with Facebook Con-
nect, but there is a key difference: users can carry their profiles and
connections to a new site from any network they belong to, as long
as it supports Friend Connect. Google, in essence, is looking to
become a middleman in the sharing of social information.
Despite such innovations, there is still a long way to go before
data is freely shared among social-networking sites, says the
DataPortability Project’s Saad. Right now, he says, many compa-
nies want data portability to be a one-way street. Some want to
receive data from other sites without giving any up, while others
want to provide data without receiving it—each hoping that its site
will become a user’s primary social tool. In the future, Saad says,
CAL H E N D E R S O N (C U LVE R); J U LI ETTE M E LTO N (Z ITTRAI N); SALE S FO R C E.C O M (B E N I O F F)
“we’re going to try and push quite firmly on the idea that you need
to be both providing and consuming data; you can’t be doing one
without the other.”
For users, the key question remains whether companies will
find a way to make social tools work together in a simple, logical
fashion. “If you can’t plug your camcorder into your VCR and your
VCR into your TV, if things don’t work together, you just don’t use
them,” Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr says. One way to achieve such com-
patibility is for a single company to control multiple online social
tools; another is for a variety of companies to agree on common
standards. As long as tools supporting both models proliferate,
however, the users of social networks may be able to assert their
preferences on the open market.
ERICA NAONE IS AN ASSISTANT EDITOR AT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW.
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 Careers
in Motion
The Path to Success
Do you want to take the next step toward professional growth?
In each issue, Career Resources brings you success stories from
executives who continued their education, essential advice from
experts on how to achieve your career goals, and a directory of
programs designed specifically for the working professional.

Access additional helpful articles and tips at

www.technologyreview.com/careerresources/.

Career Growth Profile

F
oster Hinshaw, the founder, CEO, and president of
Dataupia, understands the power of information.
Through technology, his company helps businesses
affordably streamline and quickly access massive amounts
of data so they can operate with greater insight and efficien-
cy. It’s the perfect challenge for Hinshaw, an enterprising
engineer with a head for business.
While some tech industry executives wait until midca-
reer to earn advanced degrees in business or management,
Hinshaw knew as an undergraduate at Cornell University
engineering, Hinshaw applied for and was accepted to the
MBA program at Harvard University. Almost every summer
during his college years, he worked to pay for his degrees.
He started out in tech positions, working at Pan Am as a ra-
dio technician and at Hewlett-Packard as an engineer. “The
inside knowledge I gained from being on the tech side in
those early years of my career definitely deepened my un-
derstanding of how to make successful and impactful busi-
ness decisions in tech-based companies later on,” he says.

FOSTER HINSHAW
that his schooling should go beyond engineering formulas
and equations.
Age: 60
“Apart from engineering, I have always had a strong
Job Title: CEO and President
interest in strategic and nontechnical issues, and I knew
Employer: Dataupia
I wanted to combine these interests,” he says. “I learned
Program: MS, engineering, Cornell University,
from the experiences of my engineering-school classmates
1971; MBA, Harvard University, 1974
that the path out of engineering and into business without
an MBA was difficult. To become successful and hone my
business skills, it was clear that I would need to further my To learn more about Foster’s decision to continue his education—and how
education outside of engineering with an MBA.” it helped him move up the corporate ladder, go to
Upon finishing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in www.technologyreview.com/careerresources/.

Program Directory
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Put MIT to work for you! The MIT Advanced Study Program offers professionals full or part-time oppor-
tunities to take MIT classes, build new skills, and bring innovative ideas back to work. Choose a curriculum
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To list your program or recruitment ad in our Career Resources section, e-mail Barry Echavarria at
barry.echavarria@technologyreview.com or call 603-924-7586.
 THE
FUTURE
OF WEB
2.0

Ten Web
Startups
to Watch
THESE VENTURES—ALL
FOUNDED RECENTLY—
ARE HOPING TO COMMER-
CIALIZE SOME OF THE
MOST INNOVATIVE IDEAS
OF THE SOCIAL WEB.

Instant Voicing
Send voice messages without
calling, and listen to them from
a phone—or a laptop
Company: Pinger
Founding date: 2005
Funding amount: $11 million

Greg Woock (left)

WORLDWIDE, people sent 1.9 trillion
text messages last year. That’s a lot of
tedious triple-tapping on mobile phones,
and it’s not free. Pinger, a startup in San
Jose, CA, is giving us a voice version of
text messaging that’s Web accessible, so
picking up messages need not trigger
mobile-phone charges.
Pinger lets you send voice messages
without calling (and interrupting) the
recipient. Instead, you speak a name or
phone number into your cell phone and
then leave your message, which sits on
Pinger’s servers. A text notification lets
website. Pinger cofounder Joe Sipher, a
former executive at smart-phone maker
Palm, describes the service as “noninter-
ruptive voice mail.”
Sipher and cofounder Greg Woock
conceived of Pinger as a quick, practical
way for businesspeople to leave mes-
sages. But its biggest fans are turning
out to be women between 15 and 25—a
possible sign that it could become an
important Web 2.0 tool. And since these
and Joe Sipher
make money by selling that information
to companies that do targeted mobile-
phone advertising. AT&T, T-Mobile, and
Sprint have launched similar offerings.
Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner
Perkins Caufield and Byers, which
incubated and funded Pinger, says that
because Pinger built its service with free
or low-cost open-source software, it
can quickly add or change features. In
Komisar’s view, that flexibility could allow
H OWAR D CAO

the recipient know that a voice message eager voice messagers provide personal Pinger to adjust more nimbly than larger
can be picked up by phone or on Pinger’s information upon sign-up, Pinger can competitors. —Larry Aragon

50 FEATURE STORY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

 SHARING,
PRIVATELY
With Pownce, think Twitter
meets Napster
Company: Pownce
Founding date: 2007
Funding amount: Undisclosed
YOU’VE GOT MAIL. You’ve also
got Twitter feeds, Facebook
groups, blogrolls, and instant-
messaging clients. Why do you
need Pownce? Launched in June
2007, Pownce joins the likes
of Twitter, Jaiku, Seesmic, and
Kadoink in the rapidly expand-
ing world of microblogging. But
it’s really a file-sharing platform
disguised as a microblogging
service—and possibly the next
big thing to inflict insomnia on
entertainment industry lawyers.
Pownce allows users to send
and receive large multimedia
files, and to precisely control who
receives those files and updates—
something you can’t do with Twit-
ter. The file-sharing capabilities
have been critical to Pownce’s
growth so far, says Leah Culver
(see our cover), the 25-year-old
who cofounded it with Digg.com
cofounder Kevin Rose and Digg’s
creative director, Daniel Burka.
“File sharing is kind of difficult
online,” she says. “There’s not a
good way to do it on IM. We did
an embed feature, so you can
watch videos and photos right
in line, and that really took off.”
Pownce has been a work in
progress. Allowable file sizes
were initially too small; recently
they got a big upgrade, from 10
to 100 megabytes (250 for the
“pro” account, for which users pay
$20 a year). Users complained
about the lack of a mobile-phone-
friendly site; Pownce built one.
Last October, the company rolled
out a public API (application pro-
gramming interface) enabling
features such as rePownce,
H OWAR D CAO
which publishes Pownce to your
Facebook page. One thing that
hasn’t changed is the business
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
model. From the start, Pownce
has embedded ads in its mes- Traffic Master
sage feeds. Culver thinks the A dashboard gadget brings the Internet to
service could give people a reason
highways, for traffic and local search
to jump on the Web 2.0 band-
wagon: “We have people who say, Company: Dash Navigation
‘This is the first social network Founding date: 2003
I’ve ever used.’ ” —Lissa Harris Funding amount: $71 million
CELL-PHONE
THIS SPRING, AFTER years of development, Dash
STREAMING Navigation finally released Dash Express, a two-way
Qik lets tourists—and reporters— Internet-connected dashboard traffic gadget that brings
broadcast live from phones a kind of social network to the highways. At its heart,
the device is a traffic reporter; the company draws on
Company: Qik
Founding date: 2006 existing traffic data and turns users’ cars into networked
Funding amount: $4 million
sensors that broadcast their speed and location (based
on GPS data) to other Dash-equipped cars, warning
WANDERING THE streets of
Manchester, NH, during the of tie-ups and suggesting routes. Because Dash cars
presidential primary campaign, a provide data from all roads, not just highways that may
self-described “citizen journalist” already have sensors, they fill in blank spots. In addi-
named Steve Garfield bumped tion, the gadget is a search tool that taps the Web for any
into Duncan Hunter, a minor number of purposes, including location-based search
Republican candidate. Garfield
for, say, Thai food, cheap gas, movies, or apartment
pointed his phone’s camera at
Hunter for a quick interview, rentals. Because it has an open programming inter-
whereupon Hunter disclosed face, new search applications will keep popping up, says
that he was about to tell CNN Robert Currie, Dash’s president. Dash makes money on
he wasn’t quitting the race. sales and subscriptions. —David Talbot
What Hunter didn’t know is
that Garfield’s phone was armed
with software from the startup Dash Navigation
Qik, allowing it to capture video founders Mike Tzama-
and stream the interview—in real loukas (left) and Brian
Smartt
time—on Qik’s website and thence
to other platforms, including
Garfield’s Twitter network. Thus,
Garfield says, he scooped CNN
on this bit of election minutia.
Qik’s data center not only con-
verts cell-phone videos to Flash
format but allows Web viewers
to send text messages back to
the person capturing the video.
Bhaskar Roy, a former market-
ing director at Oracle who is a
cofounder, says Qik’s key is its
adaptability—it works with phones
and networks of widely differ-
ing capacities, and does so in real
time. “We have been focusing
on speed and live aspects, and
the quality,” he says. Roy says the
company has recruited thousands
of trial users in 55 countries.
The company is now working on
FEATURE STORY 51
 business models. In one, it would
sell ads to Web video consum-
ers who text-message replies; in
another, it would take a cut from
sales of high-end cell phones that
capture the best videos (which
would come Qik-equipped).
Garfield is happy to pay: “View-
ers can type in a window while
watching, and affect the coverage.
That’s, like, totally amazing and
groundbreaking!” —David Talbot
CRISIS
SOURCING
Ushahidi’s platform allows text
messages to feed into the Web
Company: Ushahidi
Founding date: 2008
Funding amount: Undisclosed
In the chaos that followed Kenya’s
disputed presidential election
last December, 1,200 people
were killed, and several hundred
thousand more fled their homes.
Skeptical of the accuracy of
official reports, a group of Web
developers and bloggers with
Kenyan ties cobbled together
a Web application that could
receive citizen incident reports
via text message from any mobile
phone in Kenya and display them
as a Google Maps application.
Cofounded by Erik Hersman,
an American son of mission-
ary parents who was raised in
Kenya (he is author of the blog
Whiteafrican.com and now lives
in Florida), the group called the
creation Ushahidi—the Swahili
word for “testimony.” They have
formed a nonprofit company and
are finalizing funding with a large
foundation to turn Ushahidi into
a platform that can be deployed
easily and rapidly in areas of crisis.
Already, a version of Ushahidi is
being used to track anti-immigrant
violence afflicting South Africa.
“While there have been a lot of
projects to do citizen reports, they
are all Web-based,” says Ethan
Zuckerman, a research fellow at
Harvard’s Berkman Center for
52 FEATURE STORY
Internet and Society and founder
of Geekcorps, a technology vol-
unteering agency. “There is no
strong content management
system designed to take con-
tent off of SMS [text messag-
ing]. It’s pretty sophisticated.”
Now anyone with a mobile phone
can become a node on the net-
work. “Whenever a crisis breaks
out and you want distributed
data gathering and visualiza-
tion, our goal is to make it a lot
easier to do,” says Hersman. The
technology won’t require much
expertise; “people can either
download Ushahidi or we will
host it for you.” And it’s not just for
Africa. He says the technology
could help chronicle fast-moving
U.S. calamities such as Hurri-
cane Katrina. —David Talbot
PARTIAL
RECALL
QTech’s reQall makes custom
reminders for scatterbrains
Company: QTech
Founding date: 2004
Funding amount: $5 million
Sunil Vemuri, cofounder of QTech,
observes that “one of the dark
secrets of memory aids is that
people forget to use their memory
aids.” The company hopes to solve
this problem with a Web-based
tool called reQall, which grew out
of Vemuri’s doctoral research at
MIT. Users enter calendar items,
grocery lists, brilliant ideas, and
other snippets of information into
the system; they can do this as
text over the Web or via a toll-free
phone number. Then reQall uses a
combination of speech recogni-
tion software, human transcrip-
tionists, and proprietary algorithms
to generate reminders by phone,
text message, RSS feed, or e-mail,
or through a Web interface (the
details are customized to the
user). “Our main competition is
the Post-it note,” Vemuri says.
QTech’s advisors include lead-
ing figures in digitally assisted
Are You ... Influential?
33Across calculates your online social clout
for sharper ad targeting—and for you
Company: 33Across
Founding date: 2007
Funding amount: $1 million
WHEN IT COMES to social networking, “there are an
incredible number of people who want to be known as
influential,” says Eric Wheeler, CEO of the New York
City startup 33Across. Of course, there are also plenty of
people—advertisers, namely—who want to know who
the influential people are. Wheeler would cater to both.
A number of companies try to help target ads based on
users’ behavior; a visitor to Cars.com, for example, might
see Ford ads. In June, 33Across announced its first part-
nership with a social-networking site—Meebo—to build
anonymous profiles of users’ actual influence.
The profiles are drawn from the usual sources—self-
provided information and Web browsing history—as well
as from details on users’ networks and their propensity
to communicate. The goal: to find gossipy influencers
who will be the “viral promoters” of, say, a new product,
says Christine Herron of First Round Capital, an inves-
tor. “All this data can be used to understand an incredible
amount of detail about a person’s influence,” she says.
Mainly, “it allows advertisers to be much smarter in
how they deliver a message,” says Wheeler, formerly
CEO of ad agency Neo@Ogilvy North America. In
exchange for giving 33Across nonprivate user data, social-
networking sites get a piece of the resulting ad revenue.
Users could benefit, too, since the social-networking site
could share the data with them. Measures of influence
might be important to bloggers, among others. 33Across
plans a full launch in September. —Larry Aragon
memory, including Microsoft’s
SEMANTIC
Gordon Bell. Former MIT Media
Lab head Walter Bender, Vemuri’s
ADS
PhD advisor, says reQall “helps Peer39’s algorithms promise
better ways of mining language
reduce the instances of forget-
ting in the first place.” But QTech Company: Peer39
initially forgot to make money Founding date: 2006
from the business. It’s now explor- Funding amount: $11 million
J O R DAN H O LLE N D E R
ing partnerships with cell-phone
companies, fee-based “pre- THE SEMANTIC WEB is com-
mium” accounts, and advertis- ing. That means that software
ing models. —Lissa Harris will comb blogs, social net-
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 33Across founders
Eric Wheeler (left)
and Greg Levitt

