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The Media Laboratory.

If anything can be certain about the future, it is that the influence of digital technology will continue to profoundly change how we express ourselves, communicate with each other, and perceive and interact with our world. Yet, despite our increased dependency on them, these technologies are still at an early stage of their evolution, often crude, unwieldy, impersonal, and poorly matched to our human needs.  Moving these digital technologies along to their next phase of development is key to the Media Lab’s mission. Toward this goal, over the past year the lab announced Simplicity, a design‐oriented program that goes beyond looking at ways to remove buttons, slim down screens, and shrink interfaces to fit into the palms of our hands. It is a radical reexamination of ways to break free from the intimidating complexity of today’s technologies and the frustration of information overload. Following this same theme, in May the lab hosted a one‐day symposium, “Designing Bits & Pieces,” where more than 600 attendees learned about the lab’s new CELab, focused on consumer electronics. The CELab will conduct research in such areas as innovative materials and design/fabrication methods; technologies for delivering wireless, parasitic, and self‐ generated power; next‐generation sensors, actuators, and designs; and cooperative wireless communications.  This past year, the Media Lab also expanded its research boundaries into the area of biomechantronics, with the addition of a new research group, headed by Hugh Herr, formerly from the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Herr’s research program is focused on advanced human rehabilitation, robotic mechanisms that promise to become extensions of the human body, offering the promise of a new generation of “smart” prostheses.  Through all these initiatives, the lab seeks to enhance our relationship with technology, helping to create a world where the human‐computer interface consistently makes sense, fulfills the soul, and keeps us coming back for more.