Newsweek Int 24.12.2021

“We’re creating on Roblox, according to RTrack. The
a platform developers design games, stores,
where people imaginary planets and such, and get
learn together, paid if kids buy subscriptions and
work together, spend digital currency (“Robux”) on
experience admission fees or digital merchandise.
entertainment
together.” Baszucki, 58, schooled at Stanford,
started an educational software com-
pany in 1989 with his brother, teach-
ing kids basic science. “We saw that
in addition to doing their physics
homework, they were building stuff
and creating stuff and watching what
would happen when a car ran into a
building,” says Baszucki. That was
the germ. He and a small team began
work in 2004 on what is now Roblox.

When COVID hit, Roblox’s pop-
ularity exploded. It became a haven
for kids in lockdown. By one estimate,
two out of three children between the
ages of 6 and 16 now have accounts.
They’ve made Baszucki a billionaire.

If you log on, through a computer,
gaming console or VR headset, you’ll
find yourself in what resembles a
vast, brightly colored video game.
Many beginners’ avatars are simple,
like Lego figures, but Roblox provides
tools to make them more elaborate.
Reviewers generally say the Roblox
metaverse is safe and welcoming but
there have been cases of hate groups
or sex clubs on the site; the company
says it has a safety team of more than
1,600 working to shut them down.

A broader concern is that as the
metaverse becomes more and more
enticing, the real world—with annoy-
ances like work, exercise and human
contact—will seem dreary. Over Hal-
loween weekend, Roblox had a mas-
sive outage, and social media sites
filled with jokes about the horror of
children having to go outside and see
each other. Baszucki apologized and
said his young users quickly returned.

“Together,” he tells fans, “we are the
architects of play.” —n.p.

NEWSWEEK.COM 49

EXPANDING
OPPORTUNITIES
IN ESPORTS

JOHN FAZIO — FOUNDER AND CEO, NERD STREET GAMERS

Prescription rowing up, fazio was a traditional sports, we had to fix the
Gaming for ADHD varsity-level soccer player, access gap in technology,” Fazio says.
which he says helped him
EDDIE MARTUCCI, get into college and see the world. Toward that end, Fazio, a software
ADAM GAZZALEY, MATT OMERNICK, “What was most profound about soc- engineer, built Nerd Street Gamers,
FOUNDERS, AKILI INTERACTIVE cer to me, though, was how it equal- a national network of facilities
ized opportunities for everyone, no that provides affordable access to
$NLOLŠV (QGHDYRU5; LV WKH ɿUVWŜDQG matter their background.” high-quality equipment, and hosts
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IRU $WWHQWLRQ GHɿFLW K\SHUDFWLYLW\ vie for recognition and prize money, sional careers and college scholar-
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practice. “I realized that if competi- camps and virtual tournaments, and
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DECEMBER 24, 2021 NEWSWEEK.COM 51

52 N E W S W E E K . C O M

INNOVATORS ON THE
VERGE OF MAJOR
BREAKTHROUGHS

Flexible Electronics That Could that give the wearer a sense of touch?
Someday Be Part of Your Body Or a flexible smartphone that bends in-
stead of breaking in one’s back pocket
JIE XU — ASSISTANT SCIENTIST, ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY and won’t scare you half to death if you
drop it? There are probably many uses
COURTESY OF ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY ust imagine the next leagues are out to change that. that no one has thought of yet.
generation of electronics,” “The killer applications, in my
says Jie Xu. “It’s not going In 2019, Xu and her fellow scien-
to be rigid anymore. It’s going to be mind,” she says, “are technology like tists reported progress on the next
soft, comfortable. It can even be bio- robotics or prosthetics with skin-like, step: finding a way to mass-produce
compatible, like our tissue or skin.” electronic, functional coverings, and them using a common manufacturing
From her base at Argonne Nation- also soft medical sensors that we process.
al Laboratory near Chicago, Xu is pio- can put on our skin or implant into
neering flexible, skin-like electronics our bodies without any immune re- Some flexible products are already
that could someday transform people’s sponse. That’s going to be the goal.” on the market, or close to it—wear-
lives. Implantable sensors or biochem- able biosensors to measure your vital
ical pumps, assist devices to increase Xu, 33, was born in a small town in signs, video screens that can be sewn
mobility or support weakened limbs— China, and says she became fascinated into fabric, and the first attempts at
all of these could work much better if as a student with the chemistry of very folding phones. Xu hopes to improve
not for the tough, sometimes brittle small things. She says it was a disadvan- manufacturing by using artificial
circuitry they need inside to function. tage to be a girl, but she had the advan- intelligence to help determine the
Think of the circuit boards in com- tage of a very good education. After she best compounds for a particular use,
puters. Or the wiring for heart pace- got her Ph.D. in 2014 at Nanjing Univer- sorting through the properties of
makers, which have been lifesaving to sity, she moved to Stanford in California countless different electronic mate-
many people, but also uncomfortable. to be a postdoctoral researcher. There, rials—which ones are softest, tough-
They make electronics and biology in 2018, she and a team reported they’d est, easiest to make, most affordable,
seem like opposites. Xu and her col- figured out how to make flexible cir- best at conducting electricity and
cuits from polymer semiconductors— so forth. It’s far more efficient than
“The next sheets of electronics that kept work- the trial-and-error process human
generation of ing if they were bent, twisted or even scientists would have to go through
electronics is stretched to twice their original size. on their own. Xu says AI-driven lab-
going to be soft, oratories may even be able to speed
comfortable.” Polymers are materials made of the design of materials that are en-
long repeating chains of molecules, vironmentally friendly, to cut down
and they’re often pliable. Wool, nylon on electronic waste, and help map
and polyester are all polymers. So are out the manufacturing process.
rubber and many plastics. Scientists say
there are myriad possible uses. How Xu insists on sharing credit for the
about fingertips for a prosthetic hand work. “I would say I can be consid-
ered one of the disruptors, but I was
not alone,” she says. “There have been
40 years of development, of people
making efforts in this field. I am just
one of them.” —n.p.

