edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle as perSherry]"This is a book about science, technology, and love," writes SherryTurkle. In it, we learn how a love for science can start with a love for anobject--a microscope, a modem, a mud pie, a pair of dice, a fishing rod. Objectsfire imagination and set young people on a path to a career in science. In thiscollection, distinguished scientists, engineers, and designers as well astwenty-five years of MIT students describe how objects encountered in childhoodbecame part of the fabric of their scientific selves. In two major essays that framethe collection, Turkle tells a story of inspiration and connection through objectsthat is often neglected in standard science education and in our preoccupation withthe virtual. The senior scientists' essays trace the arc of a life: the gears of atoy car introduce the chain of cause and effect to artificial intelligence pioneerSeymour Papert; microscopes disclose the mystery of how things work to MIT Presidentand neuroanatomist Susan Hockfield; architect Moshe Safdie describes how his boyhoodfascination with steps, terraces, and the wax hexagons of beehives lead him to alife immersed in the complexities of design. The student essays tell stories thatecho these narratives: plastic eggs in an Easter basket reveal the power ofcentripetal force; experiments with baking illuminate the geology of planets; LEGObricks model worlds, carefully engineered and colonized. All of thesevoices--students and mentors--testify to the power of objects to awaken and informyoung scientific minds. This is a truth that is simple, intuitive, and easilyoverlooked.Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauz? Professor of the Social Studiesof Science and Technology at MIT and Director of the MIT Initiative on Technologyand Self. She is the author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit(Twentieth Anniversary Edition, MIT Press, 2005) and Life on the Screen: Identity inthe Age of the Internet and the editor of Evocative Objects: Things We Think With(MIT Press, 2007).

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