Geeks in Toyland

From Wired 14.02: Geeks in Toyland

The email from Denmark was only a few lines long. "It basically said, 'We have an opportunity for you here, but we can't tell you anything until you sign a nondisclosure agreement," says Steve Hassenplug, a soft-spoken software engineer from Lafayette, Indiana. The cryptic tone of the email from Lego headquarters hinted at something more than a simple customer survey, but Hassenplug didn't know what.

He guessed it had something to do with Mindstorms, Lego's programmable robotics kit. After all, he's a master at assembling the plastic bricks into complex robots, like his wheeled, self-balancing machine dubbed the LegWay, and he's something of a celebrity in the Mindstorms world.