MIT Media Lab Trip Report

MIT Media Lab Updates

Electronic Publishing Update
by: Walter Bender

http://ioblog.media.mit.edu
io
blogio

vote: http://ironcity.media.mit.edu/io-election

what the means?

reord everything: conversations
biometrics

everyone, everywhere?
information is from the bottom up, not top down
Diary of a Hobo
Silver Stringer Software?

What is news?
1. dog bites man -- not news
2. man bites dog -- news
3. man eats dog -- not news in korea

ontology: mining local common sense
order of magnitude when users (Ontology) organize own representation instead of
having keywords... 2.3 vs. 1.3.

the social network
context
control
leverage

persuasion
tools that understand how we are limited in our decision-making capabilities can assist us
in decision making tasks

COMMON SENSE:
local common sense in the form of Boston Globe is relative from the Boston's perspective

Consumers have leverage:
sometime in the future your car will tell your TV when to start having you watch tire adds

Where is the value?
the value is in the links (Haase 1992)
ten years later: the value is in the context and the leverage is in network

END SPEAKER

The city that we want: Brazil
Speaker: David Cavello
3 years ago, 1:6 kid:computer ratio in schools
has increased today.. but hard pressed to find good things coming out of it
Example: San Paulo School... kids pick a problem, then try to solve it...
technology is used, but not the focus, focus was what kids wanted
Example: SantaGaul? -- people can't grow their own foods... 70% illiterate...
solar powered sensors on ground in the gardens, to teach to how to better
use pesticides/fertilizers, etc.
Create the kind of technologies that allow people to solve their own problems.

END SPEAKER

Chris? Computing Culture
How artists refigure technologies to address the full range of human experience

END SPEAKER

Video for Everyone
by: Glorianna Davenport

Filmmaker and camera partnership (Barbara Barry)
- Wear it 24x7, get important pieces

Networked Camera (Pengkai Pan)
- cameras networked to be able to see multiple angles and the like
- becomes fun and engaging for consumers as they don't have to be everywhere

Video Weblogs (Aisling Kelliher)
- Diaries help people to reflect and make sense of their lives
www.audiovisceral.net

END SPEAKER

Process Modeling ***
by: Bakhtiar Mikhak
Learning Webs Group

Tabletop Process Modeling Toolkit
- for collaborative design and contrustion of tangible, real-time, and interactive simulations
that model complex network and system dynamics
- incliuding tools for building multiple visualiations
- applications:
- Engineering: netowrking - tabletop Internet
- Management: modeling information flow in organization
- collaboration with USPS for modeling mail flow and new business models for the post
office of the future

USPS Collaboration
the problem:
- analyzing mailflow is very challenging due to
- the varying way that mail moves through a processing plant
different tpes of mail have different delivery standards and therefore
sepeate streams within a facility
- all of these sepearate mail flows moving through automation and mecahnization
within a postal facility create a complicated web of physical and info flows associated
with each mail stream
- existing simulation model
???

HANDS ON MANAGERS do NOT have input, so often process modeling gets dumped into trash
since it doesn't have anything to do with the day to day. MUST get them involved

Create tool to allow:
postal managers and supervisors to work collaboratively around a table
develop intuition for different flows and how they impact one another

FOcus on human issues vs. technical

TOWER (Programmable Brick): A modular electronic design environment
- stackable boards allowing for many more people to use electronic prototyping
- like stackable breadboards
- goal is to get them out to others outside of the lab

Old tech before tower was CRICKET

END SPEAKER

Lifelong Kindergarten
by: Mitchel Resnick

- IN Kindergarten, kids are working together designing and creating things, then afterwards...

END SPEAKER

Speech Interface
by: Chris Schmandt
lost due to web pad...
END SPEAKER

Sociable Media
by Judith Donath
lost due to web pad...
usenet visualization project
extrapolated CC's to form circles of influence, etc...
END SPEAKER

Affective Computing
by Rosalind Picard
lost due to web pad...
Monitoring peoples reactions/emotions for better computer interaction:
- Eye expressions
- Mouse pressure
- Sitting in chair pressure
END SPEAKER

Cognitive Machines
by Deb Roy
lost due to web pad...
Native language descriptions of video and pictures
easy retrieval of unannotated images
IBM collaboration
END SPEAKER

Synthetic Characters
by Bruce Blumberg
lost due to web pad...
AlphaWolf - behavorial re-enforcement through and learning for automous creatures
END SPEAKER

Critical Computing
by Brian Smith
lost due to web pad...
END SPEAKER

Danger, Inc.
by: Joe Britt
CTO & SVP of Software Development
britt@danger.com

$200 device that mimics what you'd get on your desktop PC on a handheld device
- graphical HTML web browsing
computer-like instant messaging
email with attachments
telephone, etc.