NEWSWEEK.COM 53

Powering Batteries ENDING THE )520 /()7 $0$< %$1' 2'.$5 ,//8675$7,21 %< %5,7 7 63(1&(5
With Sweat DIGITAL DIVIDE FOR
LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS
AMAY BANDODKAR — ELECTRICAL
AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING BRIAN HALL — FOUNDER, NYC MESH
PROFESSOR AT NORTH CAROLINA
STATE UNIVERSITY orty-six percent of New York City households that live in
poverty lack broadband internet access. Brian Hall wants
Tiny computers can do wonderful to change that. His nonprofit NYC Mesh, a community WiFi ini-
things when strapped to your body— tiative, offers an affordable way to circumvent internet service
WKLQN VPDUWZDWFKHV ɿWQHVV WUDFNHUV providers and bring high-speed internet access to underserved
and other wearables—but how to neighborhoods—without harvesting and reselling user data.
comfortably, easily and consistently Whereas most WiFi services rely on a few access points, or
power these devices without a bulky hotspots, mesh networks use hundreds of smaller nodes, which
battery and the need for constant re- collaborate to pass data along. Joining NYC Mesh is free, but
charging is a challenge. Bandodkar has members are encouraged to donate $20 to $60 per month, if
come up with a novel idea: Use sweat. they can. The initiative is still small—about 600 buildings are
hooked up—but Hall says it’s the largest community-owned net-
Typically 90 percent of the size work in the Americas and hopes it will inspire others to “take
of a wearable device is taken up by back control of their internet connection.” This year the city
the power source, usually a battery. awarded NYC Mesh a contract to outfit housing developments
Bandodkar got the idea to save space in the Bronx and Crown Heights, Brooklyn with mesh routers,
by using the wearer’s own sweat as to bring the city a step further in closing its digital divide. —m.g.
the battery’s electrolyte—the solution
that supplies the electrical current. He DECEMBER 24, 2021
built a sensor that is four times smaller
and 20 times lighter than other models
that run on conventional batteries.

“By using a person’s own sweat as
the battery’s electrolyte, I was able to
GHYHORS D WKLQ ʀH[LEOH EDWWHU\ FHOO
which has an energy capacity similar
to that of a coin cell battery [the kind
used in watches] but without the
ODWWHUŠV XVH RI WR[LF FKHPLFDOV DQG ULJLG
metallic housing,” he says. Bandod-
kar has begun testing the sensor and
battery but cautions that it will take
several years to develop the technol-
ogy for consumer products such as
wearable devices. Eventually, he hopes
the technology will prove useful for
implantable medical devices, such
as pacemakers or as heating patches

