>> Hi everybody. And welcome to a slightly different format
conversation series. For those of you on Twitter, we do the stream,
which you'll see, but we have a hashtag, mltalks, and we have a
question and answer audience section at the end so if you tweet
#mltalks we'll look for questions. If they're interesting, we'll ask to
the group. This is a subset of what we call at the Media Lab the
Director's Fellows. The Director's Fellows is a program that I started
when I got here and was trying to increase the diversity of the
places that we impact from the Media Lab, but also try to increase
the diversity of the inputs that we have into the lab and so there's an
already a great deal of diversity at the Media Lab, but there's sort of
a category of people that wouldn't come to the lab normally as
researchers, faculty or students and I was trying to figure out a way
to get them involved. We created this thing called the Director's
Fellows program. It's hard to define exactly how we pick the fellows
but one of the definitions is that all of the Fellows none of the
Fellows are like any of the other ones, so when somebody asks how
do you pick a Fellow? Well, it's somebody like we wouldn't normally
have at the lab that isn't like any of the other fellows, but there's also
kind of a collaborative nature that all of the fellows have and part of
what the fellows are trying to help us with is to connect to the lab
but we often find, I find sometimes two students sitting next to each
other with solutions to each other's problems and sometimes they
(indiscernible) meet, and sometimes they don't and the fellows bring
a lot of context on the lab that actually has with find actually
brings groups and students together as well. We've been doing a lot
of workshops and retreats in the places that the fellows are like in
Detroit or in Nairobi or other places but we also invite the fellows to
come to the Media Lab. MIT in January has this thing called IAP,
which all of you know but it's the independent activities period,
where depends who you are but generally it's a period where you
don't have classes where people can work on projects and people
can teach each other things but generally students are here mostly
and can do interesting things. So we invited a bunch of the fellows
here to interact with the students and to do workshops and teach us
and learn and so we have some of the new fellows the stage. So
these are fellows that haven't given talks at the Media Lab on the
stage before and we want to give them a chance to make short
presentations and interact and then later we'll bring some of the
other fellows up but maybe we'll start I guess we've been rolling
bios but we'll start with Maurice and then I'll add to the bio later
maybe if he doesn't fill it in himself. I'll let you go.
>> Thanks, Joi. My name is Maurice Ashley. I'm an International Grandmaster
of Chess. The question is often asked how can you
make science cool? It's often asked in places like
this and I guess the arrogant scientist will answer it's already cool.
I don't have to make it cool and the same thing is said about Chess.
You know, Chess is not exactly considered your jock sport,
but I'm a Chess player and I know Chess is cool because
I grew up in Brooklyn where we play Chess and we had a hard style.
There was a lot of trash talking involved. Your ego would actually
it's best not to have an ego because you're going to get
your feelings hurt if you're playing Chess in the hood with guys
playing for money and trash talking and blowing smoke in your face
and talking about do you have a sister?
So, I grew up with an attitude around Chess and then I took t
hat to the world of international Chess where I do commentary for
Chess and my style leans towards the trash talking, non traditional
kind of commentary, and I'm also coaching lot of kids with national
championships from central Harlem and the like. What I'm doing
here at the lab is a project called D view and it's centered around a
tournament that I ran called the Millionaire Chess Open. The
Millionaire Chess Open was the first open tournament let's see if I
can get this to come up the first million dollar open tournament in
history. It was held until Las Vegas, and it featured some of the top
players in the world. This was a big deal in Chess because a million
dollars had never been given away in Chess before and you can see
even some little kids playing it, going after that money. No little kids
won the money by the way but they came dressed to impressed.
