Technology Review (february 2005)

Taking Terrorism Offline By David Talbot p46 MIT NEWS Inside the Center for Sports Innovation LightDetecting Flexible Fibers Teaching Children at Home Live Forever? FEBRUARY 2005 USA $4.99 • CANADA $6.99 www.technologyreview.com Aubrey de Grey thinks he can defeat death. Is he nuts? By Sherwin Nuland p36 TLFeBOOK Contents 6 Index People, companies, and organizations mentioned in this issue 10 From the Editor Technology is most useful when it is most human. 12 Letters We received an energetic response to our December story on nuclear waste. R EADM E Read before operating this magazine 14 Be Sane about Antiaging Science Wild promises of unthinkably long lives beg serious thought. 15 Deprive Terrorists of the Internet Web hosting companies must start to behave more responsibly. Volume 108, Number 2 Methuselah’s prophet Aubrey de Grey is a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge who thinks he can reverse aging in humans by treating it as an engineering problem. He’s achieved some fame for the outlandishness of his views. Sherwin Nuland, professor of surgery at Yale’s School of Medicine, profiled de Grey and found him brilliant—but also nuts. 36 15 Openly Regulate GMOs New Zealand is providing an example of effective regulation. B R I E F CAS E 16 Time to See the Opportunities Vendors must market a viable vision for invisible computing. F O R WA R D Short items of interest 18 If Only It Were This Easy The tangled politics of vaccination. 21 Cornell’s Minister of Technology Meet W. Kent Fuchs. 22 Microsoft Declares War on Spam And it’s enlisting the help of allies. 24 Guiding the Evolution of Things What engineered viruses can do. 25 So what are you reading? Rojo Networks aggregates content. 26 Logging On to Your Lawyer Artificial intell