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Technology Review among all publications is the most guilty of hyping vaporware battery technology, especially, it must be said, if it is being developed by MIT

Technology Review among all publications is the most guilty of hyping vaporware battery technology, especially, it must be said, if it is being developed by MIT people (not that Envia was). Here's the press release TR breathlessly and noncritically paraphrased in 2011. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/422627/startup-boasts-better-lithium-batteries/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/422627/startup-boasts-b...

mturmon 13y ago
Tech. Review has a hype problem across all its range of coverage.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Instead of moderation in all things, it tries to be extreme in many opposing directions. This doesn't work as well. I remember when they loved all kinds of patents without question except for one regular columnist that once had an article titled "Patents Kill." It would be a lot better if they were a little more suspicious of patents while not bothering at all to employ that guy.
selmnoo 13y ago
So, then journalists should be mercilessly and ruthlessly critical of all they are covering? ARPA-E judges are pretty smart folks, if they were fooled by this thing what makes you think a journalist on some tech news site is going to be able to vet this technology and determine if it's the going to be the next big thing or not? The point I really want to discuss is the negativity of your comment. We like to come down hard on people dismissing new projects for being incomplete, unpromising, and so on when it comes to social sharing apps. Why not also be kind to failures in the cleantech area? The area where it's actually really tough to innovate, the area where improvements would definitively make this earth better than how it's currently heading. ARPA-E's own stated mission is to fund ideas that are so far out that most institutions wouldn't fund them, "too early for private-sector investment" (their words). ARPA-E itself only expects 10% of the projects it funds to be successful. So then what good reason is there to cry about some specific project failing? It doesn't spell the end of ARPA-E, this is just the nature of the game. This is not some tragedy of news journals failing, nothing is wrong here, just move on. More will fail yet still, but one just might be that breakthrough that we're looking forward to.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  I mention it because the author of this article tried to point out how he was a skeptic in 2012. But the same publication was not exercising skepticism in 2011.
  - laumars 13y ago
    After reading your comment, I went back to read the authors 2012 article and even that doesn't demonstrate that much scepticism. The title and sub heading reads as follows: "A Big Jump in Battery Capacity If Envia can overcome some key problems, its technology could cut the cost of electric-car batteries in half." Which, to me, is just as hyped up as the other articles he's criticizing. In fact the most sceptical parts of that article were just him saying "it's not ready yet", which isn't so much scepticism but more anticipation. I'm a little disappointed with the author for this. I don't like the way how the press always have to sensationalise everything, but I accept that it happens. However to post the kind of snide remark as he did regarding others hyping technology, yet to do the exact same thing yourself in the very article you're citing as evidence of your own scepticism, well it's just pathetic in my opinion.
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
I remember Steven Chu[0] and GM getting behind envia[1], it's unfortunate that it hasn't worked out. A lot of people had high hopes for their technology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu [1] http://enviasystems.com/pop_video_chu_annon.htm http://enviasystems.com/pop_video_chu_annon.htm
devindotcom 13y ago
It's hard to criticise technology advances that are largely still lab-based. The number of people familiar with nascent technologies like carbon nanostructure surfaces for battery boosts, for instance, is very small and the reasons for skepticism very technical and difficult to make a casual reader care about - sometimes you can summarize, sometimes it would take 500 words to even explain the basis of. Technologies like this are the bread and butter of TR - exercising skepticism is one thing, but if journalists were capable of finding flaws in years-off tech like this, they would be experts in that field, not journalists. We have to give some level of credence to the reports of the people in the labs, writing university research press releases, and so on. How many software startups have been breathlessly and noncritically paraphrased by almost every single tech and media outlet in the last decade, and how many turned out sour or "pivoted" within two years of those articles? It's not just 10-years-off science that's vulnerable to this, but I would say it's more forgivable in this subject than in something like reporting on web services and social networks.

mturmon 13y ago

Tech. Review has a hype problem across all its range of coverage.

danielweber 13y ago
Instead of moderation in all things, it tries to be extreme in many opposing directions. This doesn't work as well. I remember when they loved all kinds of patents without question except for one regular columnist that once had an article titled "Patents Kill." It would be a lot better if they were a little more suspicious of patents while not bothering at all to employ that guy.

selmnoo 13y ago

So, then journalists should be mercilessly and ruthlessly critical of all they are covering? ARPA-E judges are pretty smart folks, if they were fooled by this thing what makes you think a journalist on some tech news site is going to be able to vet this technology and determine if it's the going to be the next big thing or not? The point I really want to discuss is the negativity of your comment. We like to come down hard on people dismissing new projects for being incomplete, unpromising, and so on when it comes to social sharing apps. Why not also be kind to failures in the cleantech area? The area where it's actually really tough to innovate, the area where improvements would definitively make this earth better than how it's currently heading. ARPA-E's own stated mission is to fund ideas that are so far out that most institutions wouldn't fund them, "too early for private-sector investment" (their words). ARPA-E itself only expects 10% of the projects it funds to be successful. So then what good reason is there to cry about some specific project failing? It doesn't spell the end of ARPA-E, this is just the nature of the game. This is not some tragedy of news journals failing, nothing is wrong here, just move on. More will fail yet still, but one just might be that breakthrough that we're looking forward to.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
I mention it because the author of this article tried to point out how he was a skeptic in 2012. But the same publication was not exercising skepticism in 2011.
- laumars 13y ago
  After reading your comment, I went back to read the authors 2012 article and even that doesn't demonstrate that much scepticism. The title and sub heading reads as follows: "A Big Jump in Battery Capacity If Envia can overcome some key problems, its technology could cut the cost of electric-car batteries in half." Which, to me, is just as hyped up as the other articles he's criticizing. In fact the most sceptical parts of that article were just him saying "it's not ready yet", which isn't so much scepticism but more anticipation. I'm a little disappointed with the author for this. I don't like the way how the press always have to sensationalise everything, but I accept that it happens. However to post the kind of snide remark as he did regarding others hyping technology, yet to do the exact same thing yourself in the very article you're citing as evidence of your own scepticism, well it's just pathetic in my opinion.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

I remember Steven Chu[0] and GM getting behind envia[1], it's unfortunate that it hasn't worked out. A lot of people had high hopes for their technology. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu [1] http://enviasystems.com/pop_video_chu_annon.htm http://enviasystems.com/pop_video_chu_annon.htm

devindotcom 13y ago

It's hard to criticise technology advances that are largely still lab-based. The number of people familiar with nascent technologies like carbon nanostructure surfaces for battery boosts, for instance, is very small and the reasons for skepticism very technical and difficult to make a casual reader care about - sometimes you can summarize, sometimes it would take 500 words to even explain the basis of. Technologies like this are the bread and butter of TR - exercising skepticism is one thing, but if journalists were capable of finding flaws in years-off tech like this, they would be experts in that field, not journalists. We have to give some level of credence to the reports of the people in the labs, writing university research press releases, and so on. How many software startups have been breathlessly and noncritically paraphrased by almost every single tech and media outlet in the last decade, and how many turned out sour or "pivoted" within two years of those articles? It's not just 10-years-off science that's vulnerable to this, but I would say it's more forgivable in this subject than in something like reporting on web services and social networks.