MIT Technology Review

Over a decade ago, Neal Patwari lay in a hospital bed, carefully timing his breathing. Around him, 20 wireless transceivers stood sentry. As Patwari’s chest rose and fell, their electromagnetic waves rippled around him. Patwari, now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, had just demonstrated that those ripples could reveal his breathing patterns. A few years later, researchers from MIT were building a startup around the idea of using Wi-Fi signals to detect falls.

“This is one of the least visited places on planet Earth and I got to open the door,” Matty Jordan, a construction specialist at New Zealand’s Scott Base in Antarctica, wrote in the caption to the video he posted to Instagram and TikTok in October 2023. In the video, he guides viewers through an empty, echoing hut, pointing out where the men of Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 expedition lived and worked—the socks still hung up to dry and the provisions still stacked neatly in place, preserved by the cold. Jordan, who started making TikToks to keep family and friends up to date with his life in Ant

The other day some preschoolers were pretending to be one of their favorite Sesame Street characters, a baby goat named Ma’zooza who likes round things. They played with tomatoes—counting up to five, hiding one, and putting it back. A totally ordinary moment exploring shapes, numbers, and imagination.

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