There's something of the hacker in all IT people ... there has to be because you spend so much of your time figuring out how things work and how to fix said things when they break (which is usually far too often).

An MIT Media Lab robot mimicked silk worms and spiders and wove a cocoon-like structure with a little programming help from humans.

Touchscreens could be extinct if researchers pioneering new human-computer interfaces have anything to say about it. From brain-controlled machines to gesture-driven devices, there's a range of technologies in development that may find their way into everyday electronic devices.

An unlikely pair of robots and opera singers teamed up for the U.S. debut of "Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera" in Boston Friday night.

MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a mobile-phone application that, coupled with a small plastic device held over the screen, can determine users' eyeglass prescriptions. Called NETRA or near-eye tool for refractive assessment, the system asks users to align lines on the phone's screen while looking through a small plastic cube.

Santiago Alfaro hopes to one day use the Surround Vision technology he created at the MIT Media Lab and work with famous director James Cameron to incorporate it into a film.

MIT has expanded the footprint of its Media Lab with a new US$90 million, 163,000-square-foot modern building.