Dr. Spock 2.0

As director of the comparative media studies program at MIT, Jenkins is working under a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to study how digital environments are influencing children and to develop educational curricula based on his group's findings. (Last year, the MacArthur Foundation said it would invest $50 million over the next five years to build a network of researchers and community activists to work on digital education and new media literacy.)

Jenkins, 50, is also an expert on popular culture in the Digital Age and author of several books including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Work on that book spawned the Convergence Culture Consortium, which helps media companies like MTV Networks and Yahoo think about how to engage with participatory cultures that define the generation growing up with technology.