Entries in Innovation Hub by Kara Miller and Amanda McGowan

We're looking in the U.S. at an aging population - the baby boomers are rapidly turning 65, and the demand for people to help care for those who are getting older is only going to rise. Kara Miller chatted with WGBH Morning Edition host Bob Seay about amazing advances in technology - particularly in robotics - that may fundamentally change what life is like for us as we age.

Time for a little experiment. Open a new tab in your browser and type in the URL “Relentless.com.” It’ll take you to a surprising and probably familiar place: the homepage of Amazon.com. As Brad Stone, author of the new and controversial book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” notes, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos considered “relentless” a fair characterization of the company he wanted to build. But, truth be told, it’s also a fair characterization of the man behind the company.

If you’ve ever sat behind the wheel of a car – especially between, say, the hours of 6 to 9 in the morning, or 4 to 6 at night – you’ll know exactly what Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell means when he says he’s fed up with traffic. “What frustrates me,” Rendell says, “is traffic delays because we haven’t kept up with capacity.” Since 1980, the number of vehicles on the road has increased by 104%, while lane capacity has inched forward by only 4%. So Rendell decided to do something about it.

If you’ve ever been to a foreign country, you know that one of the most terrifying parts of travel is being surrounded by a language you don’t understand. Peter Lee, head of Microsoft Research, might be able to change all that (and drastically reduce the amount of time you spend furrowing your brows and squinting at that French menu). Lee and his colleagues have created technology that can translate from language to language in real time, and he discusses it with us, along with other with up-and-coming technology that could change our lives.

Let’s play a game — identify your dominant hand. Quickly snap your fingers five times with that hand. Now, take the forefinger on your dominant hand and draw a capital “E” on your forehead. Daniel Pink — recently named to the Strategic Advisory Council of outplacement services company RiseSmart — calls this game “The E Test.” It’s been used since the 1980s to measure what social scientists call “perspective-taking.” The results can give us insight into your worldview — do you see things strictly from your own perspective, or do you take the views of others into account?

In the summer of 2012, the San Francisco tech start-up Gild offered a job to 26-year-old Jade Dominguez. Dominguez didn’t have a college degree — and he hadn’t even applied for a job with the company. Why did Gild make him an offer? The company harnesses big data to look for the Internet’s most qualified workers, rather than relying on resumes, outdated credentials, or a human resources department. As it turns out, big data thought Dominguez was the best man for the job.

Harvard Professor Paul Peterson and Former Assistant Secretary of Education Chester Finn have been studying the American education system for a long time. What they've observed is a disturbing trend.

 "We had the greatest schools in the 19th century and the early 20th century," said Peterson. "We had elementary education before any other country. We had high schools before any other country. We built colleges before any other country."

But in the 1970s, the momentum changed. 

In one of the latest installments of NOVA's "Making Stuff" series, host David Pogue went on a test-drive that was a little out of the ordinary: it didn't involve an actual driver. That's because he was taking a spin in Shelly, a self-driving racecar developed at Stanford which can navigate twists and turns at breakneck speed all on its own.

Do you ever wonder why so many movies now have a number at the end? Superman 3, Batman 5, Fast and Furious 1, 2, 3, 4...(we could go on.) Anita Elberse, professor at Harvard Business School, certainly did. In her new book, Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment, Elberse argues that, despite living in a world with more media sources and entertainment options than ever, our tastes are converging on the flashiest blockbuster hits and the biggest superstars.

Now, we turn from Anita Elberse's take on the blockbuster in entertainment to the gadgets that entertain us. David Pogue of WGBH's NOVA spends his time thinking about the race to make phones ever slimmer, their cameras just a bit better, and our watches a little smarter. We chatted about his predictions for the latest and greatest breakthroughs in technology.