When you live in a smaller town or big city, you are usually surrounded by buildings made of concrete, glass, plaster/stone or wood. It’s difficult to spot technical innovation. The fascinating part: Some of it is hiding in plain sight.

Last week the largest synchronized power grid of the world experienced a massive blackout. For half a day all of Spain went dark, as did Portugal and parts of France. What is the system that makes your electric devices at home work and that we all take for granted? Is the next blackout just around the corner?

The steep rise of artificial intelligence applications and the ever-progressing miniaturization trend in chip-manufacturing make you think of a linear development: The future seems completely digitized. But there are downsides to the increasingly heavy reliance on sensors, LLMs and smart devices. Some can be counterbalanced by intelligently designed low-tech solutions.

There is this old joke about nuclear fusion always being 30 years away. But now it looks like things are speeding up. Scientists have adjusted their expectations based on current advances in technology reducing the estimated timeline for a fusion breakthrough to about 18 years into the future. Several young companies want to be even faster – they are part of a fast-growing market.