MIT Technology Review Looks Different

We look different. What’s changed?

Readers hope that redesigns should work and flatter their eyes. They worry that things they liked have been lost, and they dislike additions at odds with their sense of a publication. 

Rest assured. The changes are meant to enhance your experiences. We’ve taken away nothing except a small section called “From the Labs,” a not-very-useful summary of recent academic publications. We added “MIT” to “Technology Review,” because our authority derives in part from our ownership by the world’s leading technological institution. 

Rather than writing about fonts and graphic design, or about the navigation of different sections (which I hope is self-evident), let me tell you what we believe, care about, and hope to do. 

Name a problem. Any will do. We believe that for any big, difficult problem, technology is at least part of the solution. At the same time, new technologies are providing entrepreneurs and businesses with opportunities that can grow prosperity and expand human possibilities. 

We’re not uncritical boosters of new technologies, recognizing that any revolution has losers as well as winners; but we are disposed to think technology a powerful force for good. 

Ours is a technological civilization. Given the number and urgency of the world’s problems, it has never been so important to understand how technologies can overcome apparently intractable difficulties. It has never been so important to understand how technologies can overturn existing markets and create entirely new ones. 

Yet no earthly activity is so badly served by the journalism that seeks to explain it. Nothing humans do is so obscured by hyperbole, jargon, and inaccurate reporting. Technology matters, but you can’t understand it by reading most technology sites and magazines. We want to change that by applying an authoritative filter to the overwhelming flood of information about technology. 

We’re committed to informing our readers about important new technologies by explaining the practical impact of these advances, describing how the technologies work and how they will change our lives. Our main criterion in choosing what to write is our judgment as to what will best serve our audiences. To fulfill our mission, we make accuracy and independence our highest priorities. We do everything in our power to publish correct information. Our coverage is independent of any corporate relationships, including our ownership by MIT, or any business arrangements, such as agreements with advertisers. 

We mean to publish smart, literate, originally reported journalism and useful information in a variety of beautifully designed media, both digital and print; we want to produce thought-provoking events that make that journalism live and breathe on stage; and we hope to provide the world with a badly needed example of an innovative, commercially sustainable, digitally oriented global media company.

We’ve been doing something like this since 1899, when MIT began publishing The Technology Review. But starting today, we’re going to do it better, with more impact, and in new ways. We want to lead the global conversation about new technologies because nothing is more important. 

Write to me and tell me what you think of our designs at [email protected].