opportunities perhaps or even new opportunities use technology further. foundationalhow and it host: sets the host: stage for future developments. let's run through the list -- guest: let's run through the list. of the 10 that the magazine came editing.genome microscale three printing. mobile collaboration. easier reproduction or editing on mobile devices, smart wind and solar power, oculus rift which is virtual reality headgear for consumers, nor oh more thick , agricultural drones and brain mapping. those are the 10 we will be discussing for the next 40

minutes or so. we encourage our viewers to call in and offer your own thoughts on either those technologies or other breakthrough technologies you would list. as we talk with brian bergstein, did you'd put these in order of importance? >> not really, they're meant to be equally important. we cover so many different fields. betweenhe differences our publication and others is that we are not solely focused on the web or computing or gadgets. we cover energy and biomedicine so we're looking for things that span the areas we cover. it would be hard to rank or compare a development in clean energy with something in consumer electronics. they are all out there and they are in their own way equally important. host: let's delve into one of the breakthrough technologies, ultra private smartphones. you write --

the nsa revelations that came out last year got everybody talking about how much data there is about us that follows us around as we are online at smartphones in particular are broadcasting a lot of information about us. is sensitive or private information at times. preferences, what you read, what you look at, how you shop. the snowden revelations are interesting because while the focus of tension on the nsa and the legality of what it is getting without a warrant, the subtext to that was that this information is readily available in the first place. it has been for a long time and there is a huge industry of commercial data brokers that buy

and sell information about your online habits and that has been going on and growing for years, for a decade. people who follow privacy issues closely have known about this and talked about this and there has been great reporting about the commercial data brokers. the focus on what the government is doing through the nsa and other agencies sort of rekindled the discussion about privacy more broadly. over the past year, there have been some new models of smart phones that have come out such as the black phone which is a mainstream friendly mass-market ready device that, by default, includes a lot of the privacy protections that they busily you would have to go out and hunt for if you are privacy conscious. the data on your phone is encrypted by default. the mechanism by which your ,hone signals to wi-fi hotspots that is shut down unless you're in a predetermined area.

even though the nsa revelations -- revelations got the attention, there is broader conversations about privacy and other is a phone on the market that makes it far easier to protect your privacy by default. host: we are talking with brian the deputy editor at the m.i.t. technology review. on ultra private smartphones is written by david talbot. the story notes that black phone sells for $629 with subtractions to privacy protection services. that's one of the many measures that technologists are taking in response to the snowden revelations. we will go to the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2014 as listed by m.i.t. technology review. here are the numbers to call in --

this is not a new thing for m.i.t. technology review to do. you have been doing this for 14 years or so? theuest: that's right, first one of these lists came out in 2001. it's interesting to look back. people should go to technology review.com and and check it out. the earlier ones often protect some of the technologies that became big over the last decade and beyond. the first list included biometrics which is the measurement of personal characteristics for your identification, fingerprints or iris patterns. some fundamental medical research that we are now familiar with like rain machine interfaces was on their sore our

track record is pretty good. host: it brings up some of the issues that have become key issues to date on that first list from 2001 -- digital write management is one of the breakthrough technology issues that was listed back then. in the latest issue that came break 2014, another would through technology is agricultural drones. tell us about that. it was fun because the article in the magazine was written by chris anderson, the whoer editor of "wired" left to start a drones company. are familiarhat we with drones in a military context. some people have been familiar automatedists with choppers and planes you can fly around at the park and take pictures. this new class of agricultural drones is different and new

because they are priced relatively affordably, under $1000. they come with a set of sensors on board that make it possible for farmers to send them up over their fields and get readouts on information that previously would have to have been collected manually or in less detail. it's possible to go up and get a needse of where pesticide to be applied or where water actually needs to be applied. the idea is that you could use less of each. the game and accor culture is we want to increase output -- the game in agriculture is increase output and using fewer resources to produce the same amount of food. commercial use of

drones is something the faa is looking into to making rules about, correct? guest: that's right but below a certain height ceiling, it's perfectly legal. they fly less than 1000 feet and hover over a field and can come back with information that says here is where the soil is dry and here is actually where there is a light or something that needs to be addressed. andget a much finer picture apply your resources much more carefully. host: we will keep going through the breakthrough technologies of 2014. let's bring in our callers. let's go to roger in illinois, on our line for independents. are you with us? he might've stepped away. line go to our independent from oakland, california. caller: hi, i was noticing on