Talk about cool in Chess. These kids were definitely cool. You saw
young Justus Williams here on the left. Round one he beat Sergei
Azarov of Belarus, Grandmaster. That was quite a sensation for the
tournament. There was T. Moore Agreov (indiscernible) and his I
guess that's his cool face. Also, of course, there was a lot of drama
in Chess. There's a lot of intensity when you lose a game. Here
David Berczes of Spain, he ended up losing his game that would
have taken him to the million dollar round, and it was just quite
devastated at the end of the day. So a lot of emotion as we we
filmed all of, of course. These were the four finalists. Two from
China, one from the Philippines on the lower right and Ray Robson
at the top. The eventual winner was Wesley So who won $100,000
first place and it was quite an event in the world of Chess. Now what
made this different was that we had made the broadcast like a
sports broadcast. As you see here, we had commentators, who
were young, dynamic, interesting and we would talk about the game
in ways that your grandfather might not talk about it. But we also
had a team of people behind them and critically from the lab Greg
Borenstein, who works in Kevin Slavin's Playful Systems Group and
Greg was really the genius behind a lot of the technology that broke
down the players. We had a lot of this based on this Deep View
Program that he created that we worked on to create together.
Basically, bringing computational tools to somehow better explain
Chess. Like how could we get the average person who knew nothing
at all about Chess to get inside the minds of a Grandmaster and
maybe think like a Grandmaster and see what a Grandmaster sees
and so there were a lot of questions that we had that we tried to get
a good solution to. How do you describe different players' styles.
That's a very intriguing thing, but how do you do it computationally.
How can you describe the matchup between two players that you
think will player A win the game, will player B win the game based on
their styles, based on their past histories. We were able to take
750,000 games from a database, and breakdown all of the
tendencies of individual players, players inside of openings, set
positions, end games, all that. How do you take that data and start
making predictions. Now it happened quite a bit that when we were
on set, Greg would use the deep blue, crunch through some
numbers and the numbers would say White has a 92% chance of
winning, and the Grandmaster commentators would go that's a
terrible number. That can't be right and then it worked out in the end
that White did win the game, and they'd say yeah, well, you know, it's
just kind of rounding. I would never have given a 92%. In fact the
numbers sometimes would go at 100%, and they would say no,
c'mon, a guy can make a mistake and then it would happen that the
win did occur and they'd slowly but surely have to come around to
the fact that this technology was working quite well. So we try to
even get down to player personalities, which I thought was a little bit
scary but you could see based on factors in the game who was a
risk taker? Who was much more careful? The way they played the
game? Who wanted to have a safe king versus the people who didn't
care. They just wanted to attack and crush you. So all of those
things we started taking into effect, determining odds between two
players. If a higher ranking player, played a low ranking player, what
were the odds? That was another question we had, and then and
prediction, a victory as well. So we use all this data. We crunched all
of these numbers with the goal of trying to bring this game, this is a
1500 year old game that most people think is like studying rocket
science and make it cool, make it simple, make it clear to the viewer.
That's the work we're doing now. That's the work we'll continue to do
and the Millionaire Chess Open number two, version two, is going to
happen again in October and we're going to keep refining this and
see if we can answer that age old question, can you make Chess
cool? Thank you.
[Applause]
>> So, one of the things that I think MIT and we found really interesting
that it's unclear whether you find interesting
but what we find really interesting is we have a lot of
work at MIT and also at the Media Lab around artificial intelligence
and machine learning, and if you look at the history of Chess, there
was a period when there was a big deal that computers, a computer,
Deep Blue, beat Kasparov, and that sort of changed the face of
Chess, and then were some studies later that Kevin often talks
about where a group of non Grandmasters with some computers
were actually able to beat a computer. Human used to be the best.
Then computer was the best, but then turns out human with
computers is stronger than either one of those two, but when you
think about this and there's an area of artificial intelligence that
Karthik in our lab works a little bit, which is human in a loop
computation. So the idea is how can you integrate human beings in
the training of the eyes, and does that make it better and I'm asking
other people have sort of I guess Lord Martin Reese and others
have said artificial intelligence is an existential threat to mankind
and they're afraid that we're going to have an AI that takes over the
world. I'm kind of arguing that it's actually some probably
combination of human beings and the eyes is optimal in that I don't
know whether human beings end up being the random number
generator for the AI or whether we're in charge but they'll probably
still need us around and I think that relationship between man and
machine is a really interesting space and what I think is neat and the
conversation you had with like because Greg's not a Grandmaster
right. He's not like an awesome Chess player but the ability for him
to interact with you guys and then create a tool that could make it
better or more capable is because he's currently the machine i
nterface for the AI. I don't know if we've talked about it a little bit
but I wondered can you imagine what you're working on here
becoming because you were commentating right. Can you
imagine a super Chess player, which would be a combination of the
kind of tools that you were working on before doing the
commentary to play Chess?
