Here on the third floor of the Media Lab in the student area of the Physical Language Workshop, I'm relaxing on a big leather couch by the iMac cluster video wall. The couch is surrounded by munchies which are no doubt fuel for many recent late-nighters. Carlos just walked me around the floor and showed me the Filterfresh machine. The students call this hell week because it's mid-term exam time, and they are preparing demos for the lab's corporate and institutional sponsors' open house. Next, the team has to rearrange the computer desks to accomodate tomorrow's visitors.

- mike lee - cambridge