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	[IMAGE]	From: Nick Val?ry, Editor, The Economist Technology Quarterly  Subject: TQ Dialogue   		
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	[IMAGE]	Dear Economist.com reader  cover imageThe latest issue of The Economist Technology Quarterly (TQ) has just been published. For the first time you will be able to discuss the articles online at Economist.com in our TQ Dialogue. This issue of TQ has articles on:  The loss of diversity   The broad diversity of technological design appears to be narrowing. Is innovation running out of big ideas?  Read full article  | Discuss   Speech recognition  After a number of false starts, speech recognition is finally becoming an important interface between man and machine. In the process it is helping to slash costs in business, create new services on the Internet, and make cars a lot safer and easier to drive.  Where else will the technology lead? Read full article  | Discuss   Deep-water oil exploration  The world's apparently unquenchable thirst for oil is fuelling a boom in exotic kinds of exploration technology for use in much deeper waters. Will this just accelerate depletion? Read full article  | Discuss   IBM and the hard-drive business  The innovation of the "giant magneto-resistive" head?the breakthrough that boosted the capacity of hard-drives from a few gigabytes to 100 gigabytes and more?came from chance observation, basic research and a vast, painstaking search for the right materials. But is GMR merely a stop-gap solution? Read full article  | Discuss   Virtual organs  Better tools, and more data, mean that creating virtual organs by computer is no longer a pipe-dream. How will this help the drug industry and surgery? Read full article  | Discuss   Designer plastics  After years of development, a new breed of catalysts called metallocenes is shaking up the plastics business, rapidly penetrating commodity markets and promising a new age of cheap designer plastics. Are they the revolution proponents claim? Read full article  | Discuss   The wireless pen  With 5,000 years of continuous development and billions of satisfied customers to its credit, the pen may not seem like a product in need of radical improvement. Yet plans are afoot to overhaul the humble writing instrument completely. With children learning to use computers before learning to write, is this a solution in search of a problem?  Read full article  | Discuss   Agricultural innovation  Richard Jefferson wants to change the face of agriculture by putting innovation back into the hands of farmers. How will he overcome the intellectual-property problems that have tied up much of the genetic material needed? Read full article  | Discuss   We also write about the new crop of video-game consoles , Infiniband servers , the aerodynamics of F1 racing-cars , automated e-mail replies , ultrasound surgery  and wind-up cell phones .  As you read these articles, we hope you will want to discuss them with us and with each other. Go to http://www.economist.com/forums/tq , where you can post your thoughts and read other people's.   Please remember that this is intended as an online forum for genuine discussion, and the bigger the differences in opinion the better. It is not a place for offensiveness or shameless self-promotion, corporate or personal.   The next TQ in print will take the best of the threads that have evolved in the TQ Dialogue since the previous issue and discuss them. The current TQ has an analysis  of readers' responses to the question of what will be the technological drivers of the next Schumpeter wave of economic activity.  So, let the heated arguments begin.   Yours sincerely   Nick Val?ry Editor, The Economist Technology Quarterly tqeditor@economist.com    P.S.  Please feel free to pass this message on to your friends and colleagues.  [IMAGE] 		
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