your list of technologies you mentioned wind and solar. i have been puzzled for some time white tidal energy has not been exploited. it is available at most people in the united states or within 25 miles of the coast. it's an obvious source of energy and easy to use. i don't understand why it has not been exploited. guest: that's a great question. unfortunately, like any promising sounding alternative energy, it has to be economical. and couldgy is useful be promising but it is not yet economical. it's not going to generate enough power to be worth installing what you need to do to harness -- to harness the power. that's interesting about this

list about smart wind and solar power. there is a knock against solar that it is not cost competitive with coal or natural gas. power. interesting is that a utility and colorado in particular is at the forefront of this, xl energy. they have outfitted every single wind turbine and innate winfield with sensors that are registering in great detail just how much energy is coming how any given turbine in any given time and combining that with really detailed forecast of the weather. what they know is just how often the wind is going to blow and how strong and how much power they can reasonably expect to generate from a wind farm. wend and solar have been coming down the cost for a while. can help make wins that much more economical because if you know that the wind will blow

and you can trust that based on this detailed data you're getting, you don't fire up a backup plan. traditionally, the operator of a is a utility relying on the power for the wind farm but would have to fire a backup plan. blowingthe wind stops is what that's for. that raises the essential net cost of wind power. if you never have to fire up or you can fire up the backup power less often, wind effectively becomes less cheap. it is an economics question. that's the kind of test and whichtidal power and other beatable semi-alternatives do not yet measure up. host: on the subject of agricultural drones --

a question on twitter -- guest: that's a great question. we have thought a lot about this. i don't see anything yet. we ask ourselves this question a lot because there is a real interesting and dynamic private spaceflight business emerging. it's not only for tourism but obviously to bring -- to supply the rockets that nasa needs to bring supplies and people to the space stations. there are companies that want to mine asteroids. just last week, one of the companies that was talking about mining asteroids seemingly scaled-back its ambitions. instead of mining asteroids for all kinds of things that you cannot find on earth reveille, now the latest business plan is

that they would mine asteroids for water that would be useful in fuel permissions deeper into space. all of a sudden, that becomes more speculative and further out. there really is not anything breakthrough, i would say, in spaceflight. spacex has done is fantastic, private rocket company. but it is not changing the game dramatically in space. host: on the subject of ultra-private smartphones -- let's go to wilson waiting in kentucky, on our line for republicans. caller: good morning and thanks for taking my call. andve a couple of questions partial comments.

researchoing on with and development into high-temperature superconductivity? is, ther question positive ion exchange membrane of the pmes fuel-cell system? that seems to be very important with respect to getting on the hydrogen energy system. can you comment on either one of those for me please, sir? can't.no, i those are outside my room of expertise. i would just be sort of guessing. after a few years of talking about hydrogen economy or hydrogen powered cars or whatever, anything related to hydrogen as a fuel still is not progressed very far.

other than that, there is really not anything exciting in that realm right now for us. specifics, it's beyond my room of expertise. host: let's go to when you see is a breakthrough, agile robots. that is listed as one of your 10 breakthrough technologies. tell us about that. guest: this is interesting is that a sorts of inflection point. it is this idea and technology that there has been some breakthrough that will allow those big jump ahead. we are familiar with robots in certain contexts. there has been robots on assembly lines and factories for a long time. robots do certain novel things were very specific

tasks like vacuuming your floor. agile robots, we are referring to a class of robots that can do something that has not been possible before. they can stand up and walk, they can dynamically balance themselves. robots have been able to stand up but that has been statically balanced. if you knock them over, they would fall down. the agile robot is that companies like boston dynamics which was bought by google and the last year and a few others have built robots that with every step can balance themselves. it's much like what we do to walk and move around. that is important because you can now have robots be far more depth at navigating -- far more depth at navigating the environment we move around in and handling everyday landscapes like going up and down stairs or clamber over rocks. they can carry things long distances in the regular environment.

