taxpayer dollars are spent on reconstruction in afghanistan. that is sunday night at 8:00 pm. >> next a discussion examining breakthrough technologies. this is from wednesday possible "washington journal." is 40 minutes. journal" continues. host: each week we spotlight a recent magazine piece. this week's segment comes from the may-june edition of the m.i.t. technology review and the cover story is 10 breakthrough technologies of 2014. the deputy editor is with us for today's discussion. how do you define richer technology as your group put together this package or m.i.t.? separate try to incremental development from something that is more of a milestone.

the milestone is defined by asking ourselves which technological breakthroughs of the past year are going to solve a big problem or a set of problems? if they don't necessarily solve a problem, they reduce for june in the world were they create new opportunities, new business 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 -- these are the 10 breakthrough technologies. of the 10 the magazine came up with, genome editing, agile robots, ultra private smartphones, microscale 3-d printing which uses living cells and 3-d printing, mobile collaboration that allows 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 chips >> those are the 10 we will be discussing for the next 40 minutes or so. we encourage our viewers to call and and offer their thoughts on these or other technologies on your list. in an order ofse importance as he came up with them? >> not really. they are meant to be equally important. we cover so many different fields. one of the differences between our publication and others is that we are not solely focused on the web or computing our gadgets. we are looking for things that span. they're hard to rank or compare the development and clean energy.

way they're all equally important. >> you write that new models dealt with security and privacy in mind reflect the zeitgeist of the snowden era. >> the revelations got everyone talking about how much eta there data there is about us. smartphones are broadcasting a lot of information about us. , that is highly sensitive or private information at times. your preferences, what you read, what you look at, how you shop. aresnowden revelations

interesting because while they focus a lot of attention on the nsa and the legality of what the nsa was getting without a warrant, the subtext to all that was that this information is readily available in the first lace and has been for a long time. there's a huge industry of commercial data brokers that buy and sell information about your online habits. that is been going on and only growing for years, for decades. people who follow these issues have known about this. there are some great stories about commercial data brokers. on what the government is doing to the nsa and other agencies rekindles the issue up riotously more broadly. interestingly, there have been some new models of smartphone 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 previously you

would've had to go out and hunt for if you are very privacy conscious. phone ison your encrypted by default. the idea here is that even though the nsa revelations get all the attention, there is a broader conversation about privacy. now there is a phone coming on the market that makes it far more easy to protect your privacy by default. >> we are talking with brian burke stein. privatee on altra smartphones written by david talbot, black phone listed as one of the key players in the ultra-private smartphone development. the story notes that black phone sells for $629 with subscription to privacy protection services.

it is one of the many measures that people are taking after the snowden river -- revelations. democrats can call in on this segment at the number on the screen. republicans and independents. -- ou are outside the u.s. you're been doing this for about 14 or so years now? >> that is right. the first one of these lists came out in 2001. it is interesting to look back. people should come to technology view.com/gr 10 and check it out. the early ones do often predict some of the technologies that became big over the last decade and beyond.

the last word included biometrics. your fingerprints or iris patterns. ther -- biometrics is on first list. medical research we are not familiar with including brain machine interfaces. i think our track record is pretty good. >> some of the issues have become key issues of the day on your list. digital rights management is on the list of breakthrough technology issues. 2014 that issue in came out in m.i.t. technology review, another one of them is agricultural drones. tell us about that. is an interesting one. it was fun for us, too, because the article was written by chris anderson, the former editor of wired who left to start his own personal drones company. the idea here is that we are all

familiar with drones in the military context, and some people have been familiar with choppers oromated copters and planes you can fly around at the park and take pictures. but this new class of agricultural drone is different and new because they are priced relatively affordably, so under $1000. what they do is, they come with a set of sensors on board that make it possible for farmers to send them up over their fields informationouts on that previously would have had to be collected manually or in less detail. it is possible to go up and get a picture of where pesticides need to be applied or where water actually needs to be applied. in the idea being that ideally,

