Whats the mission of the Center for Bits and Atoms?
The digital revolution has been all about computers, in that the world is now split into hardware and software, and different companies and people do each. Intellectually, there is a split between physical science and computer science. But many of the hardest and most interesting problems lie right at that boundary, where you can’t separate hardware from software, physical science from computer science. CBA is addressing that boundary. I’m interested in moving computing off the desktop and out into the world where we live. For instance, the Center for Bits and Atoms is developing tabletop processes that print mechanical structures: displays, actuators, and sensors. That could lead to a personal fabricator, analogous to a computer printer, that would let people take the malleability they’ve gotten used to in the world of computers and use it to shape the technology they want. A personal fabricator could make almost anything a telephone, a computer, a refrigerator, a clock radio with the