rather than just being an arm that swivels around in a factory assembly line, they can now maybe go into places that are too dangerous for humans to go. imagine after something like the fukushima nuclear cleanup in japan, there were situations that were too dangerous or inadvisable for humans to go in. if you could send a robot reliably back and look around and take images and move things around, that's hugely important. other kind of disaster recovery efforts -- we are a long way away from sending a machine into do that stuff but the fundamental advance of a robot that can stand up and walk around and move around is being pushed heavily by the military is r&d and there is a challenge theg on testing capabilities of these kind of machines.

that effort tends to push the technology along quickly so we think the next few years will see some huge developments in robots with a great amount of agility. we are focusing on the temperature technologies of 2014 in our spotlight on magazine segments. joe is waiting in las vegas, nevada, ireland for democrats. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i am interested in the mapping of the brain. the pineal gland, do you know anything about that? >> i have heard of it but i'm not too aware of whether it plays a special role in the mapping process. the mapping project is to look at the entire brain. there is a few different mapping projects we're talking about. whether it is a certain

treating mental illness or brain disorders, we are on the verge of a great amount of improvement in our understanding of the brain. just about any project that involves the brain requires a good map. what we have had for a long time is a very imperfect one and a very rough one. you may have seen the traditional map that shows brain regions, each region being somehow implicated in certain functions. ,hat level of specificity breaking the cortex into 50 regions, a lot of that work was done in the early 20th century. there are fascinating project now that take the brains of two divers and slice them unbelievably thin.

you can imagine making a hair's width size of rain and they are put on a scanner and a digital reconstruction of the brain can be made to a resolution as fine as 20 microns. you're getting to the level where you can map down to the individual neurons. everybody's brain is different. that map of neuron is not the same in every person. that's part of what makes you you. once you get down to that level of detail, now you can start to do all kinds of research that was never possible before. you can target and measure the performance or the energy from individual neurons. you can get a much finer picture of how regions of the brain interact. we have had a sort of high-level map and now we are going into more detail. it's fundamental research that will lay the groundwork for a lot come a we think i'm in the coming years. host: the list of the 10 breakthrough technologies from m.i.t. technology review are

highlighted in this weeks -- and this month's magazine. let us know which one of those you want to chat about and our phone lines are open for the next 20 minutes or so. waiting in steve scottsdale, arizona, on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. about andering technology where if you are driving -- i thought this would save millions of gallons of gas at this. if the just light car pulls up to a and it activates the light and once it turns green, that car pulls out but a lot of times, it

will turn red for maybe 50 or 100 cars that have to stop to let the one car out. i know we have the technology where instead if they had sensors that would let all those cars go through the light first and then they will let the light turned green to let the one car out. across implemented that the united states, it would save billions of gallons of gas per day. host: perhaps it's technology for a future edition? guest: it's a great idea. if you look around, how much energy is actually wasted, you will start to see it everywhere. that is a great example that transportation is such a huge -- part of our carbon footprint and wasted money. transportation accounts for a lot of that. there are some interesting projects on smart cities.

i think they tend to be over hyped. people are at least considering this which is the idea that with more sensors everywhere, sensors that are smarter, the one that with thetalked about pressure reader industry to determine if a car is there -- that is a pretty dumb sensor. if you can eventually get to the place where there is car to car communication -- one reason that the self driving google car project is interesting is not that any individual car can be cell driven or automatically driven but that if you had a bunch of in the vicinity of each other, they could communicate with each other and coordinate their movements. to let youl stop three go because you three are moving faster -- the kind of thing. we are a long way away from that. the self driving car is a little

distracting. i think you'll be driving your car for a long time but there is research on this. maybe it is something we would be highlighting in the magazine a few years. ein previouslyrgst served as a silicon valley correspondent for the ap and the technology editor. from our twitter page -- guest: it's a really exciting field. 3-d printing is already here. it has gotten a lot of attention. it comes in a few forms. the more interesting form is what manufacturers like ge or airbus would call additive manufacturing. instead of taking a block of material and milling it away to what you want, they are using