>> Well, I think it's funny because Greg really usually he's
he really is not a Chess player. He would just put some stuff up and
I'd say no that's not even legal, but then when he finally understood
what I was talking about or he put the right position up
and he'd generate something it's like wow that stuff is good, and then
I would be saying maybe we should hide some of this stuff.
I can use it later. But it is the case that the human working
with a computer is the thing, with the algorithm is the thing and for
Chess commentary it's essential. You almost look like fools when
you do commentary without an engine because the Grandmaster is
busy expounding all of these great ideas, blah, blah, blah, in the
meantime, the engine is saying dude it's mate and eight. You don't
see it. The guy's going to die and you really should be looking at that
and any idiot online with an engine can see more than a
Grandmaster, who's just casually talking about the game. So it's
important that we integrate these two so that we're more accurate
in our assessments. That we just don't talk off the top of our heads
thinking just because we're experts we know better, but it is also the
case that sometimes the engines, there's a lot of gray area where
the engines can't predict what's going to happen and yet the human
eye picks up really fast the pattern and says yeah, I know what
should happen. I can't compute it and prove it but from my intuition,
from my experience, from my knowledge this is the direction that
you're going, and that interface is still there and is critical. I don't
know how that's going to change in 50 years or 20 years even, but
that's still great space for us.
>> How much of what you are doing when you're playing is looking
at the board versus looking at the player? Because I
can imagine the computer's really good at analyzing all of the
different possible plays, and maybe even looking at historically where
this person is, but I remember Kevin was telling me that you
were looking at the moves of a kid that you were
teaching and you said do you skip breakfast? Because you look like
you're hungry the way you play and that by looking at the move that
he made you were able to tell whether he had breakfast or not.
>> That psychological element is big in Chess.
It's funny. yours may be the correct move and then they may be the
move that wins you the game. So if I'm playing against a player
and I know he or she doesn't like crazy positions,
wow, exotic situations that are hard to compute, it may not be
the best move but it's the move that I should play because
just in this moment I know this player doesn't like that, and
an engine might say what are you doing? You're risking everything
here, but I need to if I'm going to beat this particular player. So the
inside into the opponent is 90% of Chess at the highest level
because the correct move may not work. It may just be too easy.
>> So if I imagine the best Chess player in the period
where we have computers that are augmenting you
in some way. Like you're using right now half your brain for computation,
if not more. You're pulling up old data. You're analyzing moves.
If you didn't have to do any of that and you had a computer
that somehow plugged into your brain and did all of that computation,
all of that database stuff, you could focus a lot more on how you think
the other person's feeling and make it more like a sport right?
>> Absolutely, and they do that kind of Chess where they combine
the two. It's funny people think that we're, as Grandmasters, computing
machines. Like we're looking at all of these moves and I tell this
one little nugget if you may. After the first four moves in Chess,
the very first four, there are 318 billion possibilities to arrive
at those first four. 318 billion. I can't calculate 318 billion.
I'd like to pretend that I could and it makes me a super Grandmaster,
but I can't. I can only limit my view of possibilities and
to the window that makes sense to me and to the players. So I
might make mistakes along the way, and we do. We make stupid
mistakes and we admit we can't deal with the computational side. If
you have that, and then you're able to play, it's a whole different
Chess game, and we've seen that just get elevated now at Chess
into the stratosphere because of the arrival of these great
algorithms that can play so well.