Split-application model... both sides have some intelligence.. based on what each side is doing

End-uer device, hiptop, cahes and presents content to the user
- no need to undersgtand all the intneret standards
decrease mem/processsor/network bandwidth
GPRS based
??? why not just use current palm web type stuff...

Danger Service does all the heavy lifting and services as a backup and access point for the the user's data
- centralizes knowledge of support stndards
optimizes content conversion for decices.
manages device software revisions
maintains a copy of all data on the user's decice
gives yser access to data via web portal

Not really a think client, but rather split app model
centralized user data is convientinet

Java based

In dev 2 years... released summer '02 or fall '02

Hip Top: really cool unit with keyboard underneath the screen

Web browser
Email
AIM (Yahoo, Jabber, etc as well)
Phone (hands free jack)
SMS
Address Book
Calendar (iCal support?)
To Do List
Notepad (cut & paste from web)
Camera (jacks in through headset jack
Easy to write games for... (JAVA!!!)

supports AIM, Word Files, Pictures, as email attachments.

3 technology aspects that need to be most flexible
- CPU Selection
- Display resolution and bit depth
- Network Selection (GPRS now, new later)

Uses virtual machine in order to change CPUs later...

Currently Java, but will change pos-processor later to allow CLI/C#)

24Mhz Arm7 CPU
16mb RAM
4mb Flash

VM Let's developers use the environment they are used to

Radio subsystem is modular... at least one blue tooth hiptop for example

apps talk to higher level "danger" network that rides on top of IP and GRPS, etc.

Proxy based for each of the differen apps

Danger Service scaling with clusters and L4 load balancers

Four major concerns addressed:
- End user device cost
- abiltiy to use existing content
- app development
- easily evolve

48 hours standby, 8-10 hours continuous data, 2 hours talk

not simulatanious talk/data currently

Danger's money is in running the service for service providers

goal is to dev an SDK

END SPEAKER

Next Generation Collaborations and Applications
by: Stuart Kippelman
Corporate Director, Johnson & Johnson (Networking and COmputing Infrastructure)

Our Vision about Data
1. More new information will be created over the next two years than throughout our entire history
2. Medical science will not be possible without advanced computing solutions
3. Instantaneous global communication is the worlds next "Killer application"
4. R&D will become more reliat on acedemic partnerships than ever before

Thinks we have been totally wrong... not growing by 20-30%... growing 20-30 times instead... in regards
to Databases, computing power, etc.

Can't turn back to test tubes and previous ways of researching, tech is here to stay

J&J Research Areas
- Knowledge
- Data
- Communication
- Media
- Grid Computing
- Academic Partnerships

When caputuring infomration from a study... facial expressions and other forms of observation
would be key vs. just hearng their words

Grid computing... not just relaying a little information... tell all the other like components as well
so that they can utilize the information

REsearch Goals
- Push the boundaries of technology and how we think about it!
- Focus on content first, then technology
- Solve J&J's toughest computing challenges
- Bridge the gap between J&J scientific researc needs and the computing abilities it requires
- Central coordination point to further J&J objectives in relationships with acdemia
- Transfer research lessons and successes to production

Almost all scientists ar elooking at things that cannot be delivered by todays technology

Baby steps are important... get out the work before achieving BIG milestones if it makes sense

However...
- Eventually, we have to touch technology
- And its not simple stuf...
- If it was simple, we'd be out of a job!

So what's wrong with teh technology?
- Its not so advanced, because we have more ideas about what we want it to do, then it can do
- Technology vendors just don't get it

Cisco has 10s of 1000s of settings to just move packets from one palce to another

Technology is extremely complex...
Takes a $100k a year employee to configure linux... just pay Microsoft the $30.