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 53

Video Packet-
Switching
Anagran helps the Internet handle
growth in streaming media
Company: Anagran
Founding date: 2004
Funding amount: $40 million
AS A PENTAGON RESEARCHER in the
1960s, Lawrence Roberts led development
of what became the Internet. But breaking
information into packets that could take
numerous redundant network paths “wasn’t
designed for streaming media,” Roberts
says. Network routers treat packets equally
and can delay or drop them; this means
blips and dead spots in voice and video.
Roberts’ s company, Anagran, promises
a fix. Its technology, which prescreens data
before it enters a router, can tell that certain
packets belong to streaming media and give
them priority. (Or it can lower their priority,
54 FEATURE STORY
Lawrence
Roberts
if the goal is to limit file sharing.) Anagran’s
approach is different from that taken by
Roberts’s previous company, Caspian Net-
works, which shut down in 2006 after con-
suming more than $300 million in venture
capital. Caspian made a large, expensive
router that required costly network rede-
signs. Anagran’s device, by contrast, plugs
into existing routers to handle up to four mil-
lion simultaneous data or media streams.
Last year, Anagran started shipping prod-
ucts to government and university custom-
ers seeking to ensure that peer-to-peer file
sharing doesn’t overwhelm their networks.
(The technology is better at identifying
peer-to-peer traffic than an existing tech-
nology called deep packet inspection, which
can miss encrypted files, Anagran says.)
Warren Packard, who invested in Anagran
for Draper Fisher Jurvetson, says the tech-
nology will be critical to future Internet
growth, “especially when you consider its
impact on real-time streams that require
high quality of service.” —Larry Aragon
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
works, and forums for informa-
tion about the meaning of a
page, reading it ever-more intel-
ligently—and, of course, bet-
ter targeting advertisements.
This last bit is where Peer39, a
semantic-advertising company
founded by entrepreneur Amiad
Solomon, comes in. Peer39’s
investors are betting that the
company’s algorithms—built on
research at the Technion Institute
of Technology and Princeton’s
Institute for Advanced Study—
will improve on existing meth-
ods. “These guys find organic
expressions of demand on the
Web, on blogs, on forums and
chats—all kinds of specific areas
where people are talking about
products,” says Jon Medved,
an angel investor in the com-
pany. Then they instantly deliver
custom advertising. “It’s a more
compelling user experience,”
Medved says. —Lissa Harris
MASHUPS
MADE EASY
Company: Mashery
Founding date: 2006
Funding amount: Less than $5 million
WEBSITES once stood alone.
Now they talk to each other,
exchanging bits of data and
piggybacking on each other’s
communities. One key to this
change was the development
of application programming
interfaces (APIs), which allow
all sorts of information sharing
and hybridization. But startups
often have trouble managing
their APIs effectively. Mashery, a
San Francisco startup, makes it
easier—providing security, keep-
ing abreast of shifting industry
standards, and introducing poten-
tial partners to each other. This
spring, Mashery helped Reuters
launch its Open Calais project, a
public API that gives developers
H OWAR D CAO
access to semantically tagged
news content, says Oren Michels,
Mashery’s CEO. —Lissa Harris
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 THE
FUTURE
OF WEB
2.0

Internet
Gridlock
VIDEO DOWNLOADS AND PEER-TO-PEER
TRAFFIC ARE CLOGGING THE INTERNET. HOW
WE CHOOSE TO UNCLOG IT HAS FAR-REACHING
IMPLICATIONS FOR ITS PREVAILING STANDARDS
OF OPENNESS AND FREEDOM.

By L A R RY H A R D E S T Y

A
n obscure blogger films his three-year-old daughter
reciting the plot of the first Star Wars movie. He stitches
together the best parts—including the sage advice “Don’t
talk back to Darth Vader; he’ll getcha”—and posts them
on the video-sharing website YouTube. Seven million people
download the file. A baby-faced University of Minnesota gradu-
ate student with an improbably deep voice films himself singing
a mind-numbingly repetitive social-protest song called “Choco-
late Rain”: 23 million downloads. A self-described “inspirational
comedian” films the six-minute dance routine that closes his pre-
sentations, which summarizes the history of popular dance from
Elvis to Eminem: 87 million downloads.
Video downloads are sucking up bandwidth at an unprece-
dented rate. A short magazine article might take six minutes to
read online. Watching “The Evolution of Dance” also takes six
minutes—but it requires you to download 100 times as much data.
“The Evolution of Dance” alone has sent the equivalent of 250,000
DVDs’ worth of data across the Internet.
And YouTube is just the tip of the iceberg. Fans of Lost or The
Office can watch missed episodes on network websites. Netflix
now streams videos to its subscribers over the Internet, and both
Amazon and Apple’s iTunes music store sell movies and episodes
of TV shows online. Peer-to-peer file-sharing networks have gradu-
ated from transferring four-minute songs to hour-long Sopranos
episodes. And all of these videos are higher quality—and thus more
bandwidth intensive—than YouTube’s.
Last November, an IT research firm called Nemertes made
headlines by reporting that Internet traffic was growing by about
100 percent a year and that in the United States, user demand

56 FEATURE STORY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M FEATURE STORY 57
 would exceed network capacity by 2010. Andrew Odlyzko, who
runs the Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies program at the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, believes that the growth rate is closer to 50
percent. At that rate, he says, expected improvements in standard
network equipment should keep pace with traffic increases.
But if the real rate of traffic growth is somewhere between
Nemertes’s and Odlyzko’s estimates, or if high-definition video
takes off online, then traffic congestion on the Internet could
become much more common. And the way that congestion is
relieved will have implications for the principles of openness and
freedom that have come to characterize the Internet.
WHOSE BITS WIN?
The Internet is a lot like a highway, but not, contrary to popular
belief, a superhighway. It’s more like a four-lane state highway with
traffic lights every five miles or so. A packet of data can blaze down
an optical fiber at the speed of light, but every once in a while it
reaches an intersection where it has the option of branching off
down another fiber. There it encounters a box called an Internet
router, which tells it which way to go. If traffic is light, the packet
can negotiate the intersection with hardly any loss of speed. But if
too many packets reach the intersection at the same time, they have
to queue up and wait for the router to usher them through. When
the wait gets too long, you’ve got congestion.
The transmission control protocol, or TCP—one of the Internet’s
two fundamental protocols—includes an algorithm for handling
congestion. Basically, if a given data link gets congested, TCP tells
all the computers sending packets over it to halve their transmis-
sion rates. The senders then slowly ratchet their rates back up—until
things get congested again. But if your computer’s transmission
rate is constantly being cut in half, you can end up with much less
bandwidth than your broadband provider’s ads promised you.
Sometimes that’s not a problem. If you’re downloading a video
to watch later, you might leave your computer for a few hours and
not notice 10 minutes of congestion. But if you’re using streaming
audio to listen to a live World Series game, every little audio pop or
skip can be infuriating. If a router could just tell which kind of traffic
was which, it could wave the delay-sensitive packets through and
temporarily hold back the others, and everybody would be happy.
But the idea that an Internet service provider (ISP) would make
value judgments about the packets traveling over its network makes
many people uneasy. The Internet, as its name was meant to imply,
is not a single network. It’s a network of networks, most of which the
average user has never heard of. A packet traveling long distances
often has to traverse several networks. Once ISPs get in the business
of discriminating between packets, what’s to prevent them from
giving their own customers’ packets priority, to the detriment of
their competitors’? Suppose an ISP has partnered with—or owns—a
Web service, such as a search engine or a social-networking site. Or
58 FEATURE STORY
suppose it offers a separate service—like phone or television—that
competes with Internet services. If it can treat some packets better
than others, it has the means to an unfair advantage over its own
rivals, or its partners’, or its subsidiaries’.
The idea that the Internet should be fair—that it shouldn’t pick
favorites among users, service providers, applications, and types of
content—is generally known as net neutrality. And it’s a principle
that has been much in the news lately, after its apparent violation
by Comcast, the second-largest ISP in the United States.
Last summer, it became clear that Comcast was intentionally
slowing down peer-to-peer traffic sent over its network by programs
using the popular file-sharing protocol BitTorrent. The Federal
Communications Commission agreed to investigate, in a set of
hearings held at Harvard and Stanford Universities in early 2008.
It wasn’t BitTorrent Inc. that had complained to the FCC, but
rather a company called Vuze, based in Palo Alto, CA, which uses
the BitTorrent protocol—perfectly legally—to distribute high-
definition video over the Internet. As a video distributor, Vuze is
in competition, however lopsided, with Comcast. By specifically
degrading the performance of BitTorrent traffic, Vuze argued, Com-
cast was giving itself an unfair advantage over a smaller rival.
At the Harvard hearing, Comcast executive vice president
David Cohen argued that his company had acted only during
periods of severe congestion, and that it had interfered only with
traffic being uploaded to its network by computers that weren’t
simultaneously performing downloads. That was a good indica-
tion, Cohen said, that the computers were unattended. By slowing
the uploads, he said, Comcast wasn’t hurting the absent users, and
it was dramatically improving the performance of other applica-
tions running over the network.
Whatever Comcast’s motivations may have been, its run-in with
Vuze graphically illustrates the conflict between congestion man-
agement and the principle of net neutrality. “An operator that is just
GLOBAL INTERNET TRAFFIC
Petabytes per month
30,000
25,000
Projection
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Source: Cisco
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 The idea that an Internet
service provider (ISP) would
make value judgments
about the packets traveling
over its network makes
many people uneasy. Once
ISPs get in the business
of discriminating between
packets, what’s to prevent
them from giving their own
customers’ packets priority?
managing the cost of its service by managing congestion may well
have to throttle back heavy users,” says Bob Briscoe, chief researcher
at BT’s Networks Research Centre in Ipswich, England. “An opera-
tor that wants to pick winners and chooses to say that this certain
application is a loser may also throttle back the same applications.
And it’s very difficult to tell the difference between the two.”
To many proponents of net neutrality, the easy way out of this
dilemma is for ISPs to increase the capacity of their networks. But
they have little business incentive to do so. “Why should I put an
enhancement into my platform if somebody else is going to make
the money?” says David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT’s
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who
from 1981 to 1989 was the Internet’s chief protocol architect. “Vuze
is selling HD television with almost no capital expenses whatso-
ever,” Clark says. Should an ISP spend millions—or billions—on
hardware upgrades “so that Vuze can get into the business of deliv-
ering television over my infrastructure with no capital costs what-
soever, and I don’t get any revenues from this?” For ISPs that also
offer television service, the situation is worse. If an increase in
network capacity helps services like Vuze gain market share, the
ISP’s massive capital outlay could actually reduce its revenues. “If
video is no longer a product [the ISP] can mark up because it’s being
delivered over packets,” Clark says, “he has no business model.”
As Clark pointed out at the Harvard FCC hearing, ISPs do have
the option of defraying capital expenses by charging heavy users
more than they charge light users. But so far, most of them have
resisted that approach. “What they have been reluctant to do is
charge per byte,” says Odlyzko, “or else have caps on usage—only
so many gigabytes, beyond which you’re hit with a punitive tariff.”
The industry “is strangely attached to this one-size-fits-all model,”
says Timothy Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who’s gener-
ally credited with coining the term “network neutrality.” “They’ve
got people used to an all-you-can-eat pricing program,” Wu says,
“and it’s hard to change pricing plans.”
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
Absent a change in pricing structures, however, ISPs that want
to both manage congestion and keep regulators happy are in a
bind. Can technology help get them out of it?
THE LAST BIT
To BT’s Bob Briscoe, talk of ISPs’ unfair congestion-management
techniques is misleading, because congestion management on the
Internet was never fair. Telling computers to halve their data rates
in the face of congestion, as the TCP protocol does, is fair only if
all those computers are contributing equally to the congestion. But
in today’s Internet, some applications gobble up bandwidth more
aggressively than others. If my application is using four times as
much bandwidth as yours, and we both halve our transmission
rates, I’m still using twice as much bandwidth as you were initially.
Moreover, if my gluttony is what caused the congestion in the first
place, you’re being penalized for my greed. “Ideally, we would want
to allow everyone the freedom to use exactly what they wanted,”
Briscoe says. “The problem is that congestion represents the limit
on other people’s freedom that my freedom causes.”
Briscoe has proposed a scheme in which greedy applications can,
for the most part, suck up as much bandwidth as they want, while
light Internet users will see their download speeds increase—even
when the network is congested. The trick is simply to allot every
Internet subscriber a monthly quota of high-priority data packets
that get a disproportionately large slice of bandwidth during peri-
ods of congestion. Once people exhaust their quotas, they can keep
using the Internet; they’ll just be at the mercy of traffic conditions.
So users will want to conserve high-priority packets. “A browser
can tell how big a download is before it starts,” Briscoe says, and by
default, the browser would be set to use the high-priority packets
only for small files. For tech-savvy users who wanted to prioritize
some large file on a single occasion, however, “some little control
panel might allow them to go in, just like you can go in and change
the parameters of your network stack if you really want to.”
Just granting users the possibility of setting traffic priorities
themselves, Briscoe believes, is enough to assuage concerns about
network neutrality. “I suspect that 95 percent of customers, if they
were given the choice between doing that themselves or the ISP
doing it for them, would just say, Oh, sod it, do it for me,” Briscoe
says. “The important point is they were asked. And they could have
done it themselves. And I think those 5 percent that are complain-
ing are the ones that wish they were asked.”
In Briscoe’s scheme, users could pay more for larger quotas of
high-priority packets, but this wouldn’t amount to the kind of usage
cap or “punitive tariff ” that Odlyzko says ISPs are wary of. Every
Internet subscriber would still get unlimited downloads. Some
would just get better service during periods of congestion.
In order to determine which packets counted against a user’s
quota, of course, ISPs would need to know when the network is
FEATURE STORY 59
 Q&A
THE
FUTURE
OF THE
WEB
MOHIT HIRA
Director at
Indiatimes.com;
Gurgaon, India
“Web 2.0 and social network-
ing are the latest fads in India,
like the rest of the world. But
here there is also a quiet—
almost underground—move-
ment to incubate new ideas
specifically relevant to the
Indian user’s needs. From
languages to mobile applica-
tions, we will see adapta-
tions of existing sites and
platforms that will appeal to
Indian youth. Cricket, movies,
and music are likely to be the
three cornerstones on which
most of the Web will evolve.”
ERIK
HERSMAN
Cofounder of Usha-
hidi (see p. 52) and
author of the blog
Whiteafrican.com; Orlando,
FL, and Nairobi, Kenya
“The future of the Web in
Africa is the mobile phone.
SMS and voice will be used
to augment existing social
networks, empower trade,
and increase information
sharing. While there will be
continued development in
the traditional Web space as
data networks become more
robust, the true explosion
will only come on a ubiqui-
tous and affordable device.”
MOHAMED
NANABHAY
Head of new media
at Al Jazeera; Doha,
Qatar
“In the Middle East, the Web
has allowed a wider spec-
trum of voices to be heard
in a region where the media
60 FEATURE STORY
has traditionally been tightly
controlled by governments.
I expect this characteris-
tic of the Web—its ability to
amplify the voices of those
who could not be heard—to
become more significant,
and the Web’s impact upon
society to grow, as Inter-
net and mobile penetration
increase and the online
ad market matures. There
will be an explosion of
activity on the Web over
the next decade, driven by
the region’s youth boom.”
JONATHAN
ABRAMS
Founder of Socialzr
and Friendster; San
Francisco, CA
“In five to ten years, we will
all have chips in our brains.
When you look at someone’s
face on the street, your
Google Brain software will
automatically call up every
embarrassing photo of them
from ancient websites such
as Flickr, Facebook, and
MySpace; list all mutual
friends; and remind you
of the person’s annotated
bio. As a response to the
perceived slowness and
verbosity of antiquated ser-
vices like Twitter, people will
send everyone they know
nanobursts of information
about anything they might do
or think before they actually
do or think it. Every website,
blog, and social-networking
profile will include an aggre-
gated feed from every other
website, blog, and social-
networking service, result-
ing in an exponential and
infinite length of repeated
content on every possible
site, overloading our brain
chips and causing frequent
nosebleeds and occasional
cerebral hemorrhage.”
congested. And that turns out to be much more complicated than
it sounds. If a Comcast subscriber in New York and a Verizon sub-
scriber in California are exchanging data, their packets are traveling
over several different networks: Comcast’s, Verizon’s, and others in
between. If there’s congestion on one of those networks, the sending
and receiving computers can tell, because some of their packets are
getting lost. But if the congestion is on Comcast’s network, Verizon
doesn’t know about it, and vice versa. That’s a problem if the ISPs
are responsible for tracking their customers’ packet quotas.
Briscoe is proposing that when the sending and receiving com-
puters recognize congestion on the link between them, they indi-
cate it to their ISPs by flagging their packets—flipping a single
bit from 0 to 1. Of course, hackers could try to game the system,
reprogramming their computers so that they deny that they’ve
encountered congestion when they really have. But a computer
whose congestion claims are consistently at odds with everyone
else’s will be easy to ferret out. Enforcing honesty is probably not
the biggest problem for Briscoe’s scheme.
Getting everyone to agree on it is. An Internet packet consists of
a payload—a chunk of the Web page, video, or telephone call that’s
being transmitted—and a header. The header contains the Internet
addresses of the sender and receiver, along with other information
that tells routers and the receiving computer how to handle the
packet. When the architects of the Internet designed the Internet
protocol (IP), they gave the packet header a bunch of extra bits, for
use by yet unimagined services. All those extra bits have been par-
celed out—except one. That’s the bit Briscoe wants to use.
Among network engineers, Briscoe’s ideas have attracted a lot
of attention and a lot of support. But the last bit is a hard sell, and
he knows it. “The difficult [part] in doing it is getting it agreed that
it should be done,” he says. “Because when you want to change IP,
because half of the world is now being built on top of IP, it’s like argu-
ing to change—I don’t know, the rules of cricket or something.”
Someday, the Internet might use an approach much like
Briscoe’s to manage congestion. But that day is probably years
away. A bandwidth crunch may not be.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
D I G ITAL C ITI Z E N S I N DABA (NANAB HAY); S C OTT LEW I S (AB RAM S)
Most agree that the recent spike in Internet traffic is due to video
downloads and peer-to-peer file transfers, but nobody’s sure how
much responsibility each one bears. ISPs know the traffic distri-
butions for their own networks, but they’re not disclosing them,
and a given ISP’s distribution may not reflect that of the Internet
as a whole. Video downloads don’t hog bandwidth in the way that
many peer-to-peer programs do, though. And we do know that
peer-to-peer traffic is the type that Comcast clamped down on.
Nonetheless, ISPs and peer-to-peer networks are not natural
antagonists. A BitTorrent download may use a lot of bandwidth,
but it uses it much more efficiently than a traditional download
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
does; that’s why it’s so fast. In principle, peer-to-peer protocols
could help distribute server load across a network, eliminating
bottlenecks. The problem, says Mung Chiang, an associate profes-
sor of electrical engineering at Princeton University (and a member
of last year’s TR35), is the mutual ignorance that ISPs and peer-to-
peer networks have maintained in the name of net neutrality.
ISPs don’t just rely on the TCP protocol to handle congestion.
They actively manage their networks, identifying clogged links and
routing traffic around them. At the same time, computers running
BitTorrent are constantly searching for new peers that can upload
data more rapidly and dropping peers whose transmissions have
become sluggish. The problem, according to Chiang, is that peer-
to-peer networks respond to congestion much faster than ISPs
do. If a bunch of computers running peer-to-peer programs are
sending traffic over the same link, they may all see their downloads
slow down, so they’ll go looking for new peers. By the time the ISP
decides to route around the congested link, the peer-to-peer traffic
may have moved elsewhere: the ISP has effectively sealed off a wide-
open pipe. Even worse, its new routing plan might end up sending
traffic over links that have since become congested.
But, Chiang says, “suppose the network operator tells the con-
tent distributor something about its network: the route I’m using,
the metric I’m using, the way I’m updating my routes. Or the other
way around: the content distributor says something about the way
it treats servers or selects peers.” Network efficiency improves.
An industry consortium called the P4P Working Group—led
by Verizon and the New York peer-to-peer company Pando—is
exploring just such a possibility. Verizon and Pando have tested
a protocol called P4P, created by Haiyong Xie, a PhD student in
computer science at Yale University. With P4P, both ISPs and
peer-to-peer networks supply abstract information about their
network layouts to a central computer, which blends the infor-
mation to produce a new, hybridized network map. Peer-to-peer
networks can use the map to avoid bottlenecks.
In the trial, the P4P system let Verizon customers using the
Fios fiber-optic-cable service and the Pando peer-to-peer net-
work download files three to seven times as quickly as they could
have otherwise, says Laird Popkin, Pando’s chief technology offi-
cer. To some extent, that was because the protocol was better at
finding peers that were part of Verizon’s network, as opposed to
some remote network.
SCARED STRAIGHT?
Every technical attempt to defeat congestion eventually runs
up against the principle of net neutrality, however. Even though
BitTorrent Inc. is a core member of the P4P Working Group, its
chief technology officer, Eric Klinker, remains leery of the idea that
peer-to-peer networks and ISPs would share information. He wor-
ries that a protocol like P4P could allow an ISP to misrepresent its
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
network topology in an attempt to keep traffic local, so it doesn’t
have to pay access fees to send traffic across other networks.
Even David Clark’s proposal that ISPs simply charge their cus-
tomers according to usage could threaten neutrality. As Mung
Chiang points out, an ISP that also sold TV service could tier its
charges so that customers who watched a lot of high-definition
Internet TV would always end up paying more than they would
have for cable subscriptions. So the question that looms over every
discussion of congestion and neutrality is, Does the government
need to intervene to ensure that everyone plays fair?
For all Klinker’s concerns about P4P, BitTorrent seems to have
concluded that it doesn’t. In February, Klinker had joined represen-
tatives of Vuze and several activist groups in a public endorsement
of net neutrality legislation proposed by Massachusetts congress-
man Ed Markey. At the end of March, however, after the Harvard
hearings, BitTorrent and Comcast issued a joint press release
announcing that they would collaborate to develop methods of
peer selection that reduce congestion. Comcast would take a
“protocol-agnostic” approach to congestion management—target-
ing only heavy bandwidth users, not particular applications—and
would increase the amount of bandwidth available to its customers
for uploads. BitTorrent, meanwhile, agreed that “these technical
issues can be worked out through private business discussions
without the need for government intervention.”
The FCC, says Clark, “will do something, there’s no doubt, if
industry does not resolve the current impasse.” But, he adds, “it’s
possible that the middle-of-the-road answer here is that vigilance
from the regulators will impose a discipline on the market that
will cause the market to find the solution.”
That would be welcome news to Chiang. “Often, government
legislation is done by people who may not know technology that
well,” he says, “and therefore they tend to ignore some of the fea-
sibility and realities of the technology.”
But Timothy Wu believes that network neutrality regulations
could be written at a level of generality that imposes no innovation-
killing restrictions on the market, while still giving the FCC lati-
tude to punish transgressors. There’s ample precedent, he says, for
broad proscriptions that federal agencies interpret on a case-by-
case basis. “In employment law, we have a general rule that says
you shouldn’t discriminate, but in reality we have the fact that you
aren’t allowed to discriminate unless you have a good reason,” he
says. “Maybe somebody has to speak Arabic to be a spy. But saying
you have to be white to serve food is not the same thing.”
Ultimately, however, “the Internet’s problems have always been
best solved collectively, through its long history,” Wu says. “It’s held
together by people being reasonable … reasonable and part of a
giant community. The fact that it works at all is ridiculous.”
LARRY HARDESTY IS A TECHNOLOGY REVIEW SENIOR EDITOR.
FEATURE STORY 61
 THE
FUTURE
OF WEB
2.0

