That is our Construct concern, and though it’s definitely about creating the long run we wish, in some ways this concern can also be a few future that by no means arrived. Interplanetary area stations. Pleasant robots. Even (in the event you squint and settle for a beneficiant definition) terraforming an more and more uninhabitable Earth. 

Constructing is a well-liked tech business motif—particularly in Silicon Valley, the place “Time to construct” has turn into one thing of a name to arms following an influential essay by Marc Andreessen that lamented America’s seeming incapacity to construct absolutely anything. That essay was revealed 4 years in the past, on the apex of the nation’s disastrous response to covid-19, when masks, PPE, and even hospital beds have been in brief provide. (As have been primary requirements of day-to-day life like eggs, flour, and bathroom paper.) It’s an alluring argument. 

But the long run is constructed brick by brick from the imperfect selections we make within the current. We don’t usually acknowledge that the seeming steps ahead we’re taking right now could possibly be seen as steps again within the years to come back. This might very effectively be how we come to view a few of the efforts we’re making by way of local weather remediation. Xander Peters (accompanied by some unimaginable images from Virginia Hanusik) writes about Louisiana’s makes an attempt to guard communities towards elevated flooding—and wonders if maybe a managed retreat won’t be the higher plan of action.  

Generally the issues we don’t do, or the steps we skip, have larger implications than the actions we do take. For the area program, the choice to race to the moon moderately than to first construct a manner station—as was initially envisioned by a few of the pioneers of area journey—could have had the long-term impact of retaining us extra earthbound than we would in any other case be. David W. Brown seems to be on the fallout of these skipped steps and recounts the race to construct a brand new, privately operated area station earlier than the Worldwide Area Station comes plummeting again to Earth round 2030. 

Different instances, we’re simply held again as a result of we haven’t found out methods to do issues but. Merely put: the tech simply isn’t fairly there. For our cowl story on dwelling robots, Melissa Heikkilä seems to be at how the intersection of robotics and synthetic intelligence, and particularly giant language fashions, might finally be ushering within the period of helper robots that we’ve been dreaming of for the reason that days of The Jetsons. It’s such a fertile space of improvement, with motion from each massive business incumbents like Google and extremely specialised, generally secretive startups, that there’s excess of we might get into in a single story.

“There was a whole interview with Meta that I didn’t find yourself utilizing,” Melissa advised me. “They’ve a staff engaged on ‘embodied AI,’ which believes that true basic intelligence wants a bodily component to it, equivalent to robots or glasses. They’ve constructed a whole mock condominium in considered one of their workplaces, together with a full-size lounge, kitchen, eating room, and so forth, through which they conduct experiments with robots and digital actuality. It’s fairly cool!”

Search for us to maintain that reporting going at technologyreview.com. 

And there’s rather more, too—together with a zinger of a narrative from Annalee Newitz that takes on the historical past of brainwashing, a function on constructing accountability into police physique cameras, and a wild report on designing vegan cheese with generative AI. We hope you discover one thing to remove and construct on. 

Thanks for studying,

Mat Honan