Scientific American Frontiers on PBS

In this ode to originality, digital do-it-yourselfers at MIT show off their creations. One grad student videotaped his life via a “wearable computer” (he's seen meeting his girlfriend for the first time). Another designed his bicycle on a computer (his professor is looking for ways to “e-mail” it). Violinist Joshua Bell, a techie, is seen playing a computerized “hyperviolin.” And host Alan Alda sees a camera-flash “periscope” he had conceived (but never managed to design) actually built. Then there's MIT's annual mechanical-engineering design contest. Success, says professor Alex Slocomb, can cause a “geekasm.”