Forget Silicon. This Computer Is Made of Fabric

His personal style may lean toward the conventional, but the Rice University mechanical engineer is here to tell me about his creative new fashion design. His team has made a shiny black jacket that performs logic--without electronics. Specifically, the jacket can raise and lower its own hood at the push of a button, and it contains a simple 1-bit memory that stores the state of the hood. Or, as Preston says, it's "a non-electronic durable logic in a textile-based device." Here's where we need to emphasize the wildness of this design.