Advanced robotic prosthetics are breaking down the difference between human and machine, while consumer products equipped with cameras, sensors, and software seek to observe and learn from our behavior. As smart phones, thermostats, and robotic vacuum cleaners become more autonomous and lifelike, people develop emotional relationships with them. Join Cooper Hewitt curator Ellen Lupton as...

Lots of designers are using video simulations or video prototypes to develop ideas that aren't yet possible. Some of the most fun ideas imagine a digital world in which our hardware devices shrink, dissolve, or vanish altogether. This animation from Keiichi Matsuda shows a futuristic lifestyle full of data but devoid of devices. According to...

Aptly described by one blogger as “Home Depot from the future,” Inventables is a store unlike any other. The materials vendor sells unusual and unreal-sounding stuff, from rubber glass to translucent concrete. Their website is intended to help designers, artists and inventors “streamline the process of innovation and explore what’s possible.” Shape memory polymer that...

Officially announced this month, version 1.0 of the definition for Open Source Hardware is complete. Similar to Open Source Software, Open Source Hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design. The Arduino Microcontroller is an example...