3-d printing technologies to build up a part for an airplane or something layer by layer putting material exactly where you want it. you can create novel materials that were not possible before and you can have material with the same structural integrity as a previous part but let's wait. -- but less weight. on the other side, we have home 3-d printers allow you to make things if you want. with those, it is limited in your materials mainly to plastic. plastic comes out of the print head novel -- nozzle and solidifies. for now this is mainly a hobbyist angle. what we are writing about in the magazine with microscale 3-d printing is we are talking about researchers who are doing fascinating work to use 3-d printing with a greater variety of materials, not plastic.

we are talking about living cells, battery components and using multiple materials and one session of 3-d printing. there is interesting research at princeton and harvard and a few other places like cambridge in the u.k. the idea is to actually build something where the form and function are both optimized. at some point, if you wanted to have an artificial organ perhaps to test medicines on or even sunday to become a replacement, you could actually see it's possible to say build that artificial organ with a 3-d printer combining the tissue necessary to make the organ and the blood vessels that need to course through it in order for the organ to work. is a really dramatic and exciting potential use of 3-d printing.

part i've mentioned before about battery electrodes, imagine a hearing aid -- they all -- are already custom fit. matching of the battery could be laid down of the same time you're making the device. electronics could become slimmer and more streamlined and custom-made but with the function already built inside. host: let's go to will waiting in albany, oregon, on our line for independents. caller: good morning, c-span and thank you for taking my call. do any of these technologies add to the human being? does it help the human mind? does it help the human heart? does it help us to be more compassionate beings to one another? these are the breakthroughs we need. i may not be technological but these are the breakthroughs we need. do we have any technology insight that can help us in any

beingsome better human and healthier human beings? guest: that's a great question. lot becauset this a there are a lot of technologies that make life easier but does that necessarily make life better? easier is not necessarily better. too much automation, for example, is dangerous. it's dangerous to our economy perhaps or our sense of who we are in our labor. personally, i think of myself as somewhat skeptical. not all breakthroughs are necessarily good. the one thing i would say is on our list, we are seeing these breakthroughs are important and we are trying to separate the value of whether they are good. in answer to your question, while we are skeptical, i think we are optimists which is to say

that if you name the world's -- clean energy being a huge 1 -- even though technology is a cause of a lot of these problems, one way or another, technology will have to be a solution. we will live in a world of 9 billion people by 2050. if we are going to feed them or give them the standard of living they will want in a sustainable way, technology will have to be part of the answer. if we can live in a world that is less stressed in its resources -- i think we can become better people as a result. i think we can become a little more secure and a little more comfortable. in big parts of the world, people live day to day, meal to meal. there are psychologies or other developments that can make their lives easier and that should

open their hearts and do some of the things you're talking about. that is a great question but i just don't i technology is the be-all and end-all answer but it can help us on the path that you're describing. host: we've got about 10 minutes left before the house comes in. we will try to get to as many calls we can. we go to brooklyn, new york, on our line for democrats. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. is concerning the technological breakthroughs -- it appears from what you're saying that these breakthroughs are naturally going to be esoteric to the people and companies that actually make these breakthroughs. when do you think in the long term that the basic fundamental science and engineering knowledge of these breakthroughs become part of our educational system where a large group of

people now have the opportunity to expand on them, have the education to know about these technologies so that our employment is more spread out throughout the country in order for people to participate and maybe for the society as a whole, people can have these writers help our society and become part of our educational system for the betterment of our future. guest: that's a good question. i don't know how to take that one on. i feel like some of these technologies we are citing are not necessarily esoteric. some of these are things that you can buy right now like the drones and this private smartphone oculus rift. that doesn't quite answer your question about improving for having this economic or employment impact. all i can say is what we try to do with the list is come up with

things that are not super far out and super speculative. looking back in our past lists, there are things that did not make it. -- not play it to say but there are enough things on this list that art truly happening. the work with 3-d printing that i described, it's possible to see a demonstration of this at labs at harvard and princeton. it is actually happening now. what the economic impact of all this will be remains to be seen. anything that crazy new opportunities, creates new possibilities for people to build new businesses and services and hopefully expand the economy and create new jobs. the impact on education -- you may have me there. i'm not sure there's anything on this list that directly impacts education. host: jean from ohio -- that's a really good