Realized the J&J Office production network wasn't the place for research

J&J built a seperate network for research

Joined Internet2 for research activities

Advanced Networking
Preparing for extreme J&J data needs in the future
- It's the research of data to prepare JJ for our future needs
- Invesigation into J&J data needs within the 2-10 year time frame
- Includes the generation, movement, storage, and archiving of data
- Significant focus on performance: both bandwidth and latency
- Its about making bandwidth irrelevant

Next generation applications don't work at all instead of being "its slow"
80ms or less RTT or the app doesn't run

Internet2 Consortium
- Efford to duplicate original successes of the original Internet
- Members include: 185 universities, 50 corps, 5 gov agencies (add 5-10% for dated numbers)
- J&J Focus is partnerships first, then technology
- It's the best computing laboratory and test bed in existence
- J&J directly influences architectures

Download of "The Matrix" DVD
171 hours 56k modem
74 hours ISDN
25 hours DSL/Cbale
6.4 hours T1
30 seconds Internet2

Grid Computing Research
- It will power th vision of scientific comuting in the future
- Intelligent devices commuinicating with powerful processords, research instruments, and huge data archives
- ALl linked by super fast networks and advanced software
- Grids will be as easy to use as the web
- And as convientient as turning on your kitchen faucet to get water

Scientific Office of the Future
- A complete reefiniation of about how scientists work
- Fulle teleimmersive experience
- Allow advanced tech to be used in any space, not just dedicated ones
- Vision and mechanism for testing research successes
- Currently creating a protoype immersion cubicle
-- Walls of cube are screens, etc.
- It's a full virtual collaborative environment
- Integrated display technology
- High speed network access
- Integfrated..... missed it... integrating data/voice/video sharing with other spaces

High-Definition
- Used as a source of extreme amounts of data for research
- Investigation as a scientific and marketing visualization tool
- Upgrade of scientific sinstruments and future products to support and output HD
- Upgradeing collaboration space to support high-def quality

Bandwidth Medical Lessons
- J&J Highest LAN speed .... 100mb
- Digital radiology of the chest ... 200mb
- Mammography ... 1600mb
- MRI study ... 2000mb
4D MRI ... 80 Terabytes

END SPEAKER

THINK ABOUT THE CONTENT!!! NOT THE TECHNOLOGY!!!

eHealth: Blending health and technology
by: Alex R. Jadad, MD Dphil FRPC
Director, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation

HMO's only care about who is going to pay for it...
Who's going to pay for it if there is a problem?

Ego's Money and Control .... that's why we're not adopting

Life outside of hospitals is changing and advancing...

Most hospitals though are not advancing as quickly

New New, new problems?
- Most people in North America have access to the Internet
- Most poeople would like tuse the Internet to communicate with the health system
- Few, if any, institutions use the Internet to communicate with people
- How could it be made viable now?
- Will Internet-based communciation enahnace quality of care and satisfction?
- Can elxecontic communoication be effective?

Falcrum and Deloitte surveyed 1200 physicians in the US, in October and Novemeber of 2001 by telephone
- 95% had access to the Internet, mostly through dial-up (30% had PDAs)
- 23% had interacted with patients by email (19% in 2000)
- 48% would never communicate with patients through the Internet
- 12% had access to an electronic health record (33% not interested at all)

Patients are very willing to use online
- concerned have concerns about confidentiality
- most used for Presecription refills and booking appointments ****

Healthcare providers are somewhat willing to use
MAYBE they'd use it....

www.wileytoons.com (string and cans to "Network Service" center piece...

"Doesn't matter how many fancy things we have... if they don't get used we've wasted our lives."

What are the incentives to use technology... that is where the increase comes in

50% of americans are health-illiterate .... half of which are caucasian

"Internal Computing" ... maybe IC needs a new name ... INSIDE your body. :)

"How can we have fun, change the world, and make money at the same time?"

END SPEAKER

Tiny Stories Workshop
Got to make a small display unit with 1.5 bits

END WORKSHOP

Embracing Change - Media Lab Update
by: Walter Bender, Media Lab Director

NOthing stated...