BUDDING DISRUPTORS Using Diamonds
for Internet Access
Creating Empathetic
Technology FELIX EJECKAM
FOUNDER AND CEO,
RANA EL KALIOUBY AKASH SYSTEMS
CO-FOUNDER, CEO, AFFECTIVA;
DEPUTY CEO, SMART EYE efore launching his start-up akash systems in 2016, ejeckam was
head of Defense and Aerospace at Element Six. There he made and sold
Computers are smart but fall short when gallium nitride-on-diamond wafers, a semiconductor material used in automo-
it comes to understanding human emo- tives and power supplies for wind and solar farms. Beyond its use as expensive
tions. El Kaliouby’s work entails teaching jewelry, diamond is nature’s most thermally conductive material. At Akash
computers to understand complex Systems, Ejeckam grows synthetic diamonds in a lab to use the same gallium
emotions and cognitive states. This new nitride-on-diamond technology for a new purpose: internet connection.
DQG IDVW PRYLQJ ɿHOG GXEEHG (PRWLRQ Ejeckam says the company’s satellite radios can deliver ubiquitous internet ac-
$, SURPLVHV WR WUDQVIRUP WKH ZD\ ZH cess for less than $5 a month, compared to the $100 to $150 typical for high-inter-
interact with technology. net access on mobile phones now. The first diamond-powered satellites are sched-
uled to launch next year; Ejeckam says the first users will be those living in rural
(O .DOLRXE\ D FRPSXWHU VFLHQWLVW areas, sea travelers and people flying over international waters. Backstage Capital
E\ WUDLQLQJ ɿUVW EHFDPH LQWHUHVWHG LQ founder and Akash investor, Arlan Hamilton, says, “There’s a lot of talk about
WKH ɿHOG DIWHU PRYLQJ IURP &DLUR WR billionaires shooting things out into space, but Felix is doing the work.” —M.G.
&DPEULGJH 0DVVDFKXVHWWV IRU KHU 3K '
&/2 &.:,6( )520 723 5,*+7 ,//8675$7,21 %< $/(; ),1( 3+,/,3 &+(81* 67(9( -(11,1*6ʔ*(7 7< and feeling isolated from her family back 3D-PRINTED
home. “All the nuances and richness HOUSING
of my feelings were disappearing in
F\EHUVSDFH Ť VKH VD\V ţ7KHQ FDPH WKH JASON BALLARD
‘aha’ moment: What would it take to get CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, ICON
our technologies and our devices to
understand us in the same way that we %DFN LQ ,&21 EXLOW WKH ɿUVW SHU-
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Affectiva leverages a database of nearly VTXDUH IRRW KRXVH WKDW WRRN MXVW
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ing computers identify users’ feelings SDQ\ DQG LWV 9XOFDQ ' SULQWHU ZKLFK
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Among its applications: Affectiva’s tech
was used by neuroscience augment- concrete in programmed patterns to
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smart glasses that help children with essentially build the walls of a building
autism read facial expressions. IURP WKH JURXQG XS KDYH FUHDWHG PRUH
than two dozen structures. Among
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tracking technology company. The two PLOLWDU\ EDUUDFNV LQ %DVWURS 7H[DV
companies are developing consumer
WHFKQRORJ\ VXFK DV DXWRPRWLYH VDIHW\ 1RZ ,&21 SODQV WR EUHDN JURXQG
WRROV XVLQJ $, WR GHWHFW GULYHU GLVWUDF- next year on a community of 100
WLRQ DQG GURZVLQHVV RU ʀDJJLQJ LI D FKLOG ' SULQWHG KRXVHV WKH ODUJHVW QHLJK-
is left behind in a car. El Kaliouby says borhood of its kind in the world. Since
she is “on a mission to humanize tech-
QRORJ\ EHIRUH LW GHKXPDQL]HV XV Ť Ŝ0 * printable homes can be made twice as

fast as traditional methods and cost LPSURYH KRPH DIIRUGDELOLW\ DFFHVVLELO-
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into the mainstream could potentially D GHɿFLW RI PLOOLRQ QHZ KRPHV DQG
worldwide there are 1.2 billion humans
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a profound need to swiftly increase
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WLPH IRU D SDUDGLJP VKLIW Ť —K.R.

NEWSWEEK.COM 55

Culture

PARTING SHOT

Olivia Colman

olivia colman is continuing her streak of incredible perfor- Leda in The Lost Daughter is so
mances with two big ones this December. First is the HBO miniseries The complicated. Were you ever struck
Landscapers (Mondays in December), based on the true story of Susan and Chris- by some of her actions?
topher Edwards, the mild-mannered British couple charged with the murder of $ IHZ ZHHNV LQWR ɿOPLQJ ZH ZHUH DOO
Susan’s parents and with concealing it for years. “The most bizarre parts of the KDYLQJ D GULQN DQG , VDLG ţ:K\ GR ,
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was committed. It’s an amazing story.” The second project for Colman is Maggie :K\ GR WKDW" , GRQŠW NQRZ LI VKH
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a er y’s vacation by taking a beloved on the type of mother she was.
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In both roles, you’re forced to (00$ 0&,17<5(ʔ&217285ʔ*(77<
tap into some heavy emotions.
How do you do that?
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KDYH LWŠV TXLWH XVHIXO —H. Alan Scott

6 Visit Newsweek.com for the full interview