THE NETWORK

摘要

Ten years ago, contributing editor Joshua Davis received a press release that gave him pause. Clumsily formatted and full of typos, the email described an underwater robot competition, funded by NASA, in which four high school students in Phoenix, Arizona-three of them undocumented immigrants from Mexico-beat MIT to win gold. Davis picked up the phone to learn more. That repor-torial instinct turned into a wired story called "La Vida Robot" (issue 13.04), which mentioned that three of the young men didn't qualify for federal student loans because of their immigration status, wired readers eventually raised more than $90,000 in scholarships for Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Luis Aranda, and Lorenzo Santillan. 1 Now the story of those robot-builders has a new chapter. Spare Parts, starring George Lopez and Carlos PenaVega, opens in January, and Davis is publishing a book by the same title updating the kids' story. "What happened to these guys fascinates me," Davis says. "It changed their lives." How? Here's a preview.