Overview and Proposal for a "Place Lab"
Changing Places: A Joint Media Lab + Dept. of Arch Consortium
by: Kent Larson, Director of Changing Places Consortium

Buildings: Permanent
Life & Technology: Change

Archiectecture:
Places <- Technology

Media Lab:
Technology -> Places

House_n Program
n is a variable, no single solution

Previous Visionary Archs
Fuller
Gropus

Home of the future centers of:
Health Care
Energy Production
Commerce

Future Process of a couple building a house:
Play Design Games Online (10 years)
Preference Engine, gathers information
A design engineer generates proposals for the couple

Web Based Design Tools
CNC Mass Customization
Rapid Field Assembly

Creating an Agile and Modular environment is key to be able to rapidly change

Digitally tagged computers
Sensor arrays
knowing where people and what they want

The home reflects the needs and values of its occupants

House_n portion:
New design tools
(for democatization of ARchitecture)

New ways of building
(inttegrated components accomodating change)

Connecting anything, anywhere, anytime... :)

Chassis based wiring and such

Hybrid lighting as a utility

New Technologies
(tech in contect of "place")

Anywhere display: project laster drawn or images anywhere to tell people
such things as, unplug this, this costs .04/minute

Emergent materials
(high performance, Net_0 Energy)

Why should tech companies be interested:
2.3B/year on Residential Broadband
30.8B/year Home Computers
368B/year Home Improvement and Residential Construction!!!

Changing Places "Places":
The Home (House_n)
The Workplace (Agile Workplace)
The City (Urban Narratives)

How does Changing Places study all of this??
PLACE LAB
This is research, not prototyping

Testing of Infrastrucure:
"Plug and Play" Architecture
Digital Infrastrucutre
fINE Grainged Sensing
Ubitquitous displays

Testing with People:
Preventive Health, etc.
Interface
Models of Behavior
Technology in Context of real life place
Just-in-time information, delivering the right message at the right time in the right way

Why not a research facility to study life at home?

Why not build a community of Place Labs? -- working on it, with:
Finland (Energy and Wireless)
Korea (High Density Urban Housing)
Portugal (Application to older buildings)

END SPEAK

Bits and Atoms
by: Prof: Neil Gershenfeld

Breaking grounding building for the Media Lab (awesome building to be added on beside it)

The Center for Bits and Atoms housed there
Digital Logic was a bad idea
Bugs will have programs
Engineers will not design complex systems
Furture of personal compution is personal fabrication
Most advanced technologies are needed in the least-developed countries

The Home of the Future:
Your house just crashed (OK)

Building a network of swtiches/lights/etc...
ID tags are physical moved to associate
Physical is RS-432 wiring

Killer app for smart buildings... is the buildability and agility

http://www.media.mit.edu/physics

END SPEAKER

Materials
By: John Fernandex, Building Technologies program of Dept of Architecture

No reason to consider material science is going to deliver to architects and they get used
What works is Arch/Materials/Engineer are all working together to meet needs

Fabric walls? allows weaving of cable, etc into the there...
materials shipped to site not 4x8 like today, but instead as 8x300 yards

Deploying fabrics for emergency egress from buildings...
utilizing a fire resistant fabric to have an alternate means to escape from buildings
folds up inside of building, extends as needed

Facade Lab: bring in constant changes for the facade... armiture to hold the facade is the only
permanent piece

END SPEAKER

Persuasive Environments
by: Stephen Intille

Health Care Crisis
Pay More
Ration Care
Help People stay healthy
- Longer
- Outside the (costly) system

Energy Crisis...
linked to above

CAn technology motivate behavior change in
- Home
- Workplace
- City

Point of Decision Messaging
Key to motivating behavior change:
- Message
- TImeing
- Placement

POwerful evidence that messages do motivate

Technology is coming available, that new stuff is coming to help deliver message at the right time

Examples:
Posting a message on meter reading... 18% less energy used
blue light on AC to let folks know when it is cool enough outside to open windows... 15% reduction in AC use

simple message about taking stairs instead of escalators...
4-7% average take stairs, put sign up about heart needing it... 8-14% instead

Reason these works... Simple message at the right time at the right place, in a non-disruptive way

Link advice with activity:
doing above right things...

BIG impact:
20% energy
large preventive health

Object Tracking:
tracking eople a objects to help determine "when"
multi-camera system
easy setup
designed for component system
designed with portability in mind

Image based Experience Sampling
Let's the user make decisions on what needs to change few review of images

See how we can use context to make people make changes.

END SPEAKER

a picture of health
by: Brian Smith
http://web.media.miut.edu/~bsmith/cp.ppt

imagery & learning
Changing people from "listening to the narrator" to writing their own narration to really learn it

imagery & diabetes
wow... first diabetes meter was in egypt... urinate on an anthill, if the ants came out to "eat and drink"
then you had diabetes thanks to all the sugar collecting

END SPEAKER

by: Sandy Pentland

too much, Big Brother feeling if devices are in the environment...
devices on a person is a lot less "big brother"

what can you put on a body that is on and with you all the time...
knows a lot:
- when you go to the bathroom
- when you are walking
- etc...