you can use less of each very as the game and agriculture is obviously, we want to increase output while keeping input the same or hopefully reduce it. using fewer resources to produce the same amount of food. >> a commercial use of drones is something that the faa is looking into. they're making rules about it right now, correct? >> that's right or it even now, the lowest certain height ceiling it is perfectly legal. if a flap less than 1000 feet and hover over a field, they come back with information that says here's where the soil is dry or there is delight or something that needs to be addressed. the idea is you get a much finer picture and apply your resources much more carefully. >> we will keep going through the breakthrough technologies of 2014. we want to bring in collars as we discussed this issue with rgstein of m.i.t.

technology review. we have roger from naperville, illinois on the line for independence. independents. nick is waiting in oakland california. nic, good morning. i was noticing on your list of technologies, you mentioned wind and solar. i've been puzzled for some time wide tidal energy has not been exploited. most of the people in the united states live within 25 miles of the coast. it is an obvious source of energy and easy to use. i understand why it hasn't been exploited. next, its a great question. the answer is, unfortunately, like any promising sounding alternative energy, it has to be economical. useful and could

be promising, but it is not yet economical. it is not going to generate enough power to be worth installing the installations and doing what you need to do to actually harness the power. that is what is interesting about the items on our list about smart wind and solar power. the idea is that it is not yet competitive with coal and natural gas power. , xl energy.em what they have done is outfitted every single wind turbine in a vast winfield would sensors that are registering in great detail just how much energy is coming out of any given turbine at a given time. combining that with really detailed forecasts of the weather. what they know is just how often

the wind is going to blow, how strongly and how much power they can reasonably expect to generate from a wind farm. so while wind and solar been coming down in cost for a while and promising, this can help make wind that much more economical, because if you know that the wind is going to blow and you can trust that based on this detailed data that you're getting, you don't fire up a backup plan heritage traditionally, the operator of a wind farm, a utility that is drawing power from a wind farm would have to fire up up a backup plan such as coal or gas which is dirtier. in case the wind stops blowing. that raises the net cost of wind power. if you never have to fire up, or if you can fire it up much less often, wind effectively becomes cheaper. it is an economics question. unfortunately, that is the sort of test on which tidal power and some other beautiful sounding alternatives don't yet measure

up. on the subject of talkingural drones -- about the ongoing effort by the faa to come up with commercial drone use rules. other any that m.i.t. technology review has highlighted recently? is a great question. we have thought a lot about this. i don't see any yet. we asked this question a lot because her this really interesting and dynamic spaceflight business emerging, not only for tourism, but , supply the bring rockets that nasa needs to bring people and supplies to spaced issues. there are companies that want to mine asteroids.

interestingly, 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 can't find on earth readily, now the latest business plan from this company is that they would mine asteroids for water that would be useful in fuel for missions deeper into space. that becomes more speculative and a little bit further out. there really is not anything breakthrough, i would say, in spaceflight. what spacex has done, elon musk's company is fantastic. it is not changing the game dramatically in space. host: on the subject of altar -- let's gotphones

to wilson waiting in fair dale, kentucky on our line for republicans. wilson, you're on with mr. bergstein. caller: i have a couple questions and partial comments also. researchoing on with and development into high temperature superconductivity? that is one. the positive ion exchange membrane -- p.m. est will sell system? that seems to be very important fuel cell system?

talking about hydrogen economy are hydrogen powered cars, anything related to hydrogen as a fuel still has not progressed for a far. that, i would say there's really not anything that is exciting in that realm right now for us. specifics, is beyond my realm of expertise. to one you do see is a breakthrough, agile robots. that is listed as one of your 10 breakthrough technologies. tell us about that. is really interesting because robotics is at an inflection point. in technologyea that there have been some breakthroughs that are going to allow this big jump ahead.

