Research
City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
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Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability
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Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
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Opera of the Future

Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
Project Research

A Co-Design Experience: Technologies for Rural Sustainability in Colombia | 2022 Edition

​🚨Application to the 2022 Co-Design Experience here bit.ly/codesign2022 🚨OverviewThe development of technology in rural environ...
Research
Viral Communications

Creating scalable technologies that evolve with user inventiveness
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Sculpting Evolution

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering
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Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art
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Personal Robots

Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
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Future Sketches

Exploring the essence of code as a creative medium
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Camera Culture

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection
Project Research

Regional Technology Co-Creation and Transfer Ecosystems in Latin America

🚨Application to the 2022 Co-Design Experience here bit.ly/codesign2022 🚨Historically, the term technology transfer has been ass...
Article Research

Better democracy through technology

Can machines make us better citizens and conversationalists? Deb Roy thinks so.
Article Research

Systems scientists find clues to why false news snowballs on social media

A new model shows that the more polarized and hyperconnected a social network is, the more likely misinformation will spread.
Research
Space Enabled

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

Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar and collaborators receive Honorable Mention for paper at CSCW 2021

“Growing together, remaining apart: The role of digital technology in former guerrilla fighters’ social capital."
Publication Research

Growing Together, Remaining Apart: The Role of Digital Technology in Former Guerrilla Fighters' Social Capital

Debora de Castro Leal, Max Krüger, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Amparo Caicedo, Carlos Gómez, Dave Randall, and Volker Wulf. 2021. Growing Together, Remaining Apart: The Role of Digital Technology in Former Guerrilla Fighters' Social Capital. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 331 (October 2021), 24 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3476072
Post Research

Neil Gaikwad recognized by MIT and University of Chicago

Named Human Rights & Technology Fellow by MIT Center for International Studies, and a Rising Star by UChicago Center for Data & Computing.
Project Research

The Power of Without

The Power of WITHOUT is a research theme in the City Science group. The theme proposes that heavy infrastructure solutions are not financ...
Article Research

Some Bostonians feel largely unheard. With MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ portal now public, here’s a chance to really listen

A database of community conversations in various Boston neighborhoods launches publicly on Monday.
Project Research

Participatory Sensemaking

How might we collect rich and complex data from community dialogues, analyze and make sense of that data? How might we design output...
Archived
Research
PlusMinus

PlusMinus
Project Research

City Science Lab @ Hamburg

MIT City Science is working with HafenCity University to develop CityScope for the neighborhood of Rothenburgsort in Hamburg, Germany. Th...
Article Research

MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ campaign gives likely voters a voice in Boston’s race for mayor

Researchers enlist grassroots activists to engage “invisible” residents about the future of the city.
Research
MIT Center for Constructive Communication

MIT Center for Constructive Communication
Publication Research

Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities

Moro, E., Calacci, D., Dong, X. et al. Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities. Nat Commun 12, 4633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24899-8
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 restaura...
Project Research

CivilServant: User-led randomized trials online

The CivilServant project supports online communities to run their own experiments on the effects of moderation practices on antisocial be...
Archived
Publication Research

Defund Big Tech, Refund Community: Anti-Trust is Not Enough, Another Tech is Possible

Barendregt, W., Becker, C., Cheon, E., Clement, A., Reynolds-Cuéllar, P., Schuler, D., & Suchman, L. (2021). Defund Big Tech, Refund Community. Tech Otherwise. https://doi.org/10.21428/93b2c832.e0100a3f
Project Research

Curriculum: Power + AI

Check out the project site here. The pursuit of justice in AI requires more than just tweaking the numbers. It requires us to “study up”...
Center for Civic Media
Archived
Project Research

Theme | Mobility On-Demand

Urban populations around the world are rapidly growing. To improve livability, urban residents must reduce dependency on fossil fuels and...
Project Research

Resilience Across Scales

Resilience Across Scales is a research theme that encompasses the work of a few Media Lab Principal Investigators and their research grou...
Project Research

[bike] swarm

As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers...
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 addr...
Archived
Project Research