question. we did not focus on that. we were looking at the typical white-collar worker on the go for this piece. his we are talking about many of us work in offices where the work consists of putting a document together or writing something or getting something out into the world or putting something on a website. many people's work is collaborative and you produce something. the tools we have to do this with are essentially traditional desk top software like microsoft word or excel or power panel -- or powerpoint. more and more of us work on the go and check things on our phones. more and more work happens with teams that are virtual where people are in multiple places and not sitting in the same office. people work from home more often. there is a new class of software

that makes it possible to work this way much more effectively. instead of just shuffling a word attachment around, you can work some body ofon text or something that exists on your phone as you are working on it. it does not have to be saved and e-mailed around with a million attachments. everyone's contributions are sort of brought together in real-time. people move faster and is built more for the way we work. it's important because so much of the economy happens with this kind of work. there's is a much better way to and making life easier and more productive for people. as far as soldiers, i would bet there is a way that soldiers in the field could use something like this.

much of the military today is about information and exchanging information and connecting soldiers and their leaders to a network. anything that allows people to share information in real-time, to contribute what they are seeing or to get a readout -- that could be huge. to some extent, the military already does a lot of that. what we are talking about here may not apply. host: just a few minutes left but we will go to steve waiting in colorado on our line for independents. caller: good morning, great show. i love the subject. i was talking to my grandson the other day about the oculus rift and he tried to it's plain to me but can you expand on that and what it is? guest: virtual reality is really

the broader name for the technology. ourid not call it that on list because that is not new. virtual reality came out in the 1990's. i remember going into a video arcade in the 90's and putting and my bulky headset view is completely surrounded my felt as if i was in this digital landscape doing some kind of space mission. it was cool and interesting but it was not going to take off because the technology was too expensive and the graphics were not that good. it actually had some interesting applications in industry. don a headsetto and certain kinds of architectural settings to design the building or look into a 3-d view of something.

what we are talking about here is mass-market virtual reality. we now have a0's, device soon to hit the market call the oculus rift and sony is putting out its own version. the levelbe priced at where you will plug this into your home game console and it will enable virtual reality. you will put this thing over your head and it looks weird but when you do it, you're instantly surrounded by this 3-d panorama. you feel like you are are where you are. this opens up incredible applications and entertainment. video games written specifically for virtual reality will be the first major thing that gets people excited. already people are extremely excited about this. over time, you can see virtual reality becoming a new entertainment medium. what if movies were written or

made to be viewed in virtual reality? the set of playing again, i can sit back and witness an immersive 3-d experience. people talk about experience in travel. inn -- since you're colorado, i would like to slip on and oculus rift and see your state in the winter and imagine myself going down the slopes. it's a fun technology. there are all kinds of applications not only in gaming but entertainment and travel. or real estate. instead of going to an open house, you could slip this on and work through a realistic scene of the place you're interested in. this will be big. host: in the last 30 seconds or so, here is a twitter question -- oculus rift for sure is

is coming and sony out with their copycat device and that will be something that will be out soon and also the ultra-private smartphone, the black phone, is out and so are similar phones. host: we will try to sneak in one quick call from francisco in biloxi, mississippi, on our line for republicans. make it quick. what other technology besides x-ray and ultrasound are we using to map the body to find cancers? we have been doing x ray for a century now. we should get other technologies going. better forms of scanning. one thing that has come out in the last few years is that scanning at high resolution to look for cancer is not necessarily productive. you end up seeing things that

could be precancerous but will not turn out to be cancerous. you cause all kinds of problems in cost when you do that. resolution scanning is not necessarily what we need when it comes to cancer. host: we will and it there but thank you for joining us. it's the m.i.t. technology review, this >> on the next washington journal, american legion commander will discuss the allegations of this management mismanagement at veterans hospitals. then john herbst. the former ambassador to ukraine. examinesditor-in-chief president obama's management style. and we will take your calls and you can join the conversation at facebook and journal -- twitter.

washington journal. by that some :00 a.m. on c-span a.m.ve at 7:00 john carlin on the indictment of five chinese officials. after that, commencement speeches from around the country. and a chance to see the discussion of the top breakthrough technologies of the year. c-span's new book sundays at eight includes christopher hitchens talking about his lifestyle. >> there's a risk in the bohemian lifestyle. i decided to take it. whether it is an illusion or not, i don't think it is, it helped my contribution. it stopped -- helped my concentration. itld