62 PHOTO ESS AY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

 Twitter cofounders Evan Williams (right) and
Biz Stone discuss upcoming changes to the
company’s service in its office’s main meet-
ing room. Williams and Stone are veterans of
the first dot-com boom and note that starting a
company today is much easier: a product can
be developed by fewer people and rolled out
faster. This has led to a mass of startups that
release products in “limited beta,” a period in
which early adopters test features, and startup
engineers watch how the infrastructure holds
up. Today’s startups can wait longer before
they are funded, maintaining their autonomy
and ability to change course. Twitter, a side
project spun out of Odeo, Williams’s former
podcasting company, was prototyped in a few
weeks. Stone maintains that the idea behind
Twitter wouldn’t have fired up a room of ven-
ture capitalists: before seeking money, the
company had to show the service in action.

P H OTO E S SAY

Home Tweet Home

FOUNDED IN LATE 2006, TWITTER PROVIDES A COMMUNICATION TOOL
THAT LETS USERS POST 140-CHARACTER-OR-FEWER UPDATES ON
THEIR CURRENT ACTIVITIES OR THOUGHTS, NOTEWORTHY LINKS ON
THE WEB, OR PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS. TWITTERERS CAN BE FOUND
ALL OVER THE WORLD, POSTING UPDATES 24 HOURS A DAY, BUT
THIS PHOTO ESSAY WILL TAKE YOU INSIDE THE TWITTER OFFICES, IN
SOUTH PARK, SAN FRANCISCO, WHERE PROGRAMMERS TRY TO TURN
THE CONSTANT CONNECTION PROVIDED BY THE WEB AND CELLULAR
NETWORKS INTO A TOOL THAT SOME PEOPLE FIND INDISPENSABLE.

By K AT E G R E E N E Photographs by J U S T I N FA N T L

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M PHOTO ESS AY 63
 Sixteen people work at Twitter, most of them writ-
ing code that determines what users see when they
log on to the service’s Web page, or how a message
is instantly routed from, say, the company’s Web serv-
ers to thousands of cell phones throughout the world.
Recently, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory updated
nearly 10,000 people (or “followers,” in the Twitter patois)
during the Phoenix Mars lander’s “seven minutes of
terror” as it descended to the Martian atmosphere.
The main work space at Twitter is dominated by what
is essentially one long desk with people working on both
sides. Usually programmers sit quietly at their work-
stations, but occasionally there’s a flurry of activity.

64 PHOTO ESS AY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

PHOTO ESS AY 65
 Like the offices of many Silicon
Valley startups, Twitter’s is silent as
programmers type on keyboards
and stare at screens. But Twitter
is particularly quiet due to lack of
work space partitions. To have a pri-
vate conversation on the phone, for
instance, cofounder and CEO Jack
Dorsey (left and bottom left) must
go to a different part of the office.

66 PHOTO ESS AY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M PHOTO ESS AY 67
 www Take a tour of Twitter’s offices with the company’s
cofounders: www.technologyreview.com/twitter

68 PHOTO ESS AY T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

Reportedly, Twitter recently received $15 million in funding
on top of an earlier $5 million funding round, and this month
the company will move into a larger, less quirky space about
a block away. The money is badly needed for more than a
larger lunchroom, however. The number of Twitter users has
grown in the past year, and during events that spark a lot of
twittering—such as technology conferences—popular users
are constantly posting “tweets” to thousands of people. This
puts strain on the underlying message-routing architecture,
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W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M PHOTO ESS AY 69
Gina Bianchini George Church “Desh” Deshpande Parker Harris Steven Koonin Kevin Lynch
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 A Messy Art
E S SAY
MANAGING THE FIDDLE FACTOR
IN BRAIN SURGERY
A
few months ago, I sifted through a stack of junk mail
on my desk—“Neurosurgery Opportunity in North
Dakota,” “Advances in Acromegaly,” “Katrina, Join
Us in New Orleans!”—and tossed most of it. At the
bottom of the pile was a big, floppy, colorful 2008 calendar
from medical-device maker Medtronic. This I lingered over
for a moment, then saved.
Medtronic’s navigation business, which creates technology
that helps surgeons explore the human body, is headquartered
at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The calendar promised
“stunning imagery from Colorado and stunning innovation
from Medtronic.” Take September, which features an “autum-
nal sunset in a thriving aspen forest near Durango, Colorado.”
This image is paired with a photograph of a piece of surgical
technology that gets its own loving description: “Medtronic
cranial navigation pointer probes provide an enhanced patient
registration experience for a thriving neuronavigation prac-
tice.” I see the connection: thriving forest, thriving practice.
I’ll take one of those pointer probes, please.
Where to hang this calendar, though? September might pro-
vide a pleasant piece of art for my office, but August, which fea-
tures a blurry and bloody close-up of what I believe is probably
a brain tumor as seen through a surgical microscope, might be
pushing it. (“Doc, that calendar over there: what exactly … ?”)
I figured that my kitchen was out, too.
There was a time when displaying such images made per-
fect sense to me. Years ago, thrilled to have been accepted to a
neurosurgery residency program, I contacted a medical-device
manufacturer to get my hands on a poster featuring detailed
photos of aneurysm clips, which are used to close off a bulging
area in a weakened arterial wall to prevent a hemorrhage in the
brain. I had seen such a poster once before and was amazed
by the clips’ variety of configurations and sizes. These small
titanium devices are gems of form and function, perfectly
engineered for their specialized task. Having finished medi-
72 ESS AY
By K AT R I N A S . F I R L I K
cal school, I was about to embark on the seven-year training
required to become a neurosurgeon. I wanted that poster.
I am surely not alone in loving the tools of my trade, nor in
finding them physically exquisite. Surgeons are the natural
technophiles of medicine, and neurosurgeons rely at least in
part on especially advanced technologies. But there is a flip
side to the wonder I feel, and it is this: each new technological
advance promises a fresh cause for cursing in the operating
room. Although the details change from decade to decade, and
even from year to year, the source of consternation remains
constant: the fiddle factor. It is, in essence, the same prob-
lem that arises with laptops, cell phones, digital cameras, and
home theater equipment. When the complexity of your home
theater system gets the better of you, though, it just means
that you might not get to enjoy tonight’s basketball game in
surround sound. In my job, the fiddle factor can have more
serious consequences. This, after all, is brain surgery.
MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE
My profession has come a long way since the dark early days
of exploratory surgery. Before the advent of computed tomog-
raphy (CT) in the 1970s, a surgeon was often guided by clini-
cal judgments about as vague as “It’s got to be on the left side.”
Things got even better in the 1980s, with advances in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI). And in the decades since, neuro-
surgeons’ ability to target a lesion, such as a tumor—to figure
out where it is in the brain, and then to actually find it at the
time of surgery—has been aided dramatically by advanced
imaging and the technology it has made possible.
The technology that always seems to impress visitors to our
operating rooms is our navigation equipment. (“Navigation”
sounds better than “computerized frameless stereotaxy,” so I
will stick with that term.) Simply put, navigation technology
affords us something like x-ray vision during surgery. With a
specialized wand (or “pointer probe,” our Miss September),
Photograph by S T E V E M O O R S
 ALL SYSTEMS GO
Firlik and the tools of her
trade in Operating Room
2, Greenwich Hospital,
Greenwich, CT

