Mom technology and hyperbolic 3-manifolds

This is an expository paper on Mom-technology, describing the recent work of the authors in this area (found in arXiv:math/0606072, arXiv:0705.4325, and arXiv:0809.0346) concerning the use of Mom-technology to find the minimum-volume compact hyperbolic 3-manifold and the 10 smallest cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds. In addition we provide a survey of a selection of results on volumes of hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and a discussion of outstanding open problems in this area.