“Nestled in the heart of MIT’s campus, the MIT Media Lab is one of the most important storehouses of invention — developing imaginative technologies that might one day have common, everyday uses for all of us,” writes BetaBoston reporter Dennis Keohane in a piece about the MIT Media Lab.
The Boston Globe editorial board weighs in on the MIT Bitcoin Project, a student-led experiment that involves giving each undergraduate $100 of the digital currency: “Surely bitcoin deserves the skepticism with which it’s been greeted, but if it can work anywhere, it’s at MIT."
Mark Fischetti of Scientific American interviews Professor Sherry Turkle about how relying on technology to document everyday life could affect our lives and memories. “I’d be very interested in teaming up with psychologists who study how much you remember right after an event, if you’ve been wearing Google Glass versus if you’re just relying on your memory,” says Turkle.
Penelope Green writes for The New York Times about “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things” by David Rose of the MIT Media Lab. Rose proposes that new technologies in the home actually mimic the qualities found in magical tools in fantasy and folklore.
“The robot, which is a stack of three components allowing the display to swivel freely in any direction, is intended to be a family companion performing a variety of interactive tasks,” writes John Markoff for The New York Times about Jibo, a robot created by MIT Media Lab Professor, Cynthia Breazeal.
Steve Annear writes for Boston Magazine about FOLD, a platform created by Media Lab researchers Kevin Hu and Alexis Hope designed to add elements that enhance news story narratives. FOLD is designed to keep readers on the same page, eliminating the hassle of needing to visit additional sites for information.
The Economist covers Professor Joshua Hartshorne’s ‘Which English?’ quiz, which aims to gauge where the user learned English. The quiz uses grammar-focused questions and gives three guesses as to the user’s native language.
“Marriott and MIT have teamed up to develop a new app that connects people with shared interests who are staying at the same hotel,” writes Laura Reston of Boston.com. The app uses LinkedIn to match people based on shared tastes or backgrounds.
Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, speaks with Marcus Wohlsen of Wired about, “the phenomenon of convergence, where bits from the digital realm are fusing with atoms here in the physical world.”