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M ESS AY 73
 we can point to a specific location on or in a patient’s head, and
the system will show us—we hope—the corresponding spot on
a previously obtained MRI of the patient’s brain. It works well
most of the time, but like almost every other technology we
surgeons use, it has a few kinks and causes a few headaches.
Most brain trauma cases don’t require the navigation tech-
nology, for three reasons. First of all, if the case is urgent, we
don’t have time to set up the equipment and do the necessary
scanning. Second, what we’re after is usually large and can’t be
missed, like a big blood clot. Third, in trauma cases we’re less
concerned about the niceties that navigation helps us provide,
such as a minimal hair shave and a minimal incision.
A small tumor, on the other hand, is a perfect situation for
navigation. I’ll walk you through a sample case, altering (in the
interest of patient privacy) a few unimportant details.
The patient is a 62-year-old woman who has had a seizure,
the first of her life. Upon visiting the hospital, she undergoes
a brain MRI, which picks up a round, two-centimeter tumor
in her left frontal lobe. She has been a smoker since age 20.
She has no previous history of cancer.
In a long-term smoker, a small, round tumor in the brain
certainly doesn’t look good, but we always hedge our bets: “We
won’t know what it is for sure until we actually get a piece of
it.” In our line of work, it’s not unusual to see a diagnosis of
lung cancer made only after the disease has metastasized to
the brain. The parent tumor may have lurked silently within
the lung for years.
The decision for surgery is made by the patient, her oncolo-
gist, and me. Such decisions take many variables into account,
but suffice it to say that medicine is often equal parts science
and art. As is often the case in neurosurgery, the best treatment
is not entirely obvious. Something has to be done, but that
something doesn’t necessarily need to be surgery: the patient
could choose the noninvasive option of stereotactic radiosur-
gery, a focused form of radiation that can control or shrink
(but not necessarily get rid of) a tumor in the brain. This wom-
an’s oncologist, however, strongly favors surgery. So now the
patient is about to go under the knife. I spend plenty of time
with her and her family, preparing them for the experience.
Just before surgery, my patient is required to undergo a
second MRI (“You want me to get another one of those?” she
asks me), this time with several fiducial markers (small, round
foam stickers with holes in their centers) applied to her head
to serve as reference points. This particular MRI is sliced even
finer than her original one, and the images will be downloaded
into our navigation equipment. We’re aiming for millimeter-
scale accuracy.
Next, in the operating room, while waiting for the patient
to be put under general anesthesia and “lined up” (fitted with
74 ESS AY
various catheters, or lines), I speak with the circulating OR
nurse and my physician assistant about the navigation setup.
(Given that we’ll use a lot of bulky equipment, we give thanks
if we’re in one of the larger operating rooms.) Where will the
head of the bed be? Did the disc with the patient’s MRI actually
make it up from radiology? Where do we position the monitor?
What about the camera that tracks the location of the pointer
probe? We don’t want to move any major navigation equip-
ment to the other side of the room once everything is already
plugged in; that, we worry, could trigger a full-scale meltdown.
In reality, though, I believe the occasional meltdown occurs
randomly, just because the system is so complex.
Once the patient is asleep, we can’t actually start the opera-
tion until we’ve registered our navigation equipment with her
anatomical data, carefully matching up her head images with
her actual head. All told, equipment setup and registration can
add up to a half-hour to the case.
Registration first requires immobilizing the patient’s head
in a three-point-fixation device that resembles a vice or ancient
torture clamp. This part almost always makes a visitor squirm,
and I agree it does seem brutal, but it’s crucial. If the head
moves even a little bit during the operation, all bets are off in
terms of navigation accuracy. (I was impressed once when I
saw doctors on Grey’s Anatomy using what appeared to be an
authentic, properly set up navigation system in a brain-tumor
operation; but then I noticed that the patient’s head wasn’t sta-
bilized in a clamp.) In some cases, an unsettling head wiggle
can be detected partway through the surgery, and it’s up to a
nonsterile person in the room to peek under the sterile drapes
and do some investigating while the surgeon pauses and feigns
patience. Where is that damn wiggle coming from? The bed?
One of the joints of the clamp? In an operation without navi-
gation, we’ll tolerate a little wiggle. In an operation with navi-
gation, we can’t afford to.
Once the head is immobilized, the surgeon touches the
fine tip of the wand to the center of each fiducial marker
and depresses a foot pedal. This correlates the location of
the wand’s tip with the image of the fiducial on the patient’s
MRI. One of many problems here is that five shiny metal balls
attached to the butt of the wand must be visible to the large
camera in the room in order for the system to accurately reg-
ister the wand’s location. Depending upon the patient’s posi-
tioning, sometimes the camera can’t see all the balls when the
tip of the wand is at the center of a fiducial. We try to place the
fiducials so that the balls won’t end up hidden by a particular
turn of the head, but we’re not perfect.
Another source of fiddle factor is that certain parts of the
scalp are mobile: consider how a sticker on your forehead
moves if you wrinkle your brow. So the registered position of
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 a given fiducial in the OR may be slightly different from the
position recorded in the MRI scanner. Fiducials attached to
the fixed bony prominence just behind the ear tend not to
move as much—but they’re particularly likely to be hidden
from the camera if a patient’s head is rotated. You can’t win.
In a newer method of navigation registration, a handheld
scanning device is moved slowly over the patient’s face to reg-
ister dozens of points along its topography, doing away with
the fiducials altogether. But this system has its own kinks;
for example, the tip of a patient’s nose is sometimes “cut off ”
by the MRI scan. I’ve tried this scanning device but have not
been able to get it to work well. Maybe I’ll try it again at some
point. But then I’d have to deal with the headache of using an
unfamiliar technique.
Let’s get back to our patient. We are able to capture eight
of the ten fiducials, with an overall margin of error of 1.4 mil-
Once the patient is asleep, we can’t start the operation until we’ve
registered our navigation equipment with her anatomical data,
matching up her head images with her actual head. All told,
equipment setup and registration can add a half-hour to the case.
limeters. Decent. I do a crude check of the system by placing
the tip of the wand at the top of the bridge of the patient’s nose,
right in the center. I look up at the monitor, which displays
the patient’s MRI in three planes. The position of the dot on
the images—representing the tip of my wand—assures me that
the system can tell where I am. I do a similar check with the
inner and outer corners of both eyes. Perfect.
Next is the fun part. Before the operation begins, before I
even shave a path for the incision and prepare the head with an
antibiotic solution, I test my own visual-spatial skills. Where
do I think the tumor is? I know it’s in a certain region of the
left frontal lobe, but here’s why this exercise is a bit of a chal-
lenge: the frontal lobe is large (the largest lobe of the brain),
the tumor is small, and the head is round. I point to where
I think the tumor is, mark the scalp with a surgical marker,
and then reach for the wand. I run its tip around in the gen-
eral vicinity of my mark and watch the corresponding MRI
images as they appear on the screen. The images continually
shift as I move the wand. When I reach the point that lies
right above the middle of the tumor, I freeze my position. My
original guess was about two centimeters off: not terrible, but
certainly not dead on.
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
Now that we’ve completed the navigation prep work, we
can start the operation. Just before heading out to the scrub
sink in the hallway, I shave a narrow path of hair along my
patient’s scalp, apply the brown Betadine soap, and nod to
the anesthesiologist: “Got any good music?”
Before the arrival of user-friendly navigation technology in
the 1990s, neurosurgeons often had to shave a large amount
of hair, create a generous incision, and remove a relatively
large disc of skull, just to be certain that they got the whole
tumor. Now that we can pinpoint exactly where a tumor is
ahead of time, that’s no longer necessary. My patient’s hair is
long, so I anticipate that at the end of the case I will be able to
flop it over to conceal the incision. Some patients get radical
haircuts just before surgery (and some men decide to shave
their heads), assuming that this will facilitate the operation
or the healing in some way. But I find it’s actually better to
keep the hair long: I believe that looking less like a patient
can speed recovery.
When I remove the portion of skull overlying the woman’s
small tumor, the brain appears perfectly normal. I expected
this. Her tumor is not on the surface of the brain but about a
centimeter below. This is where navigation makes a big differ-
ence: I know exactly where to enter the brain in order to reach
the tumor. As a rule of thumb, we try to violate as little brain
tissue as possible. There’s no way to avoid disturbing some of
it, but you want to avoid excessive fishing around.
Before navigation came onto the scene, ultrasound was
used more routinely for this purpose than it is today. Ultra-
sound, though, presents problems: a skilled technician (or an
actual ultrasound radiologist) must often be in the room to
help interpret the grainy images, and ultrasound has trouble
penetrating bone, so it can’t help the surgeon plan the incision
or the bone opening. Besides, it’s clunky. Picture the setup
used for prenatal ultrasounds, and now picture it being used
on an exposed portion of someone’s brain. What’s more, you
can’t actually squirt gel on the brain as you would on a woman’s
belly, so a nonsterile person in the room applies the nonsterile
gel to the ultrasound probe. Then the probe (plus the gel, plus
ESS AY 75
 the long cord) is carefully sheathed in a sterile plastic covering.
This technophile finds the whole thing quite inelegant. I have
actually resorted to using ultrasound a couple of times when
the navigation system either broke down or was rendered
inaccurate, and those operations felt very retro.
After opening the skull, I enter the cortex of my patient’s
left frontal lobe. I dissect through the white matter to a depth
of about one centimeter, and I hit tissue that is firmer and
darker than white matter. This is clearly the tumor. I take a
small piece of it and have it sent off to the pathologist, who
looks at the tissue under a microscope and calls in to the OR
to confirm my suspicion of a metastasis.
Considering the flashiness of our navigation systems (which
have cool trade names like StealthStation and BrainLab), the
reader might be eager to discover what technology we use to
actually remove the tumor. I’m sorry to disappoint, but the
answer is a lowly metal suction tube in one hand, paired with a
simple cautery device in the other. But that’s modern surgery:
part high tech, part seriously low tech.
These old-fashioned but reliable tools come with their own
set of headaches, of course, as when the suction tubing gets
clogged again and again or the cautery tips become caked
with charred tissue and have to be wiped clean over and over,
like a toddler’s runny nose. I do have access to an ultrasonic
aspirator, if I want it, but it’s not worth bringing in another
bulky item for such a small tumor.
I complete the tumor resection (that is, removal), which is
the quickest part of the operation; this particular tumor is eas-
ily “suckable,” in the surgeon’s vernacular. Also, with metastatic
tumors such as this, the margins are relatively distinct; you can
usually tell tumor apart from brain without too much difficulty.
With primary brain tumors (gliomas, which arise from the brain
itself), the tumor-brain interface can be very indistinct, and this
is where navigation has yet an additional benefit. It can be used
during the resection, to assess how deep you are within the
tumor and how much work still remains to be done.
But though navigation can be a big help in tumor resection,
it’s not without its difficulties. Sometimes a new nurse or resi-
dent forgets that the camera needs an unbroken sight line to
the wand and keeps sticking a head or an arm in the way, or
a small spot of blood on one of the wand’s shiny metal balls
temporarily prevents the system from working. And those
technological woes are nothing compared with the physio-
logical problem of brain shift. Once the skull is opened, its
contents can move a little: sometimes cerebrospinal fluid
leaks out, causing the brain to sink downward; other times,
the swollen brain bulges outward; and as more tumor tissue
is removed, the surrounding brain can partially collapse into
the cavity. Whatever the reason, the result is that after all the
76 ESS AY
care we took in registration, the MRI images no longer match
up with the patient’s brain. This may not significantly affect
the operation, but in some cases it’s such a serious challenge
that the surgeon must abandon the navigation technology
altogether and rely on her own judgment.
Following the tumor resection, I spend the next several
minutes making sure there’s no ongoing bleeding. Then I close,
which requires replacing the bone flap by affixing it to the skull
with thin titanium plates and screws. Placing tiny screws into
the skull presents its own set of problems—admittedly minor,
but disproportionately annoying at the end of the operation.
Sometimes a screw fails to gain adequate purchase in the bone
and continues to spin freely with each twist of the wrist; or it
falls off the diminutive screwdriver and gets lost in the folds
of the sterile drapes; or it breaks through a very thin portion
of the skull, threatening to irritate the tissue underneath. At
this point, though, any expletives uttered by the surgeon are
drowned out. With the more delicate parts of the operation
behind us, “closing music” plays at high volume.
The two final steps of the operation—sewing the scalp
closed and placing the surgical dressing—are refreshingly sim-
ple, low tech, and fiddle free. I remove my patient’s head from
the clamp, watch her wake up, and turn down the music.
NEW AND IMPROVED
Neurosurgery is an unusual specialty, in part because it encom-
passes such a broad range of operations. Cardiac surgery (in
adults, at least) revolves largely around just two major proce-
dures: bypass surgery and valve surgery. Neurosurgery, in con-
trast, covers operations on the brain, spine, peripheral nerves,
and carotid arteries. And particularly within the categories
of brain and spine operations, there are dozens of variations.
Any one neurosurgeon, although he or she may have been
trained to perform the entire spectrum of procedures, can-
not actually do so in practice. So how do we neurosurgeons
decide which cases to include or exclude? How do we decide
which particular disorders to treat?
One big factor in the decision is the technology used to treat
a given disorder. That may sound a bit backwards. Wouldn’t
a physician’s decision about which cases to treat be based on
more profound factors, like a passion to help those afflicted
with a particular disease? In reality, though, technologic con-
siderations may trump intellectual or emotional ones.
Take Parkinson’s disease. Although this disorder is largely
treated with medication by our neurologist colleagues, a select
www See the author show off the latest in neurosurgery
technology: www.technologyreview.com/brain
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 number of neurosurgeons specialize in performing surgery for
medically refractory Parkinson’s cases. The surgery involves
stereotactic insertion of one or two electrodes deep into the
brain through a very small hole. It’s necessary to monitor the
brain’s electrophysiology, and millimeter or submillimeter
precision is key. At some centers, the neurosurgeons who
perform this particular operation also gravitate toward brain
biopsy cases, which are technologically similar: they use pre-
cise stereotactic equipment and involve maneuvering a biopsy
needle through a tiny hole. Some neurosurgeons love this sort
of work. It’s neat and clean. There’s very little blood.
On the other hand, other neurosurgeons hate this sort of
work. They prefer the bigger cases that involve wider expo-
sure of the brain and more hands-on manipulation of the
anatomy. They might even call their differently minded col-
leagues “needle jockeys.”
But there’s one thing most neurosurgeons agree on, and that
is the seemingly simple operation we call the VP shunt. “VP”
stands for ventriculoperitoneal. In essence, the shunt is a long,
thin tube that runs from the fluid-filled cavities in the brain (the
ventricles) to the belly; it’s designed to drain the excess cerebro-
spinal fluid that characterizes hydrocephalus. Pediatric neuro-
surgeons can’t get away from this operation, because it’s their
bread and butter. Childhood hydrocephalus is one of the most
common disorders they treat, and the VP shunt is a lifesaver.
Many neurosurgeons, however, shy away from the adult-
onset form of hydrocephalus called normal-pressure hydro-
cephalus (NPH), which is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s
disease. As is often the case in medicine, we don’t understand
much about this disease, but we know how to treat it. Place-
ment of a shunt can relieve its symptoms, which include poor
balance and a shuffling gait, memory loss, and incontinence.
You might think that NPH would be a favorite among neuro-
surgeons. After all, treating it has the potential to be quite
rewarding. I have seen some patients improve so dramatically
that their families say a miracle must have occurred.
Still, surgeons often joke that shunt work is akin to plumb-
ing. But I can’t imagine that plumbers encounter quite as
much trouble. One strike against the operation is economic:
Medicare reimburses the surgeon less than $1,000, a fee that
covers all follow-up in the hospital and three months’ worth of
office visits. Financial considerations aside, what irks so many
neurosurgeons about the VP shunt is its fiddle factor.
NPH can be unpredictable. In some patients, one or two
symptoms improve when the shunt is installed but another
doesn’t. What’s more, the symptoms have a way of creeping
back for no apparent reason, even after an initially successful
operation. This is frustrating for the patient, the family, and
the surgeon. It leads to a series of questions: Did the shunt
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
stop working? Is the tubing clogged? Are we dealing with more
than one disease? To answer these questions, how much of a
workup are we going to do? Should we get x-rays of the shunt
and a CT scan of the head? What about tapping the shunt by
putting a needle into it to see whether fluid can be withdrawn
(which reveals whether the tubing is blocked but risks intro-
ducing an infection)? Then there are the other vague symp-
toms that tend to crop up in older patients: dizziness, fatigue,
headache, abdominal discomfort. When such symptoms arise,
the shunt is inevitably called into question.
These frustrations are here to stay, but surgeons continue
to hope that the newest iteration of the VP shunt will at least
ease the technological hassles. In my experience, though, what
often happens is that new ones replace the old.
For example, a relatively recent advance, popularized
within the past 10 years or so, is the programmable valve. In
years past, shunts came in three basic flavors: low, medium,
and high pressure. If a surgeon decided after placing a shunt
that it needed to drain either more or less cerebrospinal fluid,
the only option was to surgically remove the old valve from
underneath the scalp and insert a different one. This is accom-
plished by cutting the tubing at both ends of the old valve,
inserting little metal connectors into the tubing left behind,
and patching in the new valve by cinching the new tubing
onto the connectors with suture. Not so elegant. Given the
prospect of sending an elderly patient back to the operating
room, most surgeons have a fairly high threshold for going
forward with a valve change.
Programmable valves largely did away with those return
trips to the OR: the pressure setting of the valve can be
changed in the office, noninvasively and painlessly, with a
magnetic device. But that process introduces a fiddle factor
of its own. For one thing, the setting can be tweaked almost
endlessly, in 10-millimeter increments. Deciding when, how
often, and how much to change a shunt setting is a messy art.
Overdrainage can make fluid pressure drop too low, causing
headaches; underdrainage can leave the original symptoms
poorly controlled. Sometimes the surgeon never quite finds
a patient’s sweet spot. Some patients return to the office over
and over again, hoping to find relief for every symptom, even
unrelated ones. And sometimes the family disagrees with the
patient; then the surgeon has to pick which party to please.
That’s not the only problem with programmable valves. In
at least one popular brand of shunt, the powerful magnetic
force of an MRI scan can change the valve’s pressure setting
inadvertently. (This was not a problem with the traditional,
nonprogrammable shunts.) And these days, MRI scans are
ordered at the drop of a hat. Let’s say that a patient with a pro-
grammable shunt develops a hip problem, and her orthopedic
ESS AY 77
 surgeon orders an MRI. There are a couple of potential pit-
falls here. One is that the patient (especially an NPH patient
with memory problems) may forget to tell her neurosurgeon
about the scan. Furthermore, the radiologist may not realize
that the shunt is programmable or that an MRI can change
the setting. I have seen patients whose settings had been off-
kilter for more than a year following an MRI scan.
Ideally, when a patient with a programmable shunt sus-
ceptible to this problem undergoes an MRI scan, imaging of
the shunt valve is ordered for the same day, so that the valve’s
setting can be confirmed. These images then have to be read
by a radiologist or neurosurgeon who is familiar with that
particular shunt. If the setting is off, then the neurosurgeon
needs to reset the valve and perhaps even send the patient
back for repeat imaging.
I’ve found that as surgeons get older, they appreciate the simpler
cases more and more. The other day, while I was doing a quick
carpal-tunnel operation using only a few simple instruments,
I had two thoughts. The first was that this procedure is one of my
favorites. The second was that I must be getting old.
A more advanced programmer uses a built-in ultrasound to
confirm a valve’s setting without requiring separate imaging.
But this introduces two new problems. The first is that some
patients complain about getting ultrasound gel on their heads
and hair. Second, the programmer is so sensitive and tempera-
mental that it may not work in rooms with either too much
noise or too much electrical equipment. This pretty much
describes most doctors’ offices. In my first experience with
the new programmer, I tried close to a dozen times to adjust
the valve setting before I gave up, used the old programmer,
and sent the patient off for fluoroscopic imaging.
Meanwhile, a competing manufacturer has designed an
altogether different programmable shunt that is advertised as
MRI compatible. Not only that, but its programmer is almost
pocket-sized, whereas the programmer for the old shunt is
housed in a heavy, unwieldy, briefcase-like container. When
I heard about this new shunt, I jumped at the opportunity to
try it. It seemed almost too good to be true: no need to worry
that MRI scans would change the settings, no need to bother
with fluoroscopy, and no need to lug a heavy programmer. My
first few cases with the new shunt went fine from the surgi-
cal standpoint. But it turned out that despite what I had been
78 ESS AY
led to believe, MRI compatibility cannot be guaranteed. As I
learned from a representative of the company that made the
competing shunt I’d just forsaken, the fine print reveals that
follow-up imaging of the new valve after an MRI is still offi-
cially recommended. Conclusion? Again, I can’t win.
CRAVING SIMPLICITY
I once spoke with a freelance writer who was observing his first
operation in preparation for a piece on brain surgery. In the
crowded operating room, he watched a nurse as she struggled
to push a surgical microscope into position, trying her best to
move the heavy and unwieldy base amid the tangle of cords
and tubes draped across the floor. I asked what he thought of
the operation so far, expecting him to say something about
the wonder of the human brain. Instead, he said that he had
worked on a ship once, and that a ship’s deck would never see
such a tangle of ropes.
A young surgeon relishes such tangly cases—tough, com-
plex, time-consuming, high-tech. While the operation is in
progress, the room might be crammed with people—two
surgeons plus a surgical assistant, two or three nurses, one
anesthesiologist, one or two neuromonitoring technicians
(who usually sit quietly in a corner), a “cell-saver” technician
(to run the machine that cleans and recirculates lost blood),
one or two industry reps who stand back and field questions
from staff about their equipment, and perhaps a radiology
technician if fluoroscopy is being performed. The size of the
crowd can be almost comical. More and more trays of surgical
instruments are brought in as the surgeon encounters tricky
conditions or unusual anatomy.
I’ve found, though, that as surgeons get older, they appre-
ciate the simpler cases more and more. Some of the happiest
senior surgeons I know have reduced their practices to just a
few nice cases—the ones that require the least support staff, the
least technology, and the least clutter in the operating room.
The other day, while I was doing a quick carpal-tunnel opera-
tion using only a few simple instruments, I had two thoughts.
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 The first was that this procedure is one of my favorites. The
second was that I must be getting old.
When I was a resident, one of my attending surgeons was
revered for his minimalist style and slick surgical skills. His
description of his method was something like this: “I like to
pare down an operation to its essentials. I cut out one small,
unnecessary step at a time. If I detect any problems, then I
add a step back in.” This may sound scary, until you realize
that fiddling with extra steps can cause problems. Extra steps—
extra instruments and maneuvers—can mean more time under
anesthesia and a greater chance of infection.
Why do these extra steps exist in the first place? Some-
times a little detail here or there is more voodoo than com-
mon sense, but we keep up the tradition because that’s what
we were taught. Perhaps we don’t question the standard pro-
cedures enough. Do we really need to leave a drain behind?
Do we really need to close that layer in a careful, watertight
fashion? Does it actually help to inject a numbing medication
into the muscle before closing? Is smearing antibiotic oint-
ment over a clean incision really necessary?
On the other hand, sometimes technological innovation
adds details to an operation that may not benefit from them.
Don’t get me wrong: I am more enthusiast than Luddite. But
sometimes what I observe is a new technology searching for
a need instead of filling one. In that case, beware.
For example, a common buzzword in surgery is “minimally
invasive.” An entire industry’s worth of scopes, retractors,
and instruments have been developed so that practically any
operation can be done in a way that meets that description.
In general, I welcome the trend. Who would choose to have
an open gallbladder operation instead of leaving the hospital
with just a few small stab marks?
In the case of gallbladder surgery, the benefit of minimally
invasive laparoscopic techniques over open surgery became
so obvious over time that a randomized, controlled trial—
another buzzword in medicine—was never even undertaken.
And within neurosurgery, the minimally invasive approach
to certain major spine fusions is a godsend to the patient. The
advantages over traditional, open surgery are numerous: a
much smaller incision, less surgical trauma to the muscles,
less pain, fewer narcotics, and a shorter recovery.
In my mind, however, it’s not so clear whether the mini-
mally invasive approach is a plus for smaller, less involved
spine cases. Take a typical lumbar microdiscectomy, in which
a small window of bone is drilled into the spine in order to
extract a fragment of disc pressing on a nerve. This is the most
common operation that neurosurgeons perform.
The senior surgeon who taught me the traditional approach
to this surgery showed me how to do the operation through
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
an incision measuring about an inch. He was so proud of
his small incisions that he would take a picture of the large
fragment of extracted disc held up next to a ruler, which was
placed in line with the incision. He would give this photo to
the patient after surgery. This was quite effective for word-of-
mouth marketing. (“Wait, you need disc surgery? Go to my guy.
Take a look at this!”) I became quite comfortable and efficient
with this technique, and I found that most patients did not
have significant postoperative pain at the incision site.
As minimally invasive spine surgery became popular, as
patients started to ask for it, and as instrumentation compa-
nies pushed their tools for both the big and small cases, I felt
obligated to try it. What I found, though, was that the juice wasn’t
worth the squeeze. All of a sudden, what had been a relatively
pared-down operation required more instrument trays in the
room, a nurse familiar with the new tools, a large specialized
retractor that had to be bolted to the bed, an unwieldy fluo-
roscopic “C-arm” machine that seemed to get in the way, and
(because the new technique involved fluoroscopy) a heavy lead
apron that I had to wear for at least the first part of the surgery.
Spine surgeons have started to realize that a minimally
invasive discectomy actually seems to increase the likelihood
of one particular complication: leakage of cerebrospinal fluid.
That’s because the surgeon must use a rigid and narrow retrac-
tor, which makes it difficult to achieve unfettered access to all
the necessary anatomy, especially when the surgeon is still
on the steep part of the learning curve. As for the prospect of
reducing postoperative pain, an original selling point of the
new approach, I have not been impressed. I will admit that the
new tools enable surgeons to operate through an incision that
is slightly smaller than my usual inch. Is anyone excited?
For all my griping, I am inspired by the general direction of
innovation in surgery. I can’t help believing that the answer to
the fiddle factor is better technology, not less technology: after
all, the innovative leaps in other fields leave medicine far behind.
The most high-tech equipment available to the brain surgeon
pales in comparison with the technology onboard a fifth-
generation fighter jet, or in a modern nuclear power plant.
If we can catch up a bit, it will be fascinating to see what’s in
store for neurosurgeons of future generations. But we should
be careful what we wish for. Just as technological advances
in nuclear plants and fighter jets try to maximize safety and
efficacy by minimizing (or even eliminating) the human ele-
ment, we should realize that the ultimate advances in surgery
will take aim at perhaps the most fickle tool in the operating
room: the surgeon.
KATRINA S. FIRLIK IS A NEUROSURGEON IN GREENWICH, CT, AND THE AUTHOR
OF ANOTHER DAY IN THE FRONTAL LOBE: A BRAIN SURGEON EXPOSES LIFE ON
THE INSIDE.
ESS AY 79
REVIEWS