>> That's really interesting. I mean because I think that having you
work with our AI machine learning people it's really interesting because
I think a lot of what we think about the brain is really
different from how the brain actually works and having somebody
that has the brain that works in a certain way, helping us teach the
computer, is maybe a lot more interesting than having people just kind
of build the algorithms without really understanding how
Grandmaster thinks, and I think that training the AI and building
the algorithms together would be something we hope we can keep working on. So, thank you.
>> Well, it's pretty humbling for me too, because the AI shows
you how stupid you are. >> Good. [Laughter]
>> But it's a great experience.
>> Thanks, Maurice. Next (indiscernible).
>> So, I'm had a pretty interesting experience with social media
in the Middle East, and if you consider a lot of things take a lot of
time to happen in the Middle East, but with social media there
was an explosion of ideas and of protests, demonstrations,
people coming out, wanting to change things. If you recall in 2009
in the summer, there was the green revolution in Iran.
Social media was so popular that, and so essential in the use
in the days of the green revolution that Hillary Clinton herself, her
office called the headquarters here in San Francisco and asked
them to delay maintenance because people were using social
media to communicate with each other. It was underestimated even
by the American you know, by the Americans who actually
invented this new kind of experience. For me, I was always
interested in what's real and what's not real online. I was interviewed
by a few journalists. They went. They misquoted me. Then on social
media things come out. The truth always ends up coming up. So I'll
give you a couple of examples here. So during the Arab spring, for
example, you had ideas that were formulated in closed
environments. There was a Facebook page that was created. Again,
not the public it was a semi-public space, but it ended up having
monumental and significant effects the real world. So you had a
group of Egyptians who came together, decided that January f25
was an important date. That was actually police day and they said
you know what, the police take their day off on Jan 25, and let's go
out and demonstrate. People will think we're celebrating the police,
however, we are actually going to start a major protest movement
and so lo and behold an idea that was formulated in a closed
environment goes out and actually ends up toppling a dictator of 30
years. So this social media, by the way, is a two edged sword. Just
like these ideas are formulated for good. They're also being good by
extremists for bad. So it's very important to make sure that we don't
lose track of this power that social media has, and how rumors and
how lies and how sometimes hateful comments and inciteful, or not
inciteful, but speech, hate speech does not in the end make its way
to the real world. Let me see. I mean this is one of the most
memorable tweets I had of the Jan 25 uprising where, you know, it
was a very emotional day because I don't know if you know the
geography of Cairo, the museums, the grand museum in Egypt, the
Egyptian museum is right in the middle of the protest and so some
people were worried that people would jump in and imagine there's
no security. The police have been withdrawn from the streets and so
you have this building that's not guarded. That has some of the
treasures of the world. people might jump in, but what the Egyptians
actually did is they reported this online and so Egyptians went and
they formed a human chain of several hundred people, and
protected the treasures of the museum so this is an example of the
use of social media for good. So the idea went viral. People rushed
to the museum and saved priceless treasures. So, there's ups and
downs. There's days that you think you're doing well but then there
are days that you end up realizing that, you know, your hopes aren't
really going to come to fruition. Now it's important to also to use the
social media to generate ideas in your own country. So, for example,
I had this article that I published a year and a half ago about
naturalizing expatriates in the country. This was a debate I don't
know if you know about the UAE where I come from. 90% of the
country are foreigners. So there's an article saying it's important to
start thinking about naturalizing these foreigners. I published the
article and it was very, very controversial. So, you know, people
thought that it's almost it's a crazy idea because you're inviting a
large group of people, who have no affinity to your own culture. So,
there were blogs written about it. It actually was published reports
were published. People were writing commentary. There was a
hashtag saying this writer does not represent me as in I don't
represent the general public and I came up with other ideas that I
feel like went viral but also cost me to get these awards such as the
Shoe of the Month award because of I feel like you know, when I
see these things some people think it bothers me but actually it
makes me very happy because I feel like the idea has an effect on
the real world. That people I get so angry and so infuriated that I
can't even show you the other stuff they do about me with the
snakes, but to you get the idea. You actually are able to influence
society. So, you know and I always like to push for these ideas that
people don't talk about. These taboo subjects, whether it was things
that I don't feel comfortable with, but I feel like if they warrant a
debate. For example, this was an interesting discussion. There was
this individual who was, you know, who was harassing me online,
and I always have this ability of turning the other cheek and never
responding. So this person was always using nice adjectives about
me, such as this one, but then after a year and a half turns out that
this person was actually a troll who was finally arrested. So it's
important not to let that's things get the best of you. That you
always keep the bigger picture in mind. Don't let people distract you.
