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Where are the next big opportunities in digital technology?

The best things in the future may also be those that are most rewarding in terms of social impact. I think there are real opportunities in technology for disabled or disadvantaged people, and these will translate into great commercial hits.

Can you give me an example?

My colleague Rosalind Picard has been working on technology for people with autism, creating emotional-social prosthetics. We want to enhance people鈥檚 ability to live independently. She has designed a system that can tell from a person鈥檚 head movements and facial expressions if they are confused, interested or disagreeing. It then feeds this information to a display in the corner of a pair of glasses. The idea is to supply autistic people with the cues they would otherwise miss. About 18 months ago Rosalind demonstrated the ideas to companies that sponsor Media Lab. They all agreed that this tool would also help them to understand their customers better. We now see it as a huge commercial opportunity.

Do you have any technologies aimed at our ageing population?

Eight months ago my mum broke her hip. I asked Hugh Herr, who runs the biomechatronics lab, if he could find a way to stop elderly people becoming injured this way. His first idea was 鈥渁ir-bag carpets鈥� that would recognise when someone is falling and create a protective cushion. In the end he settled on a supportive exoskeleton. The beauty of this is that it also allows a person to run with the same energy they would normally use to walk.

How else can technology be used in healthcare?

One of our research assistants, John Moore, is rethinking the relationship between doctor and patient. He has built an artificial intelligence system that collects information from a patient and creates a report for the doctor. The patient talks to an avatar, which uses natural language processing to interpret what the patient says.

We have also tried giving a wireless device to people with HIV who were not good at sticking to their drugs. It tracks and visualises what happens to their T-cells and explains biomedical facts about HIV infection. People loved it: they were better at keeping to their therapy.

In what direction are you steering research at the Media Lab?

Everyone communicates digitally, which gives us the illusion of being in control. But in reality the high priests of information are still in charge. Take the financial world: the CEOs of banks have information about money and how to get the best deals, which their customers currently don鈥檛 have access to. I鈥檓 on a crusade to change that and put the information in the hands of ordinary people. We want to reinvent the nature of personal banking, so we鈥檝e set up the with the Bank of America for just that purpose. We set our expectations of how technology can help regular people too low, and Media Lab is a great place to change that.