REVIEWS

I NTE R N ET With HealthVault and Google Health,

Your Medical Data Online however, consumers will have fundamen-

tal ownership of their medical data, much
GOOGLE AND MICROSOFT ARE OFFERING RIVAL PROGRAMS as they do with financial records. As more
THAT LET PEOPLE MANAGE THEIR OWN HEALTH INFORMATION.
health-care providers begin participating,
DO POTENTIAL USERS UNDERSTAND THE RISKS?
it will be easy for patients to share CT scans,
By A M A N DA S C H A F F E R
x-rays, and lab results with new doctors. In
the emergency room, “someone comes in

G
oogle and Microsoft want to do the unwilling or unable to transfer data to
same thing for personal health that patients in electronic form. In a 2007 Wall
software such as Quicken has already done Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive
for people’s personal finances. Google poll, only about a quarter of respondents
Health, which was released in May, and reported having electronic records, gener-
Microsoft HealthVault, which launched ally in their doctor’s offices; just 2 percent of
last October, allow consumers to store and all respondents said they had created and
manage their personal medical data online. maintained medical records on their own
Users will be able to gather information computers, and just 1 percent reported using
from doctors, hospitals, and testing labo- a “personal health record that is stored on
ratories and share it with new the Internet.” HealthVault and
medical providers, making it GOOGLE HEALTH Google Health just may push
www.google.com/
easier to coördinate care for health doctors and hospitals to adopt
complicated conditions and Available since May electronic records at last.
2008
spot potential drug interactions What Google and Microsoft
MICROSOFT
or other problems. Both Google HEALTHVAULT
promise to do with electronic
and Microsoft will also offer www.healthvault.com records is also a radical depar-
Available since October
links to third-party services 2007 ture, both conceptually and in
like medication reminders and practice. Those patients who
programs that track users’ blood-pressure do currently have electronic access gener-
and glucose readings over time. ally use portals maintained by doctors or
Patients already have a legal right to cop- health-care systems. Typically, patients
ies of their medical data—information that can view information such as prescriptions,
they paid for and own. But in practice, that lab results, and diagnoses; sometimes they
right is often difficult to exercise: patients can e-mail doctors or make appointments
must traipse from lab to hospital, waiting online. In most cases, though, patients do
in line for photocopies of CT scans, pre- not control their own data, so they can-
scription records, and discharge summa- not transfer it electronically to a different
ries. That’s because many doctors still do health-care provider or plug it in to third-
not use electronic records, and others are party applications.
and says I’m on 12 medications from four
doctors, including the red one and the blue
[pills],” says emergency-room physician
John Halamka, who is chief information
officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston and an advisor to Google
Health. “If you gave me data that was struc-
tured and electronic, even if it was incom-
plete, that’s much better than I have now.”
Google Health already lets some users
import medical data; so far, it has partnered
with the Cleveland Clinic and Beth Israel
Deaconess to give patients at both access to
their electronic records. Meanwhile, pilot
projects in which HealthVault users will be
able to share information electronically with
medical providers are in the planning stages
at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the
Mayo Clinic. But “the exciting part of these
systems isn’t just making data available to
patients,” says Aurelia Boyer, chief infor-
mation officer of New York-Presbyterian.
It’s offering them tools to make use of the
data on their own. “The ability to combine
applications the way Facebook does is par-
ticularly exciting,” she says.
Google Health offers an interface that
allows users to build comprehensive health
profiles, including information on condi-
tions, medications, allergies, and procedures.
The information may be typed in directly,