When you have a good idea, go for it. So, yeah. I think I'm pretty
much done here.
[Laughter]
>> I've you've written about a lot of this kind of stuff, but you know,
I think people have a pretty strong impression of the UA
and the Gulf being quite oppressive. I know, for instance,
were Internet censorship this interesting thing I mean it's quite censored.
There's an interesting fact that there are more Nazi
websites blocked in the UAE than in Israel. So they have filters
turned on full blast as far as I can tell. Voice over IP is illegal. So, in
a country like that, you're being I mean first of all, are you a leading
indicator of change, or are you just a maverick rebel in the midst of
a whole bunch of other people who don't do that?
>> I think I'm a bit of both. What's interesting is that a lot of people
assume that the governments in the Gulf,
that they don't subscribe to such ideas.
The issue isn't about believing in this change or believing in
empowerment. The issue is about articulating it. That you risk
alienating your supporters if you start coming up with ideas, such as
empowering women or reform. So it's these things that you have to
introduce them very carefully. You can't come and put them on the
front page news. What you do is you do balloon tests. You have
someone go and talk about it and you see what you gauge public
reaction. So and I also think that it's important to keep in mind in
countries like the Gulf states, two steps forward and a step back is
still a step forward. That even if you feel that you have a bad day or
a bad year or a bad decade that you always believe that next decade
will get better. You always have to have hope, otherwise you get
consumed by the hopelessness and with regards to censorship.
There was a time where Middlesex University was blocked. I'll let
you guess why?
[Laughter]
>> Not because of the word sex by the way. In case you can guess.
>> It is funny also because I heard that Queen was okay in Iran
because they didn't understand the indirect references in his songs.
Anyway, but to get the one thing that I noticed that you
talked about turning the other cheek. I think just reading your
stuff online local conservatives call you whatever they call you,
and then people on the outside will call you Gulf apologist.
So, when you try to play the middle road, which I've done this in
Japan as well. You sometimes get attacked so much from both
ends that it's actually, in total, it's worse than if you were an
extremist right? And actually being in the middle is kind of extreme
to the two extremes right. Can you actually turn the other cheek, and
doesn't it wear you down even
>> It's the only way. And I think trying to get both poles closer
is the only way that you'll actually achieve progress.
You should not let yourself be bogged down by people
who feel that you're wrong. By people who feel that they can
teach you a lesson, and what they do is they send you spam. They
just completely flood your feed. My accounts there's hacking
attempts almost every week. Just last week I had a hacking attempt
on my account. I don't publicize it as much. I try to you know, I try
to be very careful where I say I'm going to be. Only because you can
make enemies even trying to be moderate you can make enemies,
and what's important is you don't let yourself be distracted. In the
end, your end goal has to be your number one priority, and not allow
people from either side to distract you.
>> And what is your end goal?
>> Your end goal is a better tomorrow really. It really is a society
that is always more progressive society that believes has
universal values. Things that we do have in the outer world, except
that we've allowed them to be drowned out by all the talk of you
know, all of the talk you see online that really I feel has hijacked the
conversation from what's important. Human development is i
mportant. Empowering women is important. Human right is important.
Things like this.
>> And when I first met you I think you were a journalist right at the national
was that right?
>> Yes, I used to write for them.
>> And like the only reason I'm poking on this is when we talked with
about journalism. There's also a really interesting thing about
traditional media, at least in the west, is very negative about activist
journalism because we have a bad history with that.
