The 1998-99
Perspectives Series
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October 20
Professor Barry Vercoe
"Downloading a Piano, a Few Tunes, and a Friend"
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November 10
Professor Rosalind Picard
"Affective Computing"
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February 23
Professor Pattie Maes
"Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce"
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March 30
Nicholas Negroponte
Jerome B. Wiesner
Professor of Media
Technology
"How to Build a Media Lab"
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April 27
Christopher Schmandt
"Get the Message?"
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Members of the
MIT Media Laboratory
discuss their work
The Media Laboratory
Bartos Theater
Wiesner Building,
Lower Level
20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Tuesdays
5:00-6:00 pm
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Today we can build convincing digital models of the acoustic processes
that constitute most musical instruments, and can send these over the
Internet as "instruments" to be played at remote sites. Using these models,
we can orchestrate old tunes or create new ones. And by examining how
humans interact in collaborative music performances, we can predict enough
about their behavior to overcome the time lags normally found in Internet
communication. This talk is about the new world of computer-assisted music
performance, and why being alone and without your drum-kit is no longer a
viable excuse for not jamming.
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New research is giving computers the ability to recognize, express, and
in some cases "have" emotions. The emphasis is on emotional intelligence,
which can be more important than traditional mathematical and verbal skills
in developing computers that are truly responsive to people. This talk will
focus on recent efforts to enable computers to recognize human expressions
of interest, frustration, and confusion, and will include examples of
"affective wearable computers" that assist us in learning about emotion.
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In the past, software agents have been used succesfully to filter
information, match people with similar interests, and automate repetitive
behavior. More recently, the capabilities of agents have been applied to
electronic commerce, promising a revolution in the way we conduct
transactions, whether business to business, consumer to business, or
consumer to consumer. This talk will survey the technologies being
developed, as well as some of the socioeconomic issues involved, such as
trust, reputation, security, and value-based marketing.
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Fly in the face of established thinking. Be prepared to constantly
reinvent yourself. Believe nothing is impossible. Have a healthy disrespect
for authority. Celebrate differences. And remember that common wisdom is
just that, common. Why are we without clones? What is so unique about MIT's
and America's culture that it can breed non-profit entrepreneurs? In spite
of extraordinary local and global support, the very nature of the Media Lab
is cause for dyspepsia in both academic and industrial circles. The biggest
challenge is not to become the establishment.
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We use a wealth of advanced communications technologies to be constantly
reachable by those we care about; but we'd prefer this accessibility
without the ever-present junk mail and wrong numbers. This talk will focus
on new solutions to this dilemma: dynamic message- filtering systems that
use personal information to route "timely" messages via an appropriate
channel; speech interfaces that allow remote, mobile access to messages;
unobtrusive, audio wearable computers that allow graceful, adaptive, and
location-specific alerting to incoming messages; and devices and interfaces
for interacting with voice as data.
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