Digital Life Consortium

The interconnection between bits, people, and things in an on-line world.

Digital Life is a multi-sponsor, Lab-wide research consortium that conducts basic research on technologies and techniques that spur expression as well as social and economic activity. The Digital Life program operates in close collaboration with industrial and research partners to explore ideas in the context of their use, recognizing that change occurs when the magic of invention is driven by existing or emergent human behavior. Currently, the program has three broad directions:

[1] Organic Networks, which combines a re-examination of the physics of radio to construct viral communications systems with the intelligence at the ends. The grassroots nature of these systems allows people to innovate both locally and organically, much as the PC migrated innovation from the mainframe to the individual.

[2] 10X, which considers technologies that can improve human activity by an order of magnitude, including bionics, robotic and cognitive assistants, and human learning. 10X envisions intimately connected analytical and mechanical systems working with as well as for human interests.

[3] Common-Sense Computing, which is an attempt to reinvigorate artificial intelligence by developing a cognitive architecture that can support many features of "human intelligent thinking." From this base, we aim to develop systems that are robust to changing environments, assumptions, and problems.