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HOST:
MIT Communications Forum




What’s New at the Media Lab?
March 1, 2007
5:00 PM

LOCATION:
3-270



   
Video Time Index
What’s New at the Media Lab?

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SPEAKER:
Frank Moss
Director, MIT Media Lab
Professor of the Practice of Media Arts and Sciences
Jerome B. Wiesner Professorship of Media Technology
SPEAKER:
Adam Boulanger SM ‘06
SPEAKER:
Ryan Chin MA '00, SM '04
Ph.D. Candidate, and Research Assistant, Smart Cities Group, Media Lab
SPEAKER:
Hartmut Geyer
EU Marie Curie Fellow, Postdoctoral Affiliate, Biomechatronics Group, Media Lab
Locomotion Lab, Institute of Sports Science, University of Jena, Germany
SPEAKER:
Henry Jenkins
Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities
Director of Comparative Media Studies Program


SPEAKERS:
Frank Moss: Director, MIT Media Lab
Moss's Media Lab website

Adam Boulanger SM ‘06:
Boulanger's Media Lab website

Ryan Chin MA '00, SM '04: Ph.D. Candidate, and Research Assistant, Smart Cities Group, Media Lab
Chin's MIT profile

Hartmut Geyer: EU Marie Curie Fellow, Postdoctoral Affiliate, Biomechatronics Group, Media Lab
Geyer's University of Jena website

Henry Jenkins: Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities
Director of Comparative Media Studies Program
Jenkins' website
Education Arcade site

ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Under new leadership, MIT’s Media Lab has shifted gears significantly. This forum gives viewers a sense of the Lab’s current priorities, via an overview by the director and three student presentations.

Frank Moss initially laughed at the headhunter aiming to recruit him to the Media Lab, but reconsidered after reflecting on his kids’ pointed comments: “You’ve sold software to fat, white guys in IT departments all your life. When are you going to give something back to society?”

In conversation with Henry Jenkins, Moss describes his vision of “inventing a better future, in which technology can impact people at a deeper level, beginning with people who are disabled, disadvantaged, or disenfranchised.” Targeting these groups will lead to inventions that impact society as a whole, believes Moss.

Moss hopes Lab researchers will develop designs that enable more intimate interactions between humans and technology; that open up new ways for creativity and learning to change our lives; and that allow for a rethinking and simplification of “common elements in our environment.”

He introduces three young exemplars of the Media Lab’s new focus. Adam Boulanger uses “facilitative technologies to break the mold,” by handing music composition software to severely disabled patients in a Tewksbury, Massachusetts hospital. Hyperscore, says Boulanger, has enabled “new modes of interaction, new social interactions and empowerment” among patients with psychiatric disorders, spina bifida, and Alzheimer’s disease. He’s working on broadening this software to provide useful interventions in autism, and to detect cognitive decline.

Ryan Chin’s research focuses on ways to complement the increasing density of the world’s cities with appropriate car design. City Car is a two-passenger electric vehicle that folds up (to four feet) so it can be conveniently stacked in small spaces in city centers and neighborhoods, and at commuter stations. Think shopping cart, says Chin. The concept challenges fundamental ideas of car ownership and function, since it’s “more a computer on wheels,” says Chin and is intended for shared, community use. But 504 of these vehicles fit on a city block that normally can accommodate only 82 parked cars, and when stationary, these cars can return some of their energy back to the grid.

Biomechanical devices represent perhaps the ultimate in human-machine interaction. Hartmut Geyer works on ankle and knee prostheses, applying an understanding of the human gait -- the nerve signals and muscle actions required to move in different ways -- to create more responsive devices for amputees. Signals from the residual limb of the amputee tell the prosthesis how to respond during a particular activity like walking upstairs. Eventually, says Geyer, electrodes may be implanted into nerve fibers so that the brain can directly control the prosthesis, or the prosthesis can send signals to sensory fibers “so maybe the amputee wearing it can feel what he’s stepping on—maybe sand, maybe concrete.”

Download this video at Apple's iTunesU site

NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:53:12.

Henry Jenkins introduces the forum, and then engages Frank Moss in a conversation about the history and new goals of the Lab. Jenkins begins by asking Moss how he came to be director of the Media Lab.

At 1:09. Moss describes his background and start at the Media Lab.

At 35:00, Moss provides the “big picture” of the Lab, and introduces student exemplars of the Lab’s goals. The three students provide video clips of their work.

At 38:00, Adam Boulanger begins.

At 51:58, Ryan Chin begins.

At 1:10:44, Hartmut Geyer begins.

At 1:21:29, Jenkins invites audience questions.

The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2007-04-30.
       

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