80 REVIEWS T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

chosen from drop-down menus, or uploaded
from participating providers. The drop-
down menus contain mind-numbing lists
of conditions, from Aarskog syndrome to
Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. And each menu
item points patients toward information that
can help them manage their health. The link
beside diabetes, for instance, takes users to
a page featuring lists of symptoms, treat-
ments, and complications, search results
from Google Scholar, news items, and illus-
Beth Israel CIO John Halamka tells you
www why to sign up for Google Health:
technologyreview.com/googlehealth
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
trations. HealthVault’s welcome page looks
more like an interface for online banking,
but like Google Health, HealthVault lets
users link to third-party applications.
Since they deal with sensitive personal
data, however, both HealthVault and Google
Health raise significant privacy concerns.
Such services are not covered by the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act, or HIPAA, under which hospitals, doc-
tors, and third-party payers typically can-
not release information without a patient’s
consent. Google and Microsoft do promise
not to share personal health data without
consumers’ permission: “We make a very
clear promise to consumers about what we
will and won’t do with their data, and we’re
happy to be accountable for those claims,”
says Peter Neupert, corporate vice president
of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft.
But those promises are not backed by law.
Privacy experts are particularly worried
about the release of data to vendors of third-
party applications. If a drug company offers
a medication reminder, and patients opt in,
giving the company information about their
drug-taking routines, can that information
later be used for marketing? There’s a risk
of personal data “leaking out through these
applications,” says Kenneth Mandl of Chil-
dren’s Hospital in Boston, who cochaired
the Harvard Medical School Meetings on
Personally Controlled Health Record Infra-
structure in 2006 and 2007. (Google and
Microsoft say that vendors will have to dis-
close how they intend to use consumer data.)
What’s more, many vendors offering advice
on medications and treatments could have
conflicts of interest—and their advice might
not be sound in any case. There’s “really no
oversight,” says Mandl. He argues that some
combination of regulation and certification
of third-party vendors is needed.
The privacy issues aren’t insurmountable.
Microsoft and Google could be brought
under HIPAA’s umbrella, or new rules could
be enacted that give consumers stronger
protection—and greater legal recourse if
their records are leaked or improperly sold.
But it needs to be recognized that medical
information—histories of mental illness,
paternity tests, genetic information—can be
far more sensitive than browsing histories
or even financial records. While Google and
Microsoft promise to put users in control,
they are also inserting themselves between
patients and their most intimate data. Until
their legal responsibilities to patients are
clarified, only a very trusting soul would
sign on with the new platforms, however
appealing they may be.
AMANDA SCHAFFER IS A SCIENCE AND MEDICAL COL-
UMNIST FOR SLATE AND A FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR
TO THE NEW YORK TIMES.
REVIEWS 81
 G A M I N G T E C H N O LO GY peaks and silhouetted trees, a martial-arts

Brain Games master commands me to lift a rock using

only my thoughts. Trying to summon a Yoda-
DO NEW CONTROLLERS THAT PURPORT TO INTERPRET like intensity, I focus on the rock and make
BRAIN ACTIVITY REALLY WORK?
a lifting motion with my hand. (While Della
By E M I LY S I N G E R Torre says it’s not necessary to physically
make the movement, it often helps.) At first,

M
the rock does nothing. Then it lifts slightly,
arco Della Torre sits in front of a huge movements, for instance, can generate wavers in the air, and sinks.
flat screen, wearing a strange, spider- electrical potentials more than 10 times as The game includes a few training ses-
like contraption on his head. He slowly raises strong as those produced by neurons. Sci- sions, in which the software searches for
his arms, and a virtual rock begins to glow entists who use EEG try to filter out this specific patterns of electrical activity that
and shake on-screen. It falters a little and noise through various means: improving occur when I either think about lifting a
then rises, hanging briefly in the air. sensor sensitivity by applying conductive rock or make the motion to lift. The pro-
Della Torre, a product engineer at San gel to the scalp, arraying sensors in caps spe- gram will then try to detect and respond to
Francisco startup Emotiv Systems, is dem- cially fitted to a subject’s head, and employ- those patterns once play begins. In theory,
onstrating the company’s new game control- ing complex signal analysis. “It has proved I don’t actually need to imagine lifting the
ler—a headset incorporating sensors that can difficult to convincingly remove contamina- rock: any specific pattern of brain activ-
detect brain activity. Emotiv and its competi- tion from EEG signals,” says Alan Gevins, ity, or potentially even of muscle activity,
tor, San Jose–based Neurosky, a neuroscientist and founder could be tied to a command. If I repeatedly
EPOC HEADSET
are developing the first gaming Emotiv of SAM Technology in San thought about pushing during the training
$299
devices to use electroencepha- Release scheduled for Francisco, a company that is period, the computer would consider that
lography (EEG), a decades-old the 2008 holiday season developing EEG-based medi- the signal to lift.
technology in which electrodes MINDSET cal tests for evaluating atten- That calibration of the system isn’t always
Neurosky
placed on the scalp measure estimated $49 and up tion and memory. precise. During my test run, the rock rises
Not yet available to the
electrical activity in the brain. public In trying to design a head- into the air as I turn away from the screen to
In the hands of neurologists, set suitable for gaming, Emotiv jot in my notebook. I also blow up a moun-
EEG can be a powerful tool for, say, identify- and Neurosky face a daunting challenge: it tain without meaning to do anything. Drake
ing the source of seizures in epilepsy patients. must not require sticky gels, it must be sim- explains this away, saying I’m like a wizard
But game developers want to use EEG to let ple enough for any user to slip on (no matter just learning to cast spells—“They sometimes
players control virtual environments with how oddly shaped his or her head), and it go off when you’re not even trying.”
their minds. They hope EEG will become the must use sluggish EEG responses to con- The Emotiv headset has two other pur-
next big computer interface—a step beyond trol quick actions. To see how they’re faring, ported powers, both of which might be more
devices like the Nintendo Wii remote, which I flew to California earlier this year to test in tune with EEG’s strengths. Using muscle
allow players to convert their hand move- both their devices—with Gevins’s help. signals picked up from face and eye move-
ments into actions on-screen. ments, it can read facial expressions, so it
Both Emotiv and Neurosky have gener- YODA-LIKE could help animate people’s avatars—their
ated huge buzz in the gaming world. But can Sitting on a black leather couch at Emotiv’s digital alter egos—in virtual worlds like Sec-
the headsets really provide the experience sleek offices in downtown San Francisco, ond Life. (Software-enhanced cameras are
gamers are looking for? “People tend to want game producer Zachary Drake squeezes under development to do similar things.)
to do science fiction and [use EEG signals the Epoc headset onto my head. An out- More novel is the headset’s ability to roughly
to] aim the gun or fly the plane,” says Scott line of a head on the television screen in detect your state of mind—whether you are
Makeig, a neuroscientist at the University of front of me indicates the quality of the sig- engaged (be it angry or attentive) or not. The
California, San Diego. “But actually, changes nal coming from each of the headset’s 14 sky in the martial-arts game glows orange
in EEG are tied to changes in alertness and electrodes. Mine register mostly yellow— when I begin to concentrate and fades to
arousal that are slow by their nature. To try medium to poor. green when I stare out the window.
to use it to do fast things is not very natural.” I’m testing a game developed specifically Chris Linder, a developer working on
J U STI N WO O D

And measuring brain signals is tricky to showcase the Epoc’s capabilities. In front a game that will ship with the commercial
enough in the first place. Slight muscle of a pagoda set against a landscape of steep version of the Emotiv device, says that his

82 REVIEWS T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

team most enjoyed designing features that
capitalize on these two aspects of it. While
Linder, the cofounder of Demiurge Studios
in Cambridge, MA, doesn’t want to divulge
details of his nascent game, he gives the
example of allowing the player to walk on
water—but only while maintaining a con-
stant level of calm. “If you got too excited,
you would just sink,” says Linder, whose
company also developed some of the first
games for the Wii.
About 50 miles south of Emotiv’s offices
in San Francisco are those of its main com-
petitor, Neurosky, which has taken a much
simpler approach to creating a commercial
EEG device. The headset it has developed
has just one sensor, which rests on the fore-
head, and a built-in processor that analyzes
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
incoming signals before wirelessly sending
data to a computer.
The Neurosky device attempts to detect
different states of mind by analyzing brain
waves—rhythmic fluctuations in the voltage
measured by EEG electrodes. While there
is no one-to-one correspondence between
mental state and a specific brain rhythm, sci-
entists have reported specific links. Certain
patterns of theta rhythms, which occur at a
frequency of four to seven hertz, are linked
to drowsiness. Alpha waves, eight to twelve
hertz, are characteristic of relaxation. (Alpha
waves can also be induced by closing the
eyes.) Algorithms distill the electrical signals
registered by the sensor into a single out-
put number, which can then be used as an
element of control in a video game or other
REVIEWS
application. A second set of algorithms is
designed to detect a mental state the com-
pany dubs “meditation.” (As was the case
with Emotiv’s device, muscle activity prob-
ably also comes into play here. When you’re
trying to concentrate, for example, you are
likely to sit still and not move your head or
eyes; the abatement of muscle activity may
factor into the device’s analysis.)
Playing a simple game designed to dis-
play the device’s capabilities, I successfully
lift a virtual block into the air by concentrat-
ing. I also set a branch on fire by sustaining
that concentration: the branch sparks and
smokes and then explodes into flame, an
unexpectedly satisfying experience. Then, I
gamely focus inwardly and manage to raise
a sunken plane from a lake.
CAVEAT EMPTOR
What do neuroscientists—who have been
using EEG for decades—think of these
companies’ attempts to convert a research
tool into a gaming technology? The ones I
spoke with are uniformly skeptical that the
devices rely on brain activity alone. (Neu-
rosky owns up to this, while Emotiv’s pres-
ident, Tan Le, insists that the telekinesis
function uses only electrical signals ema-
nating from the brain.) Gerwin Schalk, a
research scientist at the Wadsworth Center
in Albany, NY, is developing EEG-based
systems that allow severely paralyzed peo-
ple to interact with computers. He says
that with his second-generation system,
it takes several hours of training to control
one degree of freedom of motion—what
you need to lift a rock in the Emotiv video
game. More extensive practice is needed to
develop multidimensional control. “If you
wanted to pick up signals to move a space-
ship left or right, it would be much easier
for a person to do it with facial expression
than with brain activity,” says Schalk.
Alan Gevins, who has been studying EEG
for the last 40 years, agrees. “If the sensors
aren’t making good contact with the scalp,
they will move slightly and generate an arti-
fact when the head moves,” he says. “Such
REVIEWS 83
 artifacts are often not that obvious and not
easily removed algorithmically.” Emotiv
declined to show us the raw EEG data col-
lected by its device, citing proprietary con-
cerns, so it was impossible to determine
whether the headset and analysis software
were truly filtering out noise and measur-
ing brain activity consistently.
While Gevins acknowledges that for a
gaming system, it doesn’t matter what kind
of signals the device is using, he worries that
overstating the ability of EEG to “read your
mind” could damage the technology’s repu-
tation. “They are way out on a limb with the
labels they are putting on things,” he says.
Others hope that the EEG devices could
have medical applications. Lesco Rogers, a
pain management specialist at Duke Uni-
versity Medical Center in Durham, NC, has
been in talks with Neurosky about testing its
device for use with stroke patients. Rogers
is considering very simple uses of the tech-
nology, such as allowing disabled patients
to turn on a television. “What makes the
technology interesting for me is the price
point,” he says.
Meanwhile, EEG’s ability to measure
alertness and arousal could add an interest-
ing new layer to video games: in an unin-
tended display of one of the Epoc’s features,
the sky glowed bright orange as Della Torre,
still wearing the headset after a demon-
stration, argued with a skeptical scientist.
But the technology still seems too limited
to have the transformative impact of the
Wii. It’s true that Emotiv’s and Neurosky’s
devices can, on a very simple level, read your
mind—and lifting that plane with the pow-
ers of concentration felt very impressive.
But the novelty of the devices is likely to
wear off fast, and game players expecting
the ability to exert precise mind control are
likely to be disappointed.
EMILY SINGER IS TR’S BIOTECHNOLOGY AND LIFE
SCIENCES EDITOR.
Noted neuroscientist Alan Gevins
www explains how EEG works:
technologyreview.com/eeg
84 REVIEWS
R I S K CA P I TA L
Founding Father
A NEW BOOK DESCRIBES THE MAN WHO CREATED
MODERN VENTURE CAPITAL.
By M ARK W ILLIAMS
A
lthough it’s a popular story, it is untrue strangers to most of their countrymen—and
that President George W. Bush once this pattern intensified after Harvard Busi-
said, “The problem with the French is ness School hired him in 1925: his former
that they have no word for entrepreneur.” students frequently attained high positions
Still, a common prejudice in Anglophone in business or government. During World
nations holds that the French are less War II, having become a U.S. citizen, Doriot
entrepreneurial than we. Creative Capital: joined the army, became director of the Mili-
Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capi- tary Planning Division, and received briga-
tal—a biography of the French-born Harvard dier general’s rank in the Quartermaster
Business School professor who practically Corps after William Donovan, soon to be
created modern venture capitalism—is a head of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA),
reproach to that assumption. recommended him to Presi-
CREATIVE CAPITAL:
That said, as BusinessWeek’s GEORGES DORIOT dent Roosevelt. His military
Spencer Ante makes clear in AND THE BIRTH OF superior in the war was a man
VENTURE CAPITAL
his new book, Georges Doriot By Spencer E. Ante who in the 1920s had attended
Harvard Business Press,
was an unusual Frenchman. He 2008, $35.00 his lectures on the virtues of
studied the sciences at his Pari- the goal-oriented campaign
sian lycée, to which—after gaining his license and the collective wisdom of the markets.
at 15—he drove through the boulevards of a On that latter subject Doriot felt strongly.
capital by then hunkered down for World In speeches and articles, he opposed both
War I. At 18 he passed from that lycée to the the dirigiste political economy of his native
charnel house of the Western Front as an France and the tax hikes and anticompetitive
officer in an artillery regiment; at war’s end laws enacted in the United States under the
heeded his father’s counsel that the shat- New Deal. Such regulations, he maintained,
tered state of France made the New World arrogated to bureaucrats the function of the
his wisest option. markets; their worst feature was that they
So Georges Doriot came to the United let government lend money to failing busi-
States at 21 with neither family nor friends, nesses. Ante notes that a former colleague
nor much money, but with the intention to of Doriot’s, James F. Morgan, recalled him
enroll at MIT and with a letter from a friend as “the most schizophrenic Frenchman I’ve
of his father introducing him to A. Lawrence ever met”—devoted to his original land’s wine,
Lowell, president of Harvard. At Lowell’s cuisine, and language even as “the French
suggestion he studied at Harvard Business capacity to make very simple things com-
School rather than MIT, and in his first job plicated drove him nuts.” However atypical
at an investment bank he befriended a young a Frenchman Doriot was, his pro-entrepre-
Lewis Strauss, who would later be the chair- neurial philosophy—alongside his vast expe-
man of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commis- rience serving on dozens of corporate boards
sion and a dispenser of federal benifices on in the interwar years and running much of
an enormous scale. Even in Doriot’s earli- U.S. military procurement during World
est years in America, then, its future emi- War II—made him the natural choice for the
nent men were familiar to him—though still role of company president when in 1946 a
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