inare familiar with robots this context. there been robots on assembly lines and factories for a very long time. certainseen robots do , very specific tasks like vacuuming your floor. agile robots, what we are can dong to there, things like stand up and walk. they can dynamically balance themselves. up, but theyand are statically balanced. if you knock them over they will fall down. the agile robot idea such as that espoused by boston robotics which was bought by google. every step they take they are balancing themselves. well that is important, you can now have robots be far more

thet at navigating environment that we move around in pairs they will be far better at handling everyday landscapes. they can go up and down stairs, they canver rocks, carry things long distances in the regular environment. rather than just eating 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. if you imagine after something like the fukushima cleanup in japan, there are a lot of situations that were too dangerous or advisable for humans to go in. if you could send in a robot reliably that can look around, take images, even move things around, hugely important. disaster recovery efforts. what needs to happen, we are a long way away from sending a machine into doing that stuff, but this fundamental advance of a robot that can stand up, walk

around, move around, is being pa, theeavily by darva military's arm of this type of thing. contest or effort pushes the technology along really quickly. in the next few years, we will see some huge developments in robots with a great amount of agility. 20-25we have about minutes left with brian bergstei on the 10cus breakthrough technologies of 2014 in our spotlight on magazines. is calling from nevada on our line for democrats. caller: i'm really interested in brain.ping of the do you know anything about the pineal gland?

guest: i've heard of it. i'm not too aware of it lays in a special role in the mapping project. a look atg project is the entire brain. there are a few different projects we are talking about in this. anything, whether it is a treatingrain region or mental illness. 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 rain being --each reason

each region being implicated in some kind of function. that's specificity, turning the cortex into different regions goes back to the early 20th century. there are some fascinating projects now that takes the brains of cadavers and sliced them unbelievably thin. if you can imagine taking a ir's-width section of the brain. we're getting to the level where you can map individual neurons. everybody's brain is different. that map of neurons is not the same in every person. that is 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 area and 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 high level math and now we're going into much more detail in this fundamental research that will lay the groundwork for a lot, we think, in the coming years. of 10the list breakthrough technologies highlighted in this month's magazine. let us know which one of those you want to chat about. our phone lines open for about the next 20 minutes or so. waiting in steve scottsdale, arizona on our line for republicans. good morning. i was wondering about a --hnology where if you ever

i thought of an idea that would save millions of gallons of gas. attachedust had this to stop lights. you know when a car pulls up to a light and it activates the light and once it turns green that car pulls out. but a lot of times it will turn maybe 50 or hundred cars will have to stop to let the one car out. i know we've had the technology sensors wherehad they would let all those cars go through the light first and then let the light turned green to let the one car out. if they implemented that across united states, it would save billions of gallons of gas a day. perhaps a technology for a future edition? idea. it is a great if you look around at how much energy is wasted, you will start to see it everywhere.

that is a great example. transportation is a huge part of our carbon footprint and just wasted money. transportation accounts for a lot of that. there are some interesting projects on smart cities which i actually think tend to be overhyped a little bit. people are at least considering the idea that with more sensors everywhere, sensors that are smarter, the ones that steve talked about with the pressure reader industry to determine if a car is there. that is a pretty dumb sensor. if you could get to a place where there was car to car communication. that makes thegs google self driving car project interesting is not that the car is automatically being driven, but if you had a bunch of them that were in the vicinity of each other, they could medicate

with each other and coordinate their movements. all stop to let you three go because you three are moving faster. that kind of thing. we are a long way away from that and google self driving car is a bit distracting. i think you will be driving your car for a long time. there is research on this. yeah, maybe that is something we would be highlighting in a magazine in a few years. brian previously served as silicon valley correspondent for press. oniated twitter, jd reading asks if you micromment on manufacturing and 3-d printing. it is a really exciting field. 3-d printing is really 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. and that of taking a block of material and milling it away to what you want which creates a lot of waste, they are using some 3-d printing technologies to build up a part, let's say for an airplane, layer by layer. putting material only where you wanted heard you can create novel materials that weren't possible before and you can have material with the same structural integrity as the previous part, but a lot less waste. that is a fascinating development, really important. on the other side we have home 3-d printers that allow you to make things if you want. with those, you are somewhat limited in your materials. plastic comes out of the print zzle. now there is mainly a hobbyist angle to that.

