It’s been ten years since the U.S. introduced the “new” color $20 bill. According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the average life of the 20 is just two years before it wears out. But the reason for the color 20 was introduced wasn’t just about wear and tear, it was about anti-counterfeiting technology. And, does your family have etiquette for using tech at the dinner table? Marketplace Tech speaks with a Cape Cod mother of five who is making rules to help her family navigate how to behave as a family in a high tech, interconnected world.  

Today, the head of one of the world’s largest e-commerce giants is stepping down. Jack Ma, chief executive of Alibaba says he’s too old to run an internet company at the decrepit age of 48. Plus, all this week we’re talking about the near future of tech, and today we look at what’s coming in the next decade of space exploration. Marketplace Tech talks to Adam Steltzner, a NASA engineer who navigated the incredibly challenging landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover. Steltzner says it’s about putting people on Mars. Also, he discusses looking for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

All this week we’re talking about the near future of tech. Not artificial intelligence and storing consciousness on computer chips, but what’s coming in the next decade. Let’s talk about hardware, and the world’s biggest chipmaker, Intel. A week ago the company named a new CEO, Brian Krzanich. But the head honcho at Intel Labs, where the company invents all sorts of cool new stuff, is CTO Justin Rattner. His army of innovators is working on something called seeing through the rain. 

All this week we’re talking about the near future of tech. Not clones and robot servants, but what’s coming in the next decade. Today we look at what’s coming in our own industry: Media. More and more it isn’t just a discussion of old forms, but new forms as well — I know one of my go to news sites these days happens to be Twitter. Kara Swisher, the co-exectuive editor of AllThingsD, says any media company that wants a future needs to be thinking about going mobile in every way.

The price of natural gas has been dropping, and it’s not just people turning off the heat for spring weather. It’s cheaper and easier than ever to extract natural gas thanks in part to advances in controversial technologies like hydraulic fracturing. What does the next ten years of our energy consumption look like? And, a tale of middle school hackers.

If you make office supplies, you know you’ve arrived when your product hits the shelves at Staples. The retail chain says it will start carrying the Cube 3D printer made by 3D Systems. You can buy the Cube 3D online at Staples.com now, or wait until it hits stores in June. And, this week we’ll be talking about the near-future of tech — not flying cars and terminators, but what’s coming in the next decade. Today, a conversation about free speech online. A year ago, George Washington Law Professor Jeffrey Rosen went to a hush-hush meeting at Stanford that dealt with censorship. It was full of academics, international government representatives, and a small group of young techies from companies like Twitter and Google.

A slice of digital cold turkey: On May 1 of 2012, Paul Miller at the tech site The Verge cut himself off from the Internet. No web, no streaming, no email, no texts or voicemails either. It’s now a year later, and Paul has just woken up. He says we should all be impressed at how well we use something as complex as the Internet, but also describes his own euphoria after cutting himself off. 

A month ago, ‘Google Nose’ was an April Fool’s prank: Sniff your laptop for eau de wet-dog or scent of Egyptian tomb. But it turns out real engineers have been working on smell tech. John Laurenson reports from a film festival in the Austrian city of Linz, where a smelly movie has just premiered. And, when Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer curbed the ability of employees to work from home, she got rapped by those who saw this as old-thinking. Now, the company is trying to make Yahoo a more attractive place to work by, among other things extending maternity and paternity leave.

There’s been a lot of talk online about Jason Collins, the NBA player from the Celtics and the Wizards who came out as gay this week — and some of that talk is offensive. What is appropriate language to use online and in every day life? Janell Burley Hofmann, a mother of five, gives her advice. And you’ve probably heard of the fisheye camera lens, but how about a bug-eyed one? Researchers at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have developed a unique hemispherical digital camera based on the eye of a fly. It takes photos with nearly 200 tiny lenses to put together one giant wide-angle almost three-dimensional image that is in focus at all depths of field.