What's the number one criterion Americans use to buy a camera?
It's not price, it's not megapixels, or zoom capacity, or battery life. It's the color of the camera, says New York Times technology columnist David Pogue.
Forget about price wars, gadget companies are taking design wars to the mattresses. Pogue dropped by Boston Public Radio to give us his take on the gadget wars, who's winning them, and what we'll buy next.
How do unmanned flying robots detect and kill their targets? What is life like for the men and women of the US military controlling robotic airplanes in Afghanistan from a command center in Las Vegas?
How is Big Data — the information generated from Google searches, GPS, online shopping and more — changing our lives? Kara Miller asked a panel of experts about the benefits and downsides of the international information database.
Besse Cooper celebrated her 116th birthday on Aug. 16, 2012. She was the world's oldest living person until her death in Dec. 2012. Will more of us get to Besse's age?
Is there a link between violent media and violent behavior? Kara Miller asks Dr. Michael Rich, co-founder of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital, on an encore presentation of Innovation Hub.
Still have a holiday shopping hangover? We’ve got just the thing to revive you — our tech guru Ben Saren shared his list of great gear for the New Year. Expect your shopping urge to be revived by the end of the list.
1969 was a big deal: the moon landing, Woodstock, and riots in San Francisco all took place that year. But it was the developments just a few miles away from those riots that would really change the world forever.
The price of college has been skyrocketing for years - many private schools are closing in on $60,000 a year once you factor in books, mandatory fees, and housing. And, online courses are now proliferating: we're facing obvious questions: what will happen to the traditional university? The quad? The professors? And, perhaps most importantly, the students? Are we living at an inflection point?
The Predator drone is one of many unmanned aerial vehicles in the US military's arsenal. The vehicles can be in flight halfway across the world by a US-based controller.
How do unmanned flying robots detect and kill their targets? What is life like for the men and women of the US military controlling robotic airplanes in Afghanistan from a command center in Las Vegas?
We've heard a lot about drones, but less about how they really work, and who works them. In an upcoming documentary NOVA reveals the technologies and the people behind this twenty-first century warfare.
What happens when some of our greatest innovators - scientists, technology pioneers - find themselves unemployed?
In the case of many Cold-War-era physicists, the answer was: go find a job on Wall Street.
What have mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists brought to the stock market? Well, the billionaire investor Warren Buffett once warned us of "geeks bearing formulas", but Jim Weatherall isn't so sure that we should be afraid of the new wave of techies in finance.
Since cyberactivist Aaron Swartz took his own life on January 11, the Internet itself seems to be in a state of networked grief.
On Tuesday, mourners gathered for Swartz's funeral outside of Chicago, where the 26-year-old programming prodigy was remembered as an idealist who was one of the most brilliant contributors to technology in the last 25 years.
You may have heard of the term Big Data - perhaps even heard that it’s changing our lives. But, how exactly?
Take the H1N1 flu in 2009. Scientists and doctors knew that it was sweeping the world, but what they didn’t know in real time was this: what continents and countries had it reached? Where were the new hot spots?
Check out our in-depth interview with two of CBS' featured authors, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson. McAfee and Brynjolfsson, who penned "Race Against the Machine," argue that an increasing reliance on robots allows companies to increase profits without increasing their workforce, fueling America's - and the world's - growing inequality.
In a fascinating discussion last year, the two talked to Kara about the amazing strides robots have made, and why even white-collar workers should worry about their jobs.
No question about it: Boston is a college town — a town overrun with students, brimming with the scholars who teach them and the leafy campuses that house them.
But beyond the bricks, ivy, and beautiful quads, there are emerging problems.
Best-selling author Seth Godin recently said he worries that college is too often a repeat of high school — but with binge drinking.
Robert Langer is a bit of a legend at MIT. He has more than eight hundred patents granted or pending, and has had a hand in creating twenty-five companies — and hundreds more benefit from his lab work.
When a journalist from Nature followed Langer for a day, she found herself exhausted by his pace and seemingly endless creative energy.
Traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor in 1963. MIT Prof. Andrew Lo said evolutionary biology can explain the investment decisions traders like these make every day.
The stock market may be tough to predict. Even marquee investment houses build wrong guesses into their business models. But here's what's not tough to predict: humans trading stocks and making investment decisions will make mistakes — sometimes with tragic consequences.
MIT's Andrew Lo argues evolutionary biology may be the key to understanding how humans react to financial choices, and how they may behave in the future. He joined Kara Miller to talk about his research.
This week on an encore presentation of Innovation Hub, we examine the theory that stories not only describe humanity, but also define it. Plus, is mobile computing changing the way we live our lives — from hitting the snooze button to watching late night television?
The 2012 election saw some of the largest amounts of money being poured into campaigns. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig says it's time to reexamine the whole system.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a landmark Supreme Court case with huge political implications. In the wake of Citizens, super PACs became the cash-raising vehicle of choice for parties and their candidates.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the 2012 election. Billions were spent by super PACs, from the presidential race and down the ticket. With few exceptions, no race was immune to the spending.
A debate is raging on college campuses around the country. More students are pushing for educational institutions to divest endowment money from fossil fuel companies.
Could this be the vanguard of a huge social change? Not all schools have been receptive to the idea, but some like Vassar, Tufts University and Bowdoin College have already taken it up.
The latest local dust-up is at Harvard University, where school officials have said they will not divest from fossil fuel companies.
If you've been out fighting the crowds at the mall this holiday season, you may have noticed a small but significant change: shoppers slipping their smartphones in and out of pockets to quickly and quietly do merchandise comparisons or even make payments.
We have debates all the time about education. How could our schools be doing better? Why isn't the US more competitive in the world?
The great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget argued, "[O]nly education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent or gradual." Piaget's approach to education — radically different from what we generally see in school — emphasized deep, conceptual learning.
Katie Lyslo and David Stevens joined Kara Miller to talk about the Piaget approach and how to improve our educational system.