group of Boston’s leading citizens set up the
American Research and Development Cor-
poration (ARD) as the first publicly owned
venture capital firm.
By the time Doriot called it quits in 1972
by merging ARD with the conglomerate
Textron, his firm had invested in 120 compa-
nies, most of which had proprietary, innova-
tive technologies in areas including isotope
conversion, water desalination, electronics,
data processing, scientific instrumentation,
and electrical generation. It’s an impressive
list of investments, containing names to
conjure with—if your taste runs to conjuring
with Zapata Off-Shore, a company headed
by George H. W. Bush that had a novel
mobile oil-drilling rig, or Digital Equip-
ment Corporation (DEC), which Doriot
funded with an initial $70,000 in 1957 and
which returned more than $400 million
when ARD liquidated its stake in 1972.
With DEC, a legendary company from
the dawn of the computer age, we enter
a landscape that more closely resembles
our own. Doriot left his mark in other
realms—principally as an early advocate
of globalization, by founding a European-
based counterpart of Harvard Business
School called the Institut Européen
d’Administration des Affaires, or INSEAD.
Yet his chief legacy is his quarter-century
at the head of the first organized venture
capital firm to raise its funds from insti-
tutional investors and the public. Con-
temporaneously with ARD’s watershed
investment in DEC, others began walking
the trails Doriot had blazed: Arthur Rock
(a student of Doriot’s in the Harvard class
of 1951) backed the departure of the “Trai-
torous Eight” from Shockley Semicon-
ductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor
in 1957, then funded Robert Noyce and
Gordon Moore when they left Fairchild to
found Intel; Laurance Rockefeller formed
Venrock, which has since backed more than
400 companies, including Intel and Apple;
B ETTMAN N /C O R B I S
Don Valentine formed Sequoia Capital,
which would invest in Atari, Apple, Oracle,
Cisco, Google, and YouTube.
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
Creative Capital is not a yellowing evo-
cation of a vanished era of business. Nor
does it suggest that there are, or once
were, more systematic, less speculative
ways of investing in technology startups.
But if one is struck by how little Doriot’s
venture capitalism differed from that of
today’s Silicon Valley, Ante’s book does
show how the structure of venture capital
has evolved. At the 1960s’ end, for instance,
when Doriot sought a successor at ARD, he
favored one of his former students, Thomas
“not competitive anymore” and sought the
IN A HU RRY Georges Doriot in 1931 on
the luxury liner Ile de France, 10 years after his
arrival in the United States from France.
Perkins, who’d made a name for himself as
administrative head of the research depart-
ment at Hewlett-Packard. Perkins found
polite reasons to decline Doriot’s offer, but
his real motive—as he told Ante—was simply
that “there was no way to make significant
money because of the structure of ARD.”
Doriot endured bureaucratic regulators
who did not understand or care how a ven-
ture capital firm differed from other invest-
ment companies. ARD suffered because,
since it was incorporated as a publicly
traded investment company, its employees
could not generally receive stock options
in its portfolio companies, despite Doriot’s
ceaseless pleas to the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission.
REVIEWS
The reality that Doriot’s company faced
from 1959 onward was that a new organiza-
tional form—the limited partnership, born in
Texas’s oil-wildcatting industry—was being
adopted by newer VC firms. Ante quotes
a former ARD executive who recalled that
after he supervised the IPO of one portfolio
company, the net worth of that company’s
CEO “went from 0 to $10 million and I got
a $2,000 raise.” A VC limited partnership,
by contrast, gave its general partners not
just management fees but also portions
of its capital gains; additionally, it permit-
ted profits to be passed on to its investors
without incurring corporate taxes, and it
mandated that limited partners stand clear
of management. Small wonder that when
Perkins helped found Kleiner Perkins Cau-
field and Byers in 1972, it was as a limited
partnership. When Doriot finally accepted
the SEC’s intransigence, he deemed ARD
merger with Textron.
Similar disagreements continue between
government and industry. After the dot-com
and telecom crashes, Washington passed the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act and new accounting
rules for expensing stock options, despite
the predictions of many technology execu-
tives and VCs that regulation would under-
mine innovation. John Doerr at Kleiner
Perkins, for one, believes that that hap-
pened: “Sarbanes-Oxley did have some chill-
ing effects on technology startups in terms
of the cost of being able to go public.”
What verdict should we award Doriot and
ARD? David Hsu, a professor of manage-
ment at the University of Pennsylvania’s
Wharton School, says that while ARD suf-
fered from fatal organizational flaws, it made
a lasting imprint on the practice of venture
capital. Indeed, writes Hsu in a paper he
coauthored, by the time Doriot sold the firm
to Textron, “venture capital had become
a part of the economy, and ARD simply
slipped out of existence with its historical
mission accomplished.”
MARK WILLIAMS IS A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO TECH-
NOLOGY REVIEW.
REVIEWS 85
 HACK A WEATHERPROOF SHELL

The shell of the repeater is made of a polymer

treated to block UV radiation, so it can “sit
out and bake in the sun for a few years,” says
Biswas. The green O-ring around the internal
perimeter is secured with screws, which put
enough pressure on the seal to form a water-
proof barrier. Green cable plugs at the bottom,
made of a silicone rubber, maintain a compres-
sion seal around the Ethernet cable. A working
Outdoor is submerged in a fish tank in Meraki’s
office, to prove that it can survive a monsoon.

B RADIO/ANTENNA

A Wi-Fi radio lets the Outdoor establish an

Internet connection with another repeater.
Its typical range is a few hundred meters
to half a kilometer; on a rooftop, the
repeater can reach up to a few kilometers.
The top connector can accommodate dif-
ferent kinds of antennas, such as a direc-
tional antenna that can connect to other
repeaters eight to ten kilometers away.
A

Meraki Outdoor
MESH NETWORKING REPEATER
FOR HARSH CONDITIONS
By K R I S T I N A G R I FA N T I N I

A
IN THE last few years, mesh networking has been trans-
formed from a largely military application into a tool for
providing Internet access to large populations. Meraki’s
Outdoor repeater ($100-$200) can transmit to other,
simpler repeaters; the company has a network set up in
San Francisco, with additional networks in places from
Alaska to the southern tip of South America. “Some of
our customers are considering blanketing entire cit-
ies with hundreds of thousands of devices,” says Sanjit
Biswas, a former TR35 honoree, who cofounded the
company in 2006, drawing on research he did at MIT.

86 HACK T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 D SYSTEM ON A CHIP

A single “system on a chip” integrates the

Wi-Fi-based radio and central processor, as
well as other critical components like memory.
The device deliberately has empty space:
the circuit board faces down in a large cavity,
where air currents keep it cool without a fan,
despite heat from the chips and from the sun.

DATA CENTERS

While mesh network algorithms run on the repeater,

C ETHERNET PORTS
Two 100-megabit Ethernet ports allow cables to
carry power, not just information. This lets a user
run a single cable, making it easier to set up a
repeater on a roof or in a hard-to-reach spot. The
repeater is designed to run on unreliable power,
such as that produced by a solar battery. Four
LEDs on the outside show signal strength.
three Meraki-run data centers do the heavy lift-
ing, helping to keep the devices simple and cheap.
From the data processing centers, Meraki manages
users, distributes bandwidth, and carries out other
data-intensive processes for millions of repeaters.
Internet-accessible dashboard software plots the
locations of the repeaters, shows users the health of
the network, and suggests where it could be made
stronger. For larger networks, the dashboard helps
manage users and billing. “The combination of the
software on the devices and our back end lets you do
things like offer a tier of free Wi-Fi and another tier of
paid access that’s faster,” says Biswas.
C H R I STO P H E R HARTI N G

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M HACK 87
DEMO

DEMO

Sequencing a
Single Molecule
of DNA
HELICOS BIOSCIENCES’ NOVEL
MACHINE COULD SPEED UP
SEQUENCING AND UNEARTH
NEW DISEASE-LINKED GENETIC
VARIATIONS.
By E M I LY S I N G E R

I
n the corner of Helicos BioSciences’ built the world’s fastest DNA sequencer.”
offices in Cambridge, MA, a screen Though it’s not clear whether the machine
on the face of what looks like a giant will produce a complete sequence more rap-
refrigerator flashes a countdown: 10 days, idly than competing systems do (the data
five hours, and 51 minutes until it finishes generated by a sequencing machine still has
reading the sequence of all the DNA that to be analyzed and stitched together, a com-
has been fed into it. The high-throughput putationally intensive task), Quake says it is
machine, a complex configuration of tubes, “opening entire new areas of research.”
lasers, and chemicals, contains two plates, The HeliScope, introduced earlier this
each with 25 microfluidic channels etched year, is joining an intense race for faster and
into it. Each channel is capable of holding cheaper sequencing technologies. The price 1
and sequencing a separate DNA sample. of sequencing a human genome has dropped
Sequencing the samples in parallel, the in recent years, from the $300 million the year), the DNA to be sequenced must be
machine takes just one hour to read 1.3 bil- Human Genome Project spent on its first amplified, or copied many times; the cop-
lion of the chemical “bases”—known as A, C, draft to less than $100,000. The applications ies are then read simultaneously to make
T, and G—that make up a strand of DNA. of cheap sequencing are almost limitless, it easier to detect fluorescent signals that
Called the HeliScope, it is the first com- from disease diagnostics to research that indicate the position of each DNA letter.
mercial instrument that can directly read the could yield microbes engineered to produce Single-molecule sequencing skips the copy-
sequence of a single such strand, a capability biofuels or medicines. ing step, meaning that many more unique
that gives it the potential for unprecedented In other advanced sequencing technolo- samples can be packed into a single sequenc-
P O RTE R G I F FO R D

speed. In fact, says Stephen Quake, a bioen- gies currently in use, including those from ing experiment.
gineer at Stanford University who cofounded Illumina, Applied Biosystems, and 454 Life In addition, single-molecule sequencing
the company in 2003, Helicos has “basically Sciences (which was acquired by Roche last may be able to generate a more complete

88 DEMO T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 4

1. The HeliScope is the first commercial machine to sequence a

single piece of DNA rather than one copied many times.
2. Each “flow cell” has 25 channels, each capable of holding 16
million strands of DNA for sequencing. A coating on the surface
of the cell allows it to be washed clean between reactions.
3. To start the sequencing process, a scientist uses a multitip
pipette to inject DNA samples into the flow cell.
4. The flow cell is then loaded into the HeliScope, which contains
a complex optical system and four digital cameras. A granite slab,
seen as a horizontal stripe across the top of the photo, prevents
the instrument from vibrating.
5. DNA bases—A, C, T, and G—and DNA polymerase, the enzyme
that catalyzes the sequencing reaction, are fed to the flow cell
3
through a complex fluidics system at precisely timed intervals.

picture of the genome. That’s because when
DNA is amplified, some strings are likelier
than others to be copied successfully, so
they’re more likely to be represented in the
final sequence. Likewise, rare genetic muta-
tions may go unrepresented because they
don’t get copied. “If at the end of the day you
can just put a single strand of DNA onto a
platform and sequence it directly, it’s a huge
advantage,” says Elaine R. Mardis, codirec-
tor of the Genome Center at Washington
University in St. Louis.
AWAKE AT NIGHT
With the Helicos technology, the DNA to be
sequenced is first chopped into short pieces
about 200 bases long and injected into a flow
cell, a specialized glass slide. The flow cell is
coated with tiny snippets of DNA that are
designed to snag the fragments as they float
by, anchoring them in place. The immo-
bilized pieces of DNA are fluorescently
labeled so that their position under a fluo-
rescence microscope can be recorded by a
camera. Nearly a billion pieces of DNA can
be analyzed in a single sequencing experi-
ment, compared with about 400,000 to 50
million for other technologies.
The flow cell is then nestled into the
HeliScope, where the microscope sits
ensconced in 400 pounds of Vermont
granite. The added weight stops any vibra-
tions from interfering with the signals the
device must detect. A complex optical sys-
tem and a tangle of tubing surround the
microscope, connecting it to what looks
like a miniature fridge filled with bottles
of specially made chemicals.
When a scientist activates the machine,
a precisely choreographed dance of flu-
ids begins. An enzyme called DNA poly-
merase and a single type of fluorescently
labeled base—say, A—flow into the cell.
The enzyme causes those As to take their
places in growing strands of DNA that
complement the strands in the samples.
(Each of the four bases can pair with only
one other base, so an added A must line

W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M DEMO 89
DEMO

6. A low-power laser illuminates the sequencing reactions,

which are recorded by the digital cameras.
7. The data recorded by the cameras is transferred to an
accompanying processing center, which converts the images
into strings of DNA letters. A specialized algorithm assembles
6 the overlapping fragments into a longer sequence of DNA.

up opposite an existing T, and a C against
a G.) Once the fluorescently tagged base
is incorporated into the new strand, the
HeliScope’s camera can spot the light it
emits. “The imager detects a plume—a 200-
nanometer cone of light—from the integra-
tion of a single [base] onto a single strand
of DNA,” says Steve Lombardi, president
of Helicos.
Other advanced sequencing methods use
a similar approach, known as sequencing
by synthesis. But unlike those technologies,
the HeliScope can distinguish the unam-
plified fluorescent signal of a single base
taking its place on a growing DNA strand.
One key to that ability is a nonstick material
that the company developed, which coats
the surface of the flow cell and allows it to
be washed clean between reactions: resid-
ual fluorescent bases would make it more
difficult to accurately detect individual
sequencing reactions. “You need to make
sure no extra base molecules are sticking
to the surface,” says Patrice Milos, chief
scientific officer at Helicos. “This was one
Watch single-molecule
www sequencing in action:
technologyreview.com/demo
of the biggest early challenges.” After each
cycle, the fluorescent markers are clipped
from the newly incorporated bases, and
remaining chemicals are washed away. The
process is repeated sequentially with each
of the four bases.
The HeliScope generates a massive
amount of raw data every second. It takes
five to ten days to read all the DNA that can
be loaded into two flow cells; for sequenc-
ing, that’s 400 million strands of DNA per
cell, which can generate 20 billion bases’
worth of usable sequence. Scientists load
the machine, press a button on its face, and
leave. But the sequencing obsessed can use
the Internet to check the machine’s prog-
ress in the middle of the night, a common
occurrence at Helicos.
Once the HeliScope creates its series
of fluorescence photographs, an accom-
panying data-processing center converts
them into strings of letters. Software
pastes these pieces together to form a lon-
ger sequence.
MISSING MUTATIONS
In a paper published in Science earlier this
year, scientists reported on their use of the
HeliScope to sequence the genome of the
M13 virus, important proof that single -
molecule sequencing could be used to read
and assemble the sequence of a complete
genome. (Approximately 7,000 base pairs
long, the M13 virus’s genome is tiny—about
a millionth the size of a human’s.) The tech-
nology is so new that it’s not yet clear what
applications it will be best suited to. But
some scientists believe that single-molecule
sequencing could be particularly important
in understanding how genetic variations
contribute to disease. After all, some rare
mutations linked to disease may have been
missed in previous genomic studies
because they weren’t copied during the
amplification process.
Helicos is still tinkering with the tech-
nology, developing chemistry that could
boost the speed of the sequencing reac-
tions and allow more pieces of DNA to be
anchored to a flow cell. Along with the other
major players in the field, the company hopes
to deliver a complete genome sequence for
$1,000, an accomplishment that would mark
the beginning of something totally new in
medicine: individuals’ ability to access their
own genomic information.
EMILY SINGER IS TR’S BIOTECHNOLOGY AND LIFE
SCIENCES EDITOR.