with microscale 3-d printing, we are talking about researchers that are doing fascinating work to used 3-d printing with a greater variety of materials. not plastic, we are talking about living cells, battery components and also using multiple materials in one session of 3-d printing. there is really interesting research at harvard and princeton a few other places, cambridge u.k.. the idea here is to build something where the form and function are both optimized. at some point, if you wanted to to testartificial organ medicines on or even someday to become replacement, we are seeing that it is possible to say built that artificial organ

with a 3-d printer, combining both the tissue necessary to make the organ and the blood vessels that need to course through it for the organ to work. a really traumatic and exciting potential use of 3-d printing. similarly the partner mentioned before about battery electrodes, .magine hearing aids imagine the battery inside of it could be laid down at the same time you're making the device. electronics could become slimmer, more streamlined, custom-made, but with the function of the electronics already built inside. will calling from albany, oregon on the line for independents. whethermy question is any of these technologies are adding to the human being,

whether it helps the human mind or the human heart, whether it helps us to be more compassionate beings between one another. breakthroughs weke sho need. do we have any technology insight that can help us in any way to actually become better human beings, healthier human beings? i love that question. becauseabout this a lot there are a lot of technologies that make life easier, but does that make life better? user is not necessarily better. too much automation, for to our, is dangerous economy, perhaps, to our sense of who we are and our labor. personally, i think of myself as somewhat skeptical about this. not all breakthroughs are

necessarily good. one thing i would say on our list is that breakthroughs are important and we are trying to separate what is bad from what is good. while we are skeptical, i do think we are optimists, which is to say that if you name the -- clean energy being a huge one, even though technology is because of a lot of these problems, one way or another, technology will have to be a solution. of 9 billionworld people by 2050. technology will have to be part of the answer. if we can live in a world that is less stressed in its resources, yeah, i do think we can become better people as a result very we can become a

little more secure, a little more comfortable. in big parts of the world, people live there today, meals and meal. orthere are technologies other developments that can make their life easier, i do think that will open their hearts and do some of the things you're talking about. it is a great question. i just don't inc. that technology is the end-all and be-all answer. i think it can help us on the path that you are describing. we have about 10 minutes left before the house comes in. we'll get as many calls as we can. john is in brooklyn, new york on a line for democrats. caller: thank you for taking my call, appreciate it. my question is concerning these technological breakthroughs. right now, it appears from what you are saying that these break the news are naturally going to be esoteric to the people and the companies that actually make

these breakthroughs. termyou think, in the long 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 help society with these breakthroughs and become part of the betterment of our future. that is a good question. i don't know exactly how to take that one on. i feel like some of these citingogies that we're are not esoteric. some of them are things you can buy right now, like the drones,

the private smartphone. that doesn't quite answer john's question about improving having this economic or employment impact he's talking about very alike say is is -- all i can that the items on this list are not super far out or super speculative. bit, not be a little play to safe. there are things on this list that is really, truly happening. this work i'm describing the 3-d printing, it is possible to see a demonstration of this at labs at harvard and princeton. it is happening now. what the economic impact of this will be, that remains to be seen . in general, anything that creates new opportunity creates new possibilities for people to build new businesses and

services that hopefully expand the economy, create new jobs. i'm not sure there's anything on this list in particular that directly impacts education. ohio wants tom about mobile collaboration and if this will help soldiers on the battlefield. what we're talking about here is that many of us working offices where the work consists of putting a document together, writing something, getting something out into the world, putting something up on a website heard a lot of people's work is collaborative in this way. you produce something. the tools we have to do this your traditional desktop software like microsoft word or excel powerpoint which were created for people sitting at desk top computers. more and more of us work on the

