The Matic Robot Vacuum
Forget flying cars—in the future, your apartment will clean itself
Every 20 years or so, like a wandering asteroid, I like to visit the headquarters of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), in the heart of Silicon Valley—Mountain View, California. That is to say, I went in 2005, when SETI had been looking for aliens for 20 years. This summer, I dropped in again to see how things were going.
The short answer is that SETI is still waiting for E.T., despite having had a huge private investment that has allowed them to run vastly more powerful antennas. It was a fascinating visit nonetheless, and I discovered, among many other things, that for science undergrads, getting a summer internship at SETI is tougher than getting into Harvard or Yale.
