Technology

When I picked up my daughter from summer camp, we settled in for an eight-hour drive through the Appalachian mountains, heading from North Carolina to her grandparents’ home in Kentucky. With little to no cell service for much of the drive, we enjoyed the rare opportunity to have a long, thoughtful conversation, uninterrupted by devices.…

On a typical afternoon, MIT’s new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building hums with life. On the fourth floor, a jazz combo works through a set in a rehearsal suite as engineers adjust microphone levels in a nearby control booth. Downstairs, the layered rhythms of Senegalese drumming pulse through a room built to absorb its…

Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Junior Peña learned to keep his eyes down and his schedule full. In his neighborhood, a glance could invite trouble, and many kids—including his older brother—were pulled into gang culture. He knew early on that he wanted something else. With his parents working long hours, he went to…

Textiles account for 5% of landfill space—and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community…

On a mission to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing components, Siemens turned its attention to the design of a robot gripper. Making up just 2% of the robot, the impact of this hand-like device may seem inconsequential. But, reducing its weight by 90% and the number of constituent parts by 84% can save up to 3…

On a Friday evening last December, every tier of US law enforcement—federal, state, and local—was dispatched to the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, a military research installation outside Boston. A squadron of about 15 to 20 drones had been spotted violating the base’s restricted airspace. The culprits could not be found. One retired major…