.o, check things on our phones more and more work habits or teams that are virtual, where people are in multiple places and are not sitting in offices. softwarea new class of that makes it possible to work much more effectively. a word of just shuttling attachment around, you can work , on some bodyn a that existsomething on your phone as you are working on it and it doesn't have to be .aved and e-mailed around everybody's contributions are brought together in real time and people work faster. it is much more built for the way we work. his is a crucial new technology? no, but so much of the economy

happens with this kind of work. now there is a much better way to get it done and grease the wheels, making life easier, more for people. soldiers, i would bet that there's is a way that soldiers in the field could use something like this. so much of the military today is about information and information exchange, connecting soldiers and their leaders to a network. anything that allows people to share information in real time, to contribute what they are , that or to get a readout could be huge. to some extent, the military already does a lot of that. just a few minutes left before congress goes into session. in colorado on the line for independents.

caller: i was talking to mike grandson the other day about oculus rift. he was trying to explain it to e. i was wondering if you could expand on that. i will hang up and listen to our comment. guest guest: virtual reality is really the broader name for the technology here. virtual reality came out in the 90's. our member going into a video arcade in the 90's and putting my viewll caps set and is completely surrounded and i felt as if i was in this digital landscape doing some kind of's ace based mission. it was cool and interesting, but it was not going to take off because the technology was too expensive and the graphics weren't that good. , actually, some

interesting applications in industry. don a virtuale to headset and get a 3-d view of something, but what we're isking about here mass-market virtual reality. unlike in the 90's when the technology was bulky and expensive and did not work that well, we now have a device called the oculus rift. sony is putting out its own version. this is going to be priced at the level where you will plug this into your home game console and it will enable virtual reality. it looks a little weird on your head, but when you do it, you're instantly surrounded by this 3-d panorama, you look up and looked down, you feel like you are where you are. this opens up incredible applications and entertainment.

video games written specifically for virtual reality will obviously be the first major thing that gets people excited. already, people are extremely excited about this. over time, you could see virtual reality becoming a new entertainment medium. when movies were written or made to be viewed in virtual-reality? consider playing a game come i sit back and experience some sort of immersive 3-d experience. people talked about applications and travel. were ineard you i montrose, colorado, i imagine putting on oculus rift and imagine myself going down the slopes for a midday getaway. it is a fun technology. there are all kinds of applications. not only in gaming, but in entertainment, travel, real estate. imagine instead of just going to an open house you could walk through a virtual scene of a

place you're interested in. is is going to be big. in the last 30 seconds, a twitter question. which of these new technologies are most likely to hit the consumer market in the next five years? oculus rift is coming out for sure. sony's copycat device as well. the black phone, the private smartphone is out. host: we would try to sneak in one call from francisco in biloxi, mississippi. re: using this technology to find cancers in the body? we have been using x-rays for a century now. we should get holistic knowledge

you going. ofst: there are better forms hasning, but one thing that worn out in the last few years is scanning at higher resolutions to look for cancer isn't necessarily productive or you end up seeing things that are maybe precancerous but not going to turn out to be cancerous. you may cause all kinds of problems and following costs when you do that. high-resolution scanning is not necessarily what we need when comes to cancer. thanks for joining us. m.i.t. technology review. this month has the breakthrough technologies of 2014. guest: thanks for having me. >> on the next washington journal, dan dell and your will discuss veterans affairs mismanagement across the country.

we will take your calls and you can join the conversation at facebook and twitter. atshington journal," live 7:00 a.m. on c-span. attorneyassistant general on the indictment of five chinese military officials for hacking u.s. companies. after that, a house hearing on trade and security issues affecting the u.s. and mexico. then, a discussion about updating the nation's communication networks. >> c-span's new book, "sundays at eight," includes writer christopher hitchens talking about his lifestyle. decided to take the risk of a bohemian