IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574
William Webb
{"title":"Rethinking 6G: It's not More Bandwidth that Users Need","authors":"William Webb","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918574","url":null,"abstract":"Could maximum data speeds–on mobile devices, at home, at work–be approaching “fast enough” for most people for most purposes? These heretical questions are worth asking, because industry bandwidth tracking data has lately been revealing something surprising: Terrestrial and mobile-data growth is slowing down. In fact, absent a dramatic change in consumer tech and broadband usage patterns, data-rate demand appears set to top out below 1 billion bits per second (1 gigabit per second) in just a few years.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"18-23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575
Jack Copeland
{"title":"Alan Turing's Top-Secret Diy Project: An Exclusive Look Inside his Pioneering Voice-Encryption System","authors":"Jack Copeland","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918575","url":null,"abstract":"It was 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day. With the German military's unconditional surrender, the European part of World War II came to an end. Alan Turing and his assistant, Donald Bayley, celebrated victory in their quiet English way, by taking a long walk together.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"34-41"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918588
David Schneider
{"title":"See the World With Muons: For About $100, You Can Map Mine Shafts and More","authors":"David Schneider","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918588","url":null,"abstract":"In the mid-1960s, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez had a wild idea. He proposed using muons, highly penetrating subatomic particles created when cosmic rays strike Earth's atmosphere, to search for hidden chambers within one of the pyramids of Giza.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"12-14"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918576
Gwendolyn Rak
{"title":"Bring Back Buttons: This “Re-Buttonization” Expert is in Demand as Touchscreen Mania Dies Down","authors":"Gwendolyn Rak","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918576","url":null,"abstract":"Many people are tiring of touchscreens, and there are now more ways than ever to navigate our devices. One startup's smart mouthwear, for example, lets you control your tablet with your tongue. Another has created earbuds that use subtle facial gestures to command your computer.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"30-33"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918573
Allison Marsh
{"title":"Past Forward: The Path of Most Resistance","authors":"Allison Marsh","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10918573","url":null,"abstract":"In 1861 or thereabouts, a British doctor and electrical researcher named William Snow Harris published a slim volume containing three experiments. His goal was to help readers visualize conductivity, resistance, and the powerful effects of lightning. The booklet's illustrations were printed with gold leaf, and when the reader applied a charge to one end of the metal, the current would char a black course along the path of least resistance. The booklet was part of Harris's decades-long crusade to convince the Royal Navy to adopt his lightning rods on wooden ships. This illustration shows a poor seaman who accidentally gets caught in the rigging during a lightning storm. As Harris wrote, absent a lightning rod, the sailor “would be probably destroyed.” Despite successful tests on 11 vessels, including the HMS Beagle (of Darwin fame), the Admiralty resisted adopting Harris's invention for over 20 years.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 3","pages":"60-60"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10918573","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143570734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990321
Francesca Rossi
{"title":"Careers: Advice from an AI Ethics Expert: IBM's AI Ethics Global Leader on Tackling Ethical Red Flags","authors":"Francesca Rossi","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990321","url":null,"abstract":"As a computer scientist who has been immersed in AI ethics for about a decade, I've witnessed firsthand how the field has evolved. Today, a growing number of engineers find themselves developing AI solutions while navigating complex ethical considerations. Beyond technical expertise, responsible AI deployment requires a nuanced understanding of ethical implications.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 5","pages":"19-20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10990321","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143918791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE SpectrumPub Date : 2025-03-07DOI: 10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990323
Stephen Cass
{"title":"Putting a BBS on the Air: Microsocial Media Comes to Meshtastic","authors":"Stephen Cass","doi":"10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2025.10990323","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1980s and 1990s, online communities formed around tiny digital oases called bulletin-board systems. Often run out of people's homes and accessible by only one or two people at a time via dial-up modems, these BBSs let people exchange public and private messages, play games, and share files using simple menus and a text-based interface. Today, there is an uptick in interest in BBSs as a way to create idiosyncratic digital spaces away from the glare of large social-media platforms like Facebook, X, and Bluesky. Today's BBSs are typically accessed over the Internet, rather than dial-up connections. But their old standalone mojo is possible thanks to one of the hottest new radio technologies: Meshtastic.","PeriodicalId":13249,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Spectrum","volume":"62 5","pages":"16-18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143918712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}