A telephone call to Roel Vertegaal’s lab may cause a pair of plastic-foam eyeballs to wiggle. Those peepers are attached to a desktop gadget that Vertegaal says could presage a generation of what you might call digital secretaries–particularly insightful ones at that. If Vertegaal looks at the shaking eyeballs, they’ll suddenly stop and stare back at him and then patch the call through.
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