The woman who will decide what emoji we get to use

A look at five futuristic bridges

Sponsored by AppDynamics The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology The future of emoji  05.11.21 Good morning! Today: an interview with the woman who gets to decide the future of emoji, and a look at five futuristic bridges. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. The woman who will decide what emoji we get to use   Emoji are now part of our language. If you’re like most people, you pepper your texts and Instagram posts with various little images to augment your words—maybe the prayer hands as a shortcut to “thank you,” or a rosy-cheeked smiley face with jazz hands for a hug from afar. Today’s emoji catalogue includes nearly 3,000 illustrations representing everything from emotions to food, natural phenomena, flags, and people at various stages of life. Behind all those symbols is the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit group of hardware and software companies aiming to make text and emoji readable and accessible to everyone. Unicode is probably best known for being the gatekeeper of emoji: releasing them, standardizing them, and approving or rejecting new ones. Jennifer Daniel is the first woman at the helm of the Emoji Subcommittee for the Unicode Consortium, and she’s on a mission to bring emoji to a post-pandemic future in which they are as representative as possible. Our reporter Tanya Basu spoke to her about how she sees her role and the future of emoji. Read the full interview. Five modern bridges that are pushing the bounds of engineering Subtle advances in bridge technology and construction techniques are making modern bridges bigger, safer, and longer-lived. Civil engineers have lately focused on improving safety by, for example, making bridges more resilient to fire, earthquakes, and high winds. They’re also exploring how technology can help them monitor new bridges and maintain those already in place. Up to now, the average design life of a bridge has generally been about 50 years. To push beyond that, many new bridges now have sensors that collect data on their structural behavior and condition. And new technologies—like new types of concrete or bridges that change shape to minimize wind resistance—are being studied in labs around the world, but civil engineering standards and building codes are slow to evolve.  Here are five examples of how bridge technology is already changing, from the new Viadotto San Giorgio in Genoa to Seattle’s Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (above). —Jon Allsop This story was part of our latest print magazine issue, all about cities, so it's for subscribers only. Check out the full magazine and subscribe for just $50 for the year. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Some amazing digitally restored photos of Earth.   + This weekly still life drawing challenge keeps yielding consistently impressive results.   + Someone coded a version of Tetris which always gives you the worst possible pieces. It's called "Hatetris".   + The recipe that democratized bread baking. (NYT $)   + As a spa addict, I deeply appreciate these bathhouses in Japan.   + An annual Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest is coming back this year.   + Think barbecues have to just be about the meat? Think again.    + Romania's come up with a fun way to encourage vaccinations: host them at Dracula's castle. Sponsor Message AIOps uses AI, automation to boost security As security threats and attempted data breaches increase, more organizations are looking to the IT operations platform for AI-enabled cyber defense. Learn more here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The places where no one has received a single covid-19 vaccination 💉 Nearly a dozen countries—many of them in Africa—are still waiting to get vaccines. (AP)   + The FDA has approved Pfizer's covid vaccine for teens. (CNN)   + We're going to have to live with the virus for a lot longer than we may have hoped. (NYT $)  2 The WHO declared the variant in India a global health threat This sounds scary, but all the evidence so far suggests vaccines are still effective against it. (CNBC)   + Researchers are working out just how big a threat it could pose. (Nature)   + Why Mumbai is handling the second wave so much better than Delhi. (The Economist $)   + The Indian diaspora is watching on in horror as the crisis worsens. (The Guardian)   + The calls to put India into lockdown are getting louder. (Reuters)  3 The US blamed a Russian criminal gang for the fuel pipeline hack Seems the group, DarkSide, is having some regrets about attracting this much attention and interest from the authorities (Wired $)   + The hack disrupted American Airlines' flights. (Reuters)     + DarkSide is effectively a group of state-sanctioned pirates. (Quartz)   + The hack shows the extent to which we're experiencing a ransomware pandemic. (Axios)  4 A map of America's broadband problem  The pandemic has made the problem of slow or even non-existent internet increasingly impossible to ignore. (The Verge)   5 Facebook will ask you if you want to read things before sharing them It’s taking a leaf out of Twitter's book. (Recode)   + Facebook is ploughing ahead with building Instagram for kids despite widespread concern with the plan. (FT $)   6 Cryptocurrencies are lawyering up Regulation is on the horizon, and that means everyone's hiring lobbyists. (NYT $)   7 Your smart speaker might soon start talking to you, unbidden But… does anyone really want this? Apart from Amazon and Google? (WSJ $)   8 How one man's fight against a troll sealed Big Tech's power If you haven't encountered it before, it's worth getting acquainted with Section 230's origin story. (NPR)   9 Is Mars ours? Humanity's colonial mindset goes interplanetary. (New Yorker $)   10 The US Space Force continues to just be very embarrassing 🚀 It's managed to produce a vision document that somehow takes 17 pages to say remarkably little of any substance. (Vice) Not an expert? Not a problem.  Our team is full of those. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today for an insightful look into technology for the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Quote of the day “In the United States there is an obligation to appear happy, and I get told to smile and ‘be happy’ a lot, which is very annoying. The mask frees me from this.” —Bob Hall, a 75-year-old retired researcher in New Jersey with a "naturally grim countenance" tells The Guardian why he doesn't want to stop wearing a face mask.  Top image credit: MS TECH | COURTESY PHOTO Please send no-knead bread to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Join the MIT Technology Review Global Panel Examine today's tech trends, see survey results, and contribute to our custom research Apply today   Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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