Research
Human Dynamics

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion
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Space Enabled

Advancing justice in Earth's complex systems using designs enabled by space
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Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability
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City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
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Media Lab Research Theme: Future Worlds

Future Worlds | Design and action for the future we want to live in
Project Research

The Shipt Calculator: Crowdsourcing Gig Worker Pay Data to Audit Algorithmic Management

The increasing prevalence of large-scale labor aggregation platforms, worker analytics, and algorithmic decision-making by management raise…
Research
Viral Communications

People and intelligent machines in a creative, symbiotic loop
Article Research

Gigaverse

Dan Calacci, a PhD student in the Human Dynamics group, talks about one of his projects that centers around the gig economy.
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

Cultivating Creativity | Catalyzing a global movement enabling everyone to unlock and unleash their individual and collective creativity
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Community Biotechnology

Community Biotechnology
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Responsive Environments

Augmenting and mediating human experience, interaction, and perception with sensor networks
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Sculpting Evolution

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering
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Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body

Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing
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Opera of the Future

Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
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Media Lab Research Theme: Decentralized Society

Decentralized Society | Architecting the new internet for the good of the people
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Media Lab Research Theme: Life with AI

Life with AI | Designing the future of smart systems to improve the human experience
Article Research

Social media is rewriting the banking playbook

In Scientific American, Dr. Alex Lipton and Media Lab Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland call for the creation of new banking regulations.
Article Research

The future of intelligence (artificial and otherwise)

Media Lab Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, MIT CSAIL Director Daniela Rus, and Prof. Josh Tenenbaum discuss the future of intelligence.
Project Research

OpenCBDC

ResearchTechnical Paper | Executive Summary | GitHubAboutIntroductionOpenCBDC is an open source project to engage in co…
Project Research

Mental Machine: Labour in the Self Economy

​Mental Machine: Labour in the Self Economy, 2022, is a live performance by Kawita Vatanajyankur made in collaboration with Pat Patara…
Project Research

Blockchain: A new framework for robotic swarm systems

Swarms of robots will revolutionize many applications, from targeted material delivery to farming. However, the characteristics that make t…
Publication Research

Gaka-chu: a self-employed autonomous robot artist

E. C. Ferrer, I. Berman, A. Kapitonov, V. Manaenko, M. Chernyaev and P. Tarasov, "Gaka-Chu: A Self-Employed Autonomous Robot Artist," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), London, United Kingdom, 2023, pp. 11583-11589, doi: 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160866.
Research
Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)

Digital Currency Initiative
Archived
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Archived
Project Research

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

Since the Bank of England first raised the concept of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in its 2015 research agenda, the subject has g…
Archived
Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.
Archived
Archived
Research
Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge
Article Research

AML by design: Designing a central bank digital currency to stifle money laundering

Human Dynamics group members explore how technical CBDC design choices can be used to make a CBDC inherently resistant to money laundering.
Article Research

Promoting systemic change in the Middle East, the “MIT way”

In a recent MISTI course, students engaged on collaborative solutions to climate, health care, and economic development in the Middle East.
Archived
Research
Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
Center for Civic Media
Archived
Archived
Research
Civic Media

Creating technology for social change
Archived
Research
Object-Based Media

Changing storytelling, communication, and everyday life through sensing, understanding, and new interface technologies
Post Research

Neil Gaikwad chosen as a 2019 Facebook Fellow

Neil Gaikwad, a PhD student in the Space Enabled research group, has been selected as one of the 2019 Facebook Fellows.
Article Research

The MIT researcher who helps senators understand digital currencies

The MIT Digital Currency Initiative director serves as a crucial link between cryptocurrency developers and central banks around the world.
Article Research

MIT experts test technical research for a hypothetical central bank digital currency

Collaboration with Federal Reserve Bank of Boston yields progress in understanding how a digital currency might be developed in the future.
Article Research

Future bright: SA data scientist awarded scholarship to study at MIT in Massachusetts

Lynn Cameron highlights Human Dynamics student Tobin South and his path from the University of Adelaide to the Media Lab.
How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.
Archived
Article Research

The barriers to innovation

Opera of the Future alum Joe Chung writes that Boston is ideally suited to become a hub of the world’s longevity-innovation ecosystem.
Article Research

Digital Currency and Trade Systems Are Tearing up the Rules: We need a "digital Bretton Woods" to set standards

Sandy Pentland discusses national digital currencies and trade platforms, and how they could upend today's geopolitical hierarchies.
Project Research