You're now it sounds like you're an activist and not a
journalist. Is that how you would characterize yourself?
>> Not really. I feel like whether
I feel like I'm a person who tries to bring up taboo subjects
that are not really broached, that are not really covered.
I try to I try to be very mindful of how far I can push and I push
as much as I can and then I push a little bit more, and then I
retreat and I see what happens. So generally when I do something, I
post something and I live with it for two days, and then I come back
and I saw that all hell had broken loose for two days and I find this
very amusing for me because I just take it easy and people calling
me and saying what's going on? What have you done on Twitter?
So, it's an interesting life to say the least.
>> But you do you are trying to cause reform to occur in the Gulf.
Would that be a primary motivation?
>> I think reform is happening. I don't think I'm causing it. I think
it's just happening. I'd like to see it happening faster. I'd like to see
it happening in a more inclusive manner. Particularly speaking,
I would like to see it happening in my lifetime, which you
know, sometimes you doubt, especially when I told you this when
you get a step backwards you think what's going on really in the
outer world. During the Arab spring, there was this moment of hope,
but as you see this moment of hope was kind of hijacked by a
number of parties, including violent extremists but does that mean
that your ultimate goal changes, I don't think so. I think this is
exactly why you should continue with calling for whatever you
believe in this situation.
>> And since you broached the fact that you talk about taboo subjects
I hope this isn't taboo but when I talk to people who have worked
in the Gulf they often say probably your generation
your grandparents there was no oil yet, and your parents
there was no air conditioning and now you guys have air conditioning
and oil and your generation are often viewed as either spoiled
or fighting or whatever, and that sort there's this bright
period in the Gulf, in the parent's age, and I think a lot of people are
worried about people in your generation in the rich states. How do
you feel about that and are you an anomaly or is that an overrated problem?
>> I think the measures of success
in the region have changed in the last generation. So measures of
success in the last region was human development in terms of
infrastructure, in terms of so I come from a part of the world where
there was no hospitals, there were no schools. My mom was the very first
teacher in the country, literally the very first teacher. So you're talking
about no schools, no hospitals, and so the measures of success was in
the 70s and 80s and 90s building schools, building hospitals, building
roads, building bridges. The measures of success in the 21st century are
more soft. They're more about empowerment. They're more about a
better quality of education, rather than just primary education, a higher
quality of education. So the measures are very, very different and I think
that we will see this. I'm very hopeful. Especially, because I feel like Dubai
is leading the way in terms of human development, and I feel like you
know, I see in Tunisia, for example, particularly, it's the most advanced
now, but I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.
>> That's good. I love Sultan [sp] because he always gives me hope for
the region, that there is a generation of trouble makers that are going
to change things. So thank you, Sultan. Jeff.
>> My name is Jeff Sturges and I create Makerspaces and maker learning
experiences in the city of Detroit, and I'm particularly passionate
about these places and the creation of them for multiple reasons.
I grew up as a tinkerer kid. I actually had access to my
basement, my garage and my kitchen. I was also fortunate to have a
basement, a garage and a kitchen, not everybody does. There wasn't
anyone particularly teaching me, but I was definitely getting into stuff,
taking things apart, blowing things up, hurting myself and learning an
incredible amount and having a ton of fun doing it. So that's part of it but
also seeing different spaces throughout my life that really shocked me.
