The Top 12 Emerging-Technology Stories of 2011

3. A Supercomputer Wins Jeopardy!: When IBM's game-playing computer trounced two trivia experts, its victory was hailed as a landmark for intelligent machines. A Jeopardy! champ explains why the real winners were humans.

8. The Man Who Gave Us Less for More: Impatient Futurist columnist David H. Freedman examines the crushing success of Steve Jobs.

31. First Stealth Helicopter Crashes Into Public View: New secret weapon emerges: A chopper with quiet rotors and radar-absorbing skin.

34. World's Smallest Electric Motor: Single-molecule motor is 60,000 times thinner than a human hair.

40. Computer Model Mimics Infant Cognition: Babies may be able to help teach computers common sense.

42. The Too-Sure Thing: Overconfidence can help explain wars, financial disasters, and collapsed civilizations. Social scientist James Fowler explores how such a destructive social trait manages to thrive.

50. The Net Watchman: Think of him as a cop with the world's biggest beat: Security guru Jeff Moss is in charge of keeping the entire Internet stable, resilient, and safe.

57. Invisibility Cloak: Two advances usher the age of the invisible within sight.

71. Presenting the No-Focus Camera: New start-up's advance allows you to go from fuzzy to focused after snapping a photo.

72. The Bird Watcher: Peter Vesterbacka on the secret to making the most popular, ridiculously addictive video game in history.

86. Silicon's Next Wave: A re-worked form of silicon may be the next smallest, fastest thing in computer chip design.

92. 3-D Chips Make Computers Faster: New waffle-like construction of chips does more with less.