MIT Students Make Internet A 6th Sense

LONG BEACH, California -- Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they're done.

Pattie Maes of the lab's Fluid Interfaces group said the research is aimed at creating a new digital "sixth sense" for humans.

In the tactile world, we use our five senses to take in information about our environment and respond to it, Maes explained. But a lot of the information that helps us understand and respond to the world doesn't come from these senses. Instead, it comes from computers and the internet. Maes' goal is to harness computers to feed us information in an organic fashion, like our existing senses.

Watch this stunning video:

LEDs light the MIT dome

Tiny red lights know as LEDs revolutionized the calculator in the 1960s and '70s, creating a boxy digital display of numbers that became a hallmark of the early hand-held adding machines.

In a fitting coincidence that brings mathematics full circle, the same type of tiny lights have begun illuminating the Great Dome at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a white, energy-efficient glow.

Let's hope Boston doesn't freak out over THESE LED lights. Remember this?