Gobo

Your social media. Your rules.Gobo is an experiment, not a startup. We’re building it to change the conversation on social media and imag...
Archived
Project Research

Voter Education through Network Analytics

In “normal” times, the process of voting can be confusing enough for many Americans -- from whether and where they’re registered, to abse...
Archived
Research
Human Dynamics

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion
Archived
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Design Fiction

Sparking discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies through design and storytelling
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
Archived
Research
Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge
Article Research

Literati CTO Finds “Tech for Good” in Boxes of Books

Civic Media alum Charlie DeTar talks to the MIT Alumni Association about his work with Literati, using technology for social good, and more.
Archived
Project Research

Streetchange

Computer vision uncovers predictors of physical urban change

Archived
Project Research

Private Location Data for the Public Good and Urban Understanding

There is a continuous and ubiquitous collection of precise, timestamped, geolocation data from apps and devices, being amassed by private...
Project Research

Algorithmic Justice League

www.ajl.orgAn unseen force is rising—helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This f...
Article Research

Episode 89: Chelsea Barabas

Joshua B. Hoe interviews Chelsea Barabas of MIT about criminal justice monitoring, surveillance, and algorithms
Post Research

City Science team wins Best Student Paper Award at Computing Conference 2020

Congratulations to City Science researchers Alex Berke, Jason Nawyn, Thomas Sanchez Lengeling, and group head Kent Larson!
Archived
Research
Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
Archived
Project Research

Moral Machine

The Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving c...
Archived
Article Research

AI researchers say scientific publishers help perpetuate racist algorithms

“This is why we keep seeing race science emerging time and again," writes Chelsea Barabas. "It’s because publishers publish it."
Publication Research

Contact Tracing Technologies: Methods and trade-offs

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

Theme | CityScope

City Science researchers are developing a slew of tangible and digital platforms dedicated to solving spatial design and urban planning c...
Project Research

ChampScope

Virtual CityScope Champs-Élysées is an interactive and immersive platform that explores the future of Paris’ most important street.
Post Research

Media Lab @ Design, Technology + Social Innovation Workshop 2020

The following Media Lab students joined the MIT India Initiative in Mumbai for this workshop.
Article Research

Building a more honest internet

What would social media look like if it served the public interest?
Post Research

Joy Buolamwini and Amanda Nguyen chosen for TIME 100 Next 2019

Congratulations to Joy Buolamwini and Amanda Nguyen for being recognized in the "Advocates" category.
Article Research

Artificial intelligence can be biased. Here’s what you should know.

Joy Buolamwini talks to Frontline about bias in AI, and what can be done about it.
Article Research

World's 100 most influential people in digital government 2019

Commending a formidable variety of international change-makers driving digital transformation in government.
Project Research

Income, Race, Bikes

Is the placement of bike-share docks equitable?This interactive map explores the question visually.The map shows the addition of bike-sha...
Post Research

Alum Erhardt Graeff receives Best Dissertation Award

The Association of Internet Researchers has recognized alum Erhardt Graeff, now an assistant professor of social and computer science at ...
Archived
Project Research

Empowerment-based design and evaluation of civic technology

Civic technology should empower us as citizens. But despite its breadth as a field, civic technology often takes its lead from Silicon Va...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Let's play: Waste at MIT

Let's play: Waste at MIT is a game about trash; it’s also a game about understanding civic infrastructure. This project explores the use ...
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Boycott!

A web browser extension that reveals less well-known aspects of corporate public behavior such as environmental respect and political bia...
Archived
Project Research

RelatiVotey

Many people think their vote doesn't count—that a single vote would not change an election's outcome—and they stay home on Election Day. ...
Project Research

LinkedOut: Codesigning societal reentry with returning citizens

LinkedOut aims to define and build solutions to facilitate societal reentry for formerly incarcerated individuals.In collaboration with t...
Project Research

CityScope PlayGround: MIT East Campus

This project depicts the design, deployment and operation of a Tangible Regulation Platform, a physical-technological apparatus made for ...