One of which being this place, the MIT Media Lab, which I didn't find out
about until I was out of college much later on in life where I was like wow
there is actually a place like this. It's so multi or anti disciplinary, but so
many people are doing so many different things and they're doing it with
raw passion. That is really exciting. Why don't these things exist when
you're four? They should exist as early as possible and in one's life, I
think. I also learned even just a bit after I learned about the MIT Media Lab,
I learned about the Center for Bits and Atoms MIT Fab Lab Program
and the idea of that is actually creating a workshop much smaller than
the Media Lab and having multiple different types of digital fabrication
tools. So that was incredibly powerful too. It's like the place where you
can make almost anything, just like the class that's actually in MIT that
inspired the launch of the MIT Fab Lab Program. So, all of this is very
exciting and I have a passion for social justice, and I believe that
everybody is capable of incredible things. I don't care how old, how young
you are, where you're coming from or what your background is, if you're
given this access you can do incredibly powerful thing and so I believe
that very strongly, which is why I focus this work in Detroit. It's one of the
more economically socioeconomically challenged places in the country,
and I also focus this work on youth. So I focus the work in Detroit
because I think there's a lot of opportunities in Detroit. That's one side I
think people think of opportunities, but there's also a lot of incredible
challenges, and to me that is the opportunity. It's like how can we take
this place of incredible challenge where people's lives are rough, and how
can you help people empower themselves to make change in a place
where their lives are rough. So when you think of the Gandhi be the
change you want to be in the world, well that sounds awesome, but if you
don't even believe you can make change, that's one problem. If you
believe it, but you don't know how, that's another big problem. So I think
that spaces like these in building strong communities and cultures
around them can be incredibly powerful in doing that. The reason I focus
on youth is because like Whitney Houston I believe the children are our
future, and if you're working with youth you're doing that as young as
possible. You're instilling these ideas and these skills at a very early age,
which is incredibly strong and powerful, but also young people when they
do things and when they do interesting things they bring in older people
because older people are big kids, even though they sometimes deny
that, and they want to see what the kids are doing, which is awesome. So,
and that's a great way to engage older people and get them connected
with younger people, connected with each other, also extremely powerful.
So this next image we have on the screen is actually a picture that really
represents the future that I idealize want to see happen, and it is
happening in our Makerspace called the Mt. Elliott Makerspace in Detroit,
and this is a young lady. She's 12 years old, and she's teaching a group of
high school actually middle or I think it's elementary or middle school
teachers in one of the more wealthier suburbs of Detroit how to make
paper speakers out of these little sticky notes that cost $1 a piece and
how to use these speakers to understand frequency, sound, electronics,
AC and DC alternating current and direct current, electromagnetism and
electromagnetic induction, and she's doing this. She had a friend doing it
with her. They're doing an awesome job, and they've actually done it for
like 90 teachers of other affluent suburbs at one time, and they make
money doing it, and they do this now with very little coaching. They're
actually some of the best employees or contractors I've ever had. So it's
really powerful what is possible, and I've worked with these girls for a
couple of years now and I can just say hey we're going to run a little
workshop and they're super excited about it and they do it. So it's this
type of intergenerational learning with a learning that's happening
between adults and youth, vice versa, back and forth, that I think is
extremely powerful. So to borrow a word from a startup charter school in
Detroit. It's a K 4 school that is doing play space education in really a
really awesome way. It's called the Boggs School. They're trying to go
solutionaries, and this idea of solutionaries versus revolutionaries is
people who look at things and they think creatively about how to solve
the problems in their neighborhoods, in their lives, with themselves,
amongst each other, and this is what we're trying to do with our
Makerspaces and our maker learning experiences as well. It's not just
creating skills to become a better engineer, ala stem or even ala steam.
Whatever the flavor of the day is. So it's more important than that. It's first
getting people, as I said earlier, to believe something is possible. You
have a problem. You have an idea. It is possible. You can do it. The issue
becomes how. So, once you believe if. You've changed the mindset to Oh,
it's possible. It's just a matter of time and what do I need to do to do it?
Then it's how. So we want to teach the skills, and we are teaching the
skills of how to create make ideas real, and that's sketching, that's
carpentry, it's prototyping. It's metals. It's woods. It's making T shirts that
but the hard skills of that, but also the softer skills. So these days it's
being called 21 st century skills, which I think is ridiculous because I think
project management, entrepreneurship, collaboration, community and
self reliance, these are actually life skills that I think are valuable in any
century. So they're not just 21st century skills. It's really working, but I
think that the most important thing that we're making this these
Makerspaces is we are making love. [Laughter] you like that, huh.
