Over the past two decades, Prof. Gupta (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) has built a large social network, the Honey Bee Network, to recognize, respect, and reward grassroots innovators. The Honey Bee network has demonstrated that by building upon a resource in which poor people are rich—their knowledge— new paradigm of development can be unleashed.

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Audio communication research to date has been primarily dominated by work in the areas of speech recognition, transmission and compression, synthesis, computer music theory, and some music information retrieval. Looking at many research laboratories and universities, we tend to find audio processing groups focusing exclusively on the above areas.

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In this talk, Paul Mijksenaar will demonstrate his ideas on the strong role of architecture for wayfinding (spatial) criteria and, accordingly, the task of the signage's (verbal) criteria. In addition, he will discuss the challenges and opportunities of dynamic signage with active interfaces.

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Corporations have well-refined methods of product development, brand development, management, production, and more. All of these are important elements of standard business models via which firms function, and seek to grow and profit.

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The capacity to transform is a trait of all living organisms. In his talk, Chuck Hoberman will demonstrate how designed objects can behave like organisms, transforming their size and shape in a complete, continuous manner. Hoberman will speak about his theory of transformability, and describe his work in deployable shelters, consumer products and medical instruments.

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This exhibition at the MIT Museum explores the social potential of new communication technologies. Art installations and research projects by the Sociable Media Group challenge visitors to think about the rapidly changing world of social interaction and the ramifications for the future. Avatar chairs, data portraits and an immersive information cityscape are just some of the exciting aspects of this new exhibition.

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The nature of construction has remained intensely manual throughout recorded history. Unlike in manufacturing, the growth of automation in construction has been slow. A promising new automation approach is Contour Crafting (CC). Invented by Behrokh Khoshnevis, Contour Crafting is a mega-scale fabrication process aiming at automated construction of whole structures as well as subcomponents. The potential of CC became evident from investigations and experiments with materials and geometries.

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The Media Lab (E15) invites the MIT community to dream and design engaging augmentations to its interior space using elements of the outdoor natural environment. Interior space (public and private) and resources ($2-10K) will be allocated to top-seeded projects. On 1/26, David Small and Joe Paradiso will present, and there will be a charrette of short-listed projects. The selected projects will be announced at the end of January.

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This lecture will examine the ways games are influencing the future of business, and especially the future of banking. Among other topics, Mollick will cover the use of games for financial literacy and education, user experience design, increasing motivation and performance, and collective innovation and problem solving.

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Bart Hopkin will talk about musical instruments and sound, with the following question as a starting point: to what extent do musicians—composers, improvisers, and instrument makers—seek mastery and control over the sounds they produce; or, conversely, to what extent do they knock about in a world of existing sound possibilities, making the most of what they happen to find?

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