How do you use the mobile devices in order to communicate back...

"High Roller"
manic, depressive, bi-polar, etc... doesn't come to attention of med professionals sooner
You can listen to voice in order to determine if there are manic/depression
identify bi-polar in order to recognize the change and catch it before the full swing occurs

"Topic Identifier"
ID topics that are being discussed

"Activity Monitor"
accelerometer are cheap and small
can tell if running/walking/etc.

"Social Interactions"
who do you talk to
what is your affect when you do talk to them (happy, scared, etc)
helps looking at social

Kids game to teach them about diabetes... have them bet on their and others glucose level...
they have to learn about glucose (and hince control) in order to win

END SPEAKER

Lifelong Kindergarten
by: Mitchel Resnick

See previous days topic

Personalizing what is to be learned...
Kids:
- Pet gerbil activities at night... Mouse House with Lego Brick to track him
- Odomoeter on Roller blades
- Security system for diary

END SPEAKER

Fabricating Rules
by: Larry Sass

Lots and lots of images of creating rules to be applied without hard copy blueprints
Check out Pallido (spelling?) rules for building by rules

END SPEAKER

Customize Mass Housing: A Challenge to Design and Production
by: Jose Duarte

Application of rules to allow a person to put their needs for automated creation of their house to
meet their specific needs

END SPEAKER

Design OnDemand (DoD)
by: Jarmo Suominen

users don't want choises; they just want exactly what they want (Joseph Pine)

Helskinki apartment maker... much like the car industry's build your car

END SPEAKER

WORK: The Agile Workplace

Postal Services using TOWER and CRICKET
by: Bakhtiar Mikhak

Same as previous day presentation

END SPEAKER

by: Michael Joroff

Looking at the agile workplace for 2 years

Killer App: look at work, try to undertand how it is being done
Self-concious of situated place/technology/culture and relationshipsbetween them
Frequently people worked with, they don't tell any body what they do.
Most groups don't think about what it is they do

Most times people simplify what it is they do, "Collaboration" doesn't answer what the needs are

Have to observe and really understand work, represent it in the physical piece

Basic mindset to where they are going:
1. Work is the fundamental is the basis to create workplace
- NOT creating a cool space etc.
2. Workplace is a bundle of service, Physical, connectivity, etc.
3. Work is situated
- Tools
- Places
- Culture
4. Subject to continuous change
5. Agility: a mindset is a way that work is managed, not just flexible
6. Work is no longer place based, can be broadly distributed now

Purpose:
1. evaulate th effectives of new tech when work places change
2. improve the application of technology; unless the tech is fit into the culture of the place it fails
3. apply technology from one work place to another work place (ie: voice loop from black boxes to others)
4. really understand the work, in order to come with new suggestions for tech application
5. Look at three things in LABORATORIES, must know the work there first:
- obersvation
- modeling
- re-situation

END SPEAKER

Urban Narratives: Making the City Speak
by: Gregory Beck from "Architecture + Experienced Design"

What are Urban NArratives?
- Stories create PLACES
- INTERPERTATION, not Data
- Technology as TRANSLATOR

Demonstration Project 2002:
Boston's Freedom Trail
- Bringing narrative content and infomration to civic places
- First "Urban Laborartory ...
- First pieces as a PDA tour

Using PDA's have interpretive media for:
- Historical Narratives
- Commercial Narratives
- Current Events
- Where you arein the city
- something else....

All sounds like a guidebook... speaker says "This is not a guidebook"

Urban Narratives: What ar ethe consequiences?
- Increase visitor length of stay
- Establishes a conversation among people, place, and culture
past... person
future... person
place .... persoin
person ... person
- Impacts every level of commercial activity
urban infrastructure
retail
visitor industries
mobile electonics

END SPEAKER

Urban Narratives/Media in the City
Continuing topic from above, but in Seoul Korea
by: Dennis Frenchman

Seoul: Digital Media City
DMC portion of the city is being designed to take into consideration of
the current Korean city environment
for example, large central pedestrian street to gather like always, while cars
have mo efficient straight street and ave's.

END SPEAKER

by: Glorianna Davenport
see previous days notes

END SPEAKER

by: David Cavallo
see previous days notes

END SPEAKER