Old Media, New Tricks

"You’ll notice we’ve got lots of electronics around—most of which we’ve taken apart,” says New York Times R&D Lab creative technologist Alexis Lloyd, casually sidestepping two turquoise exercise balls. Walking toward Lloyd’s desk, where she’s working on an indecipherable screen of code, she explains that some of her co-workers have swapped their chairs for the rubber spheres to prevent back pain during protracted coding sessions. Atop the rows of desks, two disassembled mice sit next to a broken Kindle and a tangle of wires and batteries.