France just banned smartphone use in schools
The new legislation means that students between the age of 3 and 15 will either have to leave their phones at home or keep them turned off during the school day.
Technology & innovation
This archive covers technology and innovation breakthroughs that improve lives, protect the environment, and expand human possibility. From medical devices to clean energy tools, the stories here focus on what’s working and who’s making it happen.
Research successfully transplant lab-grown lungs in pigs
Eventually, bioengineered lungs could replace donor ones altogether. And that could make the transplant waiting list a thing of the past.
Chinese citizens are using blockchain to warn each other of unsafe vaccines
By using the blockchain in this new way, Chinese citizens may have finally found a way to express themselves that’s beyond the government’s reach.
Sierra Leone just held the world’s first blockchain-powered election
Agora’s work in Sierra Leone marked an important milestone on the path to a more transparent and fair democracy built on blockchain technology.
South Australia to get world’s largest solar and wind powered hydrogen “superhub”
“The Superhub will enable Neoen to produce renewable hydrogen for overseas export markets, and create 300 construction and ongoing jobs for South Australia”
SpaceX is about to quietly launch the first 2 of nearly 12000 satellites to blanket Earth in high-speed internet
The two satellites may test aspects of Starlink, a project to bathe Earth in high-speed internet access using nearly 12,000 spacecraft.
The Large Hadron Collider goes live beneath the France-Switzerland border
The Large Hadron Collider sent its first beam of protons around a 27-kilometer underground ring on September 10, 2008, beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva. Built by CERN over a decade with more than 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries, it remains one of humanity’s most ambitious collaborative experiments in understanding matter itself.
Apple releases the iPhone, putting the internet in everyone’s pocket
The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007, when Apple opened its stores to buyers who had waited hours, sometimes days, for a $499 glass rectangle with no keyboard and no instruction manual. Steve Jobs had unveiled it months earlier as “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator,” and the audience laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t.
China unveils the world’s first maglev wind turbine in Beijing
In 2006, a Beijing engineering team unveiled a wind turbine whose rotor floated on magnetic levitation, spinning without touching any bearing. By eliminating friction, the design could reportedly start generating power in breezes as slow as 1.5 meters per second. It was an early, imperfect signal of the engineering ambition now reshaping wind energy worldwide.
Denmark builds the world’s first offshore wind farm at Vindeby
Offshore wind began quietly in 1991, when Danish workers planted 11 small turbines in the shallow waters off Vindeby, on the island of Lolland. Each one produced just 450 kilowatts, powering a few thousand homes and proving turbines could survive the sea. It was the first offshore wind farm ever built — a modest experiment that opened a door.