The Atlas of Inequality

Segregation is hurting our societies and especially our cities. But economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods. The restaurant…
Article Research

Norman Foster launches 'On Cities' masterclass series

A new masterclass video series from the Norman Foster Foundation features leading experts in the fields of architecture, urbanism, and more.
Archived
Project Research

COVID-19 policy analysis: labour structure dictates lockdown mobility behaviour

Countries and cities around the world have resorted to unprecedented mobility restrictions to combat COVID-19 transmission. Here we exploit…
Archived
Publication Research

COVID-19 policy analysis: labour structure dictates lockdown mobility behaviour

Heroy Samuel, Loaiza Isabella, Pentland Alex and O’Clery Neave 2021COVID-19 policy analysis: labour structure dictates lockdown mobility behaviourJ. R. Soc. Interface.182020103520201035 http://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2020.1035
Center for Mobile Learning
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Viral Vote

Climate change and the domino effect it creates will require coordination at scales we haven’t seen and new forms of organization to addres…
Archived
Project Research

Gigbox: a research and development toolkit centering workers in the gig economy

Delivery workers, ridehail drivers, and other gig workers are increasingly controlled through algorithmic decision-making, fueled by data a…
Archived
Project Research

The role of industry, occupation, and location-specific knowledge in the survival of new firms

How do regions acquire the knowledge they need to diversify their economic activities? How does the migration of workers among firms and in…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

What is the optimal way to diversify an economy?

One of the eternal challenges of economic development is how to identify the economic activities that a country, city, or region should tar…
Archived
Archived
Research
New Media Medicine

How radical new collaborations will catalyze a revolution in health.
Archived
Project Research

AI, Automation, Labor, and Cities: How to map the future of work

Should workers worry about automation and AI?Many workers, policy makers, and researchers are asking themselves exactly this question. But …
Archived
Article Research

An exercise at Kennedy School explores the dangers if large sums could be secretly sent to hostile nations

Neha Narula and Gary Gensler joined other experts to explore the potential impacts of digital currencies on national and global security.
Article Research

Building a more resilient, data-driven economy

“In a resilient economy, power and decision-making should be distributed among a diverse set of stakeholders."
Publication Research

Contact Tracing Technologies: Methods and trade-offs

Alex Berke and Kent Larson, City Science group, MIT Media Lab (2020).
Article Research

(Re)Building the Economy | Alex (Sandy) Pentland | TEDxMIT

With each major crisis, be it pandemic, war, or major new technology, there has been the need to reinvent our society.
Hundred Dollar Laptop
Archived
Digital Life
Archived
Post Research

Dizzying Decisions

It’s not about your wireless or cable bill, it’s about your right to learn.
Post Research

A Coronavirus briefing with MIT

MIT Industrial Liaison Program with professors Yossi Sheffi, Alex Pentland, and Andrew Lo to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on business.
Article Research

Does the US need a national digital currency?

Proponents say payments with a digital dollar would be faster and easier. Opponents say it would be costly and inefficient.
Article Research

China’s digital yuan could help countries like North Korea evade US sanctions, experts say

Neha Narula joined experts discussing the privacy and security concerns around China's digital currency.
Article Research

In wargaming exercise, a digital yuan neuters US sanctions and North Korea buys nukes

Neha Narula and Gary Gensler participated in a simulated “digital currency war” at Harvard’s Belfer Center.
Article Research

Sustainability rating for space could help keep junk out of the sky

Danielle Wood discusses the satellite technology research and other work underway in her Space Enabled research group.
Archived
Research
CE 2.0

CE 2.0
Archived
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Advancing Wellbeing

Advancing Wellbeing
Archived
Research
Music, Mind and Machine

How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.
Article Research

The world is complex. Measuring charity has to be too

We must, however, make changes in the way we fund potential solutions so that it supports a diversity of disciplines and approaches.
Project Research

Social Physics of Unemployment

Earlier studies proved that behavior is highly shaped and constrained by one's social networks, and demonstrated ways in which individuals …
Publication Research

Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor

Frank, Morgan R., David Autor, James E. Bessen, Erik Brynjolfsson, Manuel Cebrian, David J. Deming, Maryann Feldman, et al. “Toward Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Labor.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 25, 2019, 201900949. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900949116.
Article Research

Visualizing where rich and poor people really cross paths—or don’t

These maps show “place inequality"—or why people of different income levels are at different coffee shops.