90 DEMO T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
 Understand the Fun and Beauty
in Mathematical Concepts
Discover How to Think Precisely, Decisively, and Creatively in 24 Fascinating Lectures
H
umans have been having fun and
games with mathematics for thou-
sands of years. Along the way, they’ve
discovered the amazing utility of this field—
in science, engineering, finance, games of
chance, and many other aspects of life.
Join Professor Arthur T. Benjamin to
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Professor Benjamin has another goal in this
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Have You Forgotten Math?
Worry Not!
Professor Benjamin gives his presentation
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Other lectures are devoted to pi, the imagi-
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and infinity. These numbers are gateways to
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He also introduces you to prime numbers,
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you investigate the powerful techniques for
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A Math Course Designed for You
You will find Dr. Benjamin’s introduc-
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 FROM
FROM THE
THE LABS
LABS
B I OT E C H N O LO GY
Blind Mice
See the Light
RESEARCHERS
ENGINEER SIGHT INTO A
BROKEN VISUAL CIRCUIT
SOURCE: “LIGHT-ACTIVATED
CHANNELS TARGETED TO O.N.
BIPOLAR CELLS RESTORE VISUAL
FUNCTION IN RETINAL
DEGENERATION”
Botond Roska et al.
Nature Neuroscience 11: 667–675
Results: Blind mice that had
been genetically engineered
to produce a light-sensitive
protein in their retinas devel-
oped a rudimentary sense of
vision. The mice responded
to moving patterns, display-
ing an ability to resolve fine
visual details about half as
well as normal mice.
Why it matters: People
with macular degeneration
or retinitis pigmentosa, two
leading causes of blindness
in the United States, lose
vision when photoreceptor
cells degenerate. The new
results raise the possibility of
a therapy that would enable
their eyes to detect and
respond to light even in the
Specific cells (shown here in
green) in the retinas of blind mice
were engineered to express a light-
sensitive protein, giving the mice a
rudimentary form of vision.
92 FROM THE LABS
absence of photoreceptors,
partially restoring sight.
Methods: Researchers
inserted a gene for a light-
sensitive protein found in
algae into the retinas of mice
that lacked photoreceptors.
Embedded in the mem-
branes of retinal cells that
normally relay signals from
photoreceptors to the brain,
the protein acts as a chan-
nel that opens when hit with
light. That allows positively
charged ions to flood into the
cells, triggering a signal that
ultimately reaches the brain.
Next steps: The cells engi-
neered to produce the light-
sensitive protein normally
turn on in response to light.
The researchers would like to
apply their approach to cells
that shut off in the presence
of light, adding another layer
of complexity to the restored
visual system. But they must
first find a way to deliver a
second light-sensitive protein
specifically to those cells.
Cells Show
Promise for
Parkinson’s
BRAIN CELLS
DEVELOPED FROM SKIN
CELLS HELP ALLEVIATE
SYMPTOMS IN RATS
SOURCE: “NEURONS DERIVED
FROM REPROGRAMMED
FIBROBLASTS FUNCTIONALLY
INTEGRATE INTO THE FETAL BRAIN
AND IMPROVE SYMPTOMS OF RATS
WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE”
Rudolf Jaenisch et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 105: 5856–5861; published
online April 7, 2008
Results: Skin cells repro-
grammed to act as stem cells
differentiated in culture into
neural stem cells. Trans-
planted into the brains of
rodents, they were inte-
grated into the existing
brain circuitry and became
functioning neurons. The
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
reprogrammed cells, which
are known as induced
pluripotent stem cells, also
improved symptoms in rats
modeling Parkinson’s disease.
Why it matters: Animal
and human studies suggest
that replacing the dopamine-
producing neurons damaged
in Parkinson’s can treat the
disease. But finding a source
of such cells in humans has
been problematic. Embry-
onic stem cells, which can
give rise to neurons, are one
potential source. But taking
cells from human embryos
is controversial, and embry-
onic stem cells are difficult to
obtain. Working with repro-
grammed cells might prove
easier than working with
embryonic stem cells.
Methods: In a dish,
researchers transformed
mouse skin cells into undif-
ferentiated cells by inducing
them to express four genes;
previous studies had shown
that those genes were able to
reset the cell to its embryonic
state. Then they used a previ-
ously identified set of chemi-
B OTO N D R O S KA, F R I E D R I C H M I E S C H E R I N STITUTE FO R B I O M E D I CAL R E S EAR C H
 cals to prompt those cells to
differentiate into neurons.
The cells were labeled with a
fluorescent marker and trans-
planted into the brains of fetal
mice, where they appeared to
integrate into the brain as the
mice grew to adulthood.
Researchers also trans-
planted reprogrammed cells
into the brains of rats given a
chemical toxin to knock out
their dopamine-producing
cells. The transplants repaired
a motor dysfunction evident
in these animals.
Next steps: The scientists
are now trying to repeat the
experiments with human
cells. Once they develop
human dopamine neurons,
they will transplant them into
rodents to see if they behave
like the reprogrammed
mouse cells. The research-
ers also aim to determine
whether neurons derived
from induced pluripotent
stem cells are as stable as
those derived from embry-
onic stem cells
N A N OT E C H N O LO GY
New Circuit
Element
THE MEMRISTOR COULD
BE USEFUL FOR NON-
VOLATILE MEMORY
SOURCE: “THE MISSING MEMRIS-
TOR FOUND”
R. Stanley Williams et al.
Nature 453: 80–83
Results: Researchers at
HP Labs have fabricated
a memristor, or memory
J. J. YAN G, H P LAB S
resistor—a fundamental elec-
tronic device that had been
described theoretically but
W W W . T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W . C O M
An image from an atomic force
microscope shows a circuit with 17
memristors lined up in a row. Every
memristor shares the same bot-
tom wire (top left to bottom right),
and each has its own top wire. The
memristors are between the wires.
never produced until now.
The amount of charge that
flows through the device can
be changed by exposing it to
an electrical voltage. Apply-
ing a positive voltage lowers
its resistance, and applying
a negative voltage increases
it. Furthermore, the change
in resistance is proportional
to the length of time the volt-
age is applied: the more the
device is charged, the more
electricity it conducts. Once
set, the resistance stays the
same until it’s reset.
Why it matters: Memris-
tors could lead to nonvolatile
memory chips that store
more data than flash memory.
They could also be used in
processors designed to mimic
aspects of the human brain.
In the brain, learning depends
on changes in the strength
of connections between neu-
rons. The memristor can be
used to set the strength of
connections between transis-
tors, achieving a similar effect.
Chips using memristors
could be useful for face rec-
ognition and for controlling
robot movement.
Methods: The new memris-
tors consist of two layers of
titanium dioxide sandwiched
between two electrical con-
tacts. One layer of titanium
dioxide is an insulator, block-
ing the flow of electrons from
one contact to the other. The
other layer, which has fewer
oxygen atoms than titanium
dioxide normally does, con-
ducts electricity.
When a voltage is applied,
some of the oxygen ions move
from the first layer into the
oxygen-deficient layer. That
improves the conductivity
of the first layer, allowing
electrons to pass through the
memristor from one contact
to the other.
Next steps: Since Hewlett-
Packard doesn’t make
memory chips, the tech-
nology will probably be
licensed to another company
for product development. The
HP researchers are working
on a prototype that combines
transistors and memristors to
form a brainlike chip.
Nano RNA
Therapeutics
LIPIDLIKE MATERIALS
IMPROVE DELIVERY OF
RNA FOR SILENCING
GENE EXPRESSION
SOURCE: “A COMBINATORIAL
LIBRARY OF LIPID-LIKE MATERIALS
FOR DELIVERY OF RNAI
THERAPEUTICS”
Daniel G. Anderson et al.
Nature Biotechnology 26: 561–569
Results: By developing new
techniques of chemical syn-
thesis, researchers at MIT
and Alnylam Pharmaceuti-
cals in Cambridge, MA, were
able to quickly make 1,200
different lipidlike molecules
that serve as building blocks
for nanoscale containers
called liposomes. Some of the
resulting liposomes proved
effective at introducing RNA
into a variety of different cells
in rodents and primates. The
RNA was able to block the
action of certain genes and of
microRNA, which serves to
regulate genes.
Why it matters: Silencing
genes with RNA—a technique
FROM THE LABS 93
 known as RNA interference,
or RNAi—is a potentially
powerful therapy for genetic
diseases, viral infections, can-
cer, and even heart attacks,
but it’s been difficult to deliver
RNA to cells, since the body’s
immune system breaks it
down quickly. The new deliv-
ery agents skirt the body’s
defenses.
Access to such a large col-
lection of lipidlike materials
will allow scientists to better
understand how to design
effective delivery nanopar-
ticles. And the new synthesis
methods could help research-
ers find delivery agents that
are even more effective, which
could increase the chances of
success for RNA-based thera-
pies, as well as other drugs.
Methods: The researchers
developed a one-step pro-
cess for making molecules
that resemble the lipids typi-
cally used for the commercial
manufacture of liposomes.
Then they developed ways
to screen the ability of lipo-
somes made from these mole-
cules to deliver RNA directly
to cells in a petri dish and to
living tissue in animals.
For in vivo tests, the
researchers added cholesterol
and an ether called polyethyl-
ene glycol to their molecules
to help the liposomes avoid
the body’s defenses.
Next Steps: Researchers at
MIT are sorting through new
molecules to find better deliv-
ery agents. They are testing
their potential for targeting
a variety of diseases and for
delivering therapeutics other
than RNA.
94 FROM THE LABS
I N F O R M AT I O N T E C H N O LO GY
Modeling
the Climate
A LOW-POWER SUPER-
COMPUTER COULD
LEAD TO ULTRAHIGH-
RESOLUTION CLIMATE
MODELS
SOURCE: “TOWARDS ULTRA-HIGH
RESOLUTION MODELS OF CLIMATE
AND WEATHER”
John Shalf et al.
International Journal of High Performance
Computing Applications 22: 149–165
Results: Engineers and sci-
entists at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory have
designed a low-power super-
computer that can resolve cli-
mate models to the kilometer.
Why it matters: Today’s
supercomputers aren’t nearly
powerful enough to run algo-
rithms that predict future
weather with kilometer-scale
resolution—algorithms that
would allow researchers to
improve the overall accuracy
of climate models and better
inform local decisions about
how to adapt to global warm-
ing. The proposed supercom-
puter would be not only more
powerful but hundreds of
times more power efficient
than any other supercom-
puter, making such calcula-
tions cost effective.
Methods: The research-
ers used chip design soft-
ware made by Tensilica, a
chip manufacturer in Santa
Clara, CA, to build a pro-
cessor with only the func-
tions necessary for weather
modeling, as opposed to the
general-purpose chips com-
monly used in today’s super-
computers. They are also
custom-designing the chip’s
memory and the circuitry that
connects its 32 processors—or
“cores”—to reduce inefficien-
cies and minimize power con-
sumption. The climate model
that will run on the machine
splits the globe into 20 million
cells—one for each core in the
supercomputer—and will be
able to simulate the move-
ment of storm systems and
weather fronts.
Next steps: The researchers
still need to finalize the design
of the 20-million-core super-
computer. They also plan to
run the climate model on
simulations of the supercom-
puter, looking for problems
with either the hardware or
the software and opportuni-
ties to optimize performance
and energy use.
T-Rays
Heat Up
A SEMICONDUCTOR
TERAHERTZ-LASER
SOURCE WORKS AT
ROOM TEMPERATURE
SOURCE: “ROOM TEMPERATURE
TERAHERTZ QUANTUM CASCADE
LASER SOURCE BASED ON
INTRACAVITY DIFFERENCE-
FREQUENCY GENERATION”
Federico Capasso et al.
Applied Physics Letters 92: 201101
Results: Researchers have
designed a semiconductor
laser that emits terahertz
radiation—or t-rays—at room
temperature.
Why it matters: Terahertz
radiation could enable sen-
sitive chemical detection,
ultrafast data transmission,
and devices that “see through”
T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008
walls and clothing. Today’s
devices for emitting terahertz
radiation, however, require
expensive liquid-nitrogen
cooling systems and are too
bulky to be portable. The new
terahertz laser source is a
tiny semiconductor chip that
doesn’t need to be cryogeni-
cally cooled.
A single chip contains 10 terahertz
lasers. A hemispherical silicon lens
focused the light from one of the
lasers onto a detector for testing.
Methods: On the chip, the
researchers built a device
called a quantum-cascade
laser, which can emit two
beams of infrared light at
different frequencies. Inside
the chip, semiconductors
are arranged such that they
not only relay the infrared
beams but also emit a third
beam whose frequency is the
difference between those of
the first two. The researchers
adjusted the device so that the
third beam is in the terahertz
frequency range.
Next steps: Currently, the
terahertz rays shine from the
edge of the chip, which limits
the total power of the laser.
The researchers plan to adapt
the device to force the light
out of the top surface, which
should increase its power.
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To see a listing of current searches,
please visit us at
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For confidential consideration,
send your résumé to
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A BETTER
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38 YEARS AGO IN TR

Community Access Fano was optimistic about the future

of networked computing, but his essay
ROBERT FANO KNEW THAT THE TRUE POWER OF painted a dark picture of the possible
COMPUTING LAY IN ITS ABILITY TO CONNECT PEOPLE. alternative if access were limited. In this
B y M AT T M A H O N E Y he was influenced by Norbert Wiener,
the great prophet of the Information
Age, who’d died in 1964. Wiener’s

I
exhortations to think through the
n 1970, MIT Ford Professor of Engi- The effects of this early experiment negative ramifications of innovation
neering Robert Fano wrote an essay were profound. “It was unbelievable what were well heeded by Fano.
for this magazine called “Computers in happened,” recalls Fano, who is now 90. Computers provide access to knowl-
Human Society—For Good or Ill?” Having “Very quickly, [the network] became the edge, and knowledge is power. Thus, unless
experimented with the scarce and expen- storage of knowledge of the community. computers are made truly accessible to the
sive machines for more than a decade, he It was an amazing phenomenon.” The population at large, there will develop a
knew that a revolution was at hand. And network could, as Fano explained in his dangerous power gap between those who
he worried that if computing power have access to computers and those
did not become broadly accessible, who have not, and particularly
human liberty would be gravely between organizations—whether
threatened. public or private—and the private
Seven years before, Fano had citizen. I do not see how individual
organized Project MAC at MIT freedom can survive in such circum-
to demonstrate the feasibility of stances. Computers may indeed
“general-purpose, independent, become the pillars of the Orwellian
on-line use of computers by a large world of 1984, and Big Brother may
number of people.” He believed well take the form of a computerized
that the computer’s potential lay and centralized information system
not in its computational power but which has become essential to the
in its ability to foster “intellectual operation of society.
communication” and collabora- Thus, the social exploitation of
tion. (His insight proved true not computers may proceed in two very
just for intellectual communication NET WORK Robert Fano (left) with Marvin different directions. The emphasis
for but every other kind, too. Throughout Minsky, a cofounder of MIT’s Artificial Intelli- may be toward turning the power of com-
gence Lab, which was part of Project MAC
this issue of the magazine, we explore the puters to the service of the individual, so as
rise of social networking.) With fund- essay, become a reservoir for all kinds of to augment his intellectual capabilities and
ing from the U.S. Defense Department’s research, one accessible to many users. enable him to cope with a much higher level
Advanced Research Projects Agency, Intellectual activities have an important of operational complexity in society. Or the
whose Information Processing Tech- common feature—their cooperative nature. emphasis may continue on the automation
niques Office was headed by the visionary One man builds upon the work of others, or of existing functions in human organiza-
J. C. R. Licklider, Project MAC research- he uses data generated by the activities of tions, with a concomitant centralization of
ers perfected a time-sharing computer others, or his own activities generate data information and control. The first direction
system that multiple users could log in to which will be used by others. In other words, leads to strengthening human organiza-
simultaneously. interaction between people is fundamental tions by augmenting the capabilities of the
to intellectual activities. Thus, if a computer individuals in them, while the second direc-
C O U RTE SY O F TH E M IT M U S E U M

Listen to Robert Fano describe system is to assist people in their intellectual tion leads to the evolution of organizations
www his pioneering research: activities, it must facilitate intellectual com- into superhuman entities with their own
technologyreview.com/fano
munication among them. goals, largely insensitive to human values.

Technology Review (ISSN 1099-274X), Reg. U.S. Patent Office, is published bimonthly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Entire contents ©2008. The editors seek diverse views, and authors’ opinions do not represent the official
policies of their institutions or those of MIT. Printed by Brown Printing Company, Waseca, MN. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to Technology Review, Subscription
Services Dept., PO Box 420005, Palm Coast, FL 32142, or via the Internet at www.technologyreview.com/customerservice/. Basic subscription rates: $34 per year within the United States; in all other countries, US$47. Publication Mail
Agreement Number 40621028. Send undeliverable Canadian copies to PO Box 1051 Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Printed in U.S.A. ABC audited

96 38 YEARS AGO T E CH N O L O G Y R E V I E W J U L Y / A U G U S T 2008

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