(indiscernible) likes that. So making love. I actually did a sermon our
space is in the basement of a church, so I was fortunate enough to do a
sermon one day in church and people loved this. I'm like we're making
love downstairs. People were really excited and of course I had to explain
myself and what I mean to say is not only are we creating these valuable
skills that increase your power as a human being and as a community,
but we are instilling the values of why are we doing this work? Why are
we developing these skills and what values underlie this work to make it
even more powerful? Sure, we can develop job skills. We are developing
job skills to fill lower level job, higher level jobs. We're making better
engineers. We're making more creative and innovative engineers. More
importantly, we're making more creative and innovative people in any
discipline, in any industry, in any job or any position in life. That's more
important than that stuff. We actually do want more creative politicians
and more creative bankers and more creative attorneys and more
creative people in the world in positions that we don't normally society
with design, technology and art. We want those people to be making
better policies. We want engineers and designers and technologists to be
making more amazing, more beautiful work, but, but we have to be
thinking about our fellow humankind and our world and our impact on
those people and things and environments in the process of doing that. I
don't think we do that enough now. If we did, the world would be a better
place. So at the expense of sounding like a 21st century hippie, which I've
comfortable with, I think we do need to think more love. So by making
this love, and thinking about that, and actually extending the parameters
of normal design and technological thinking to go beyond just speed,
quality and price to actually now include impact. Speed, quality, price and
impact, an impact on the earth, an impact on people, an impact on
societies. Maybe we wouldn't have had the mortgage crisis. Maybe we
wouldn't keep people in prison and just constrict them to solitary
confinement for years at a time. What if people in prison learned and
actually came out of prison way more skilled than someone who didn't go
to prison. So I think of those ideas and I think of Makerspaces of places
in schools and libraries and prisons and neighborhoods, in basements, in
kitchens and garages and as many places as humanly possible and, of
course, schools. Because I think that is a better world. So Makerspace is
in as many places as possible and schools and Makerspaces being i
ndistinguishable as places for learning, not just education.
>> Thank you, Jeff.
>> [Laughter]
>> And Jeff and Shaka hosted one of our first workshops.
Actually, that's where I met I guess in Detroit and I think one
of the things is embody is all of the technology and science that we have
here in Cambridge is really different when you actually bring it into the
field and I think one of the things that I remember from our sessions
where having kids in Detroit sort of sitting next to somebody from MIT
saying I was working with somebody from MIT and my idea won. I want
to be a designer, and on the other hand having the MIT kids sort of see
that it wasn't just the pure technology. It was what first of all could you
use the local materials and that you had to design in places, a certain co
design thing. And so that's been extremely interesting, but I think the
other thing that you talked about we've talked about before is this idea
of repair right. I mean like I think we have a culture here of just always
buying new stuff, but you don't have enough resources you tend to repair,
and I don't know if you want to because like you call it a Makerspace,
but it's different from what I see it at maker fairs. Where maker fairs are
kind of hobbyists whereas the people I saw in Detroit were making things
that they were actually going to use rather than sort of show right?
>> Yeah. I would say although I'm using the word Makerspace,
I would say in contrast to just purely thinking about bringing new things
into the world I'm more thinking about amplifying what already
exists that's powerful in the world in front of you already.
So in the spirit of repair, you know, you don't necessarily
want to go out and make a new bike out of virgin
materials or new wood. It's like what bikes can we put together to make
newer, better bikes, and the skill of repairing or rehabilitating things that
already exist is an incredibly powerful skill and an incredibly powerful
mindset particularly in a space like Detroit, and even more so how to do
that in the least expensive or least energy intensive way possible. So, I
actually did go out to Detroit to build a Fab Lab, but actually it was
through conversations with parents and other people, particularly parents
said well, why does my kid need a $20,000 laser cutter to make things?
And I thought to myself, well, when I was a kid I didn't have that either. So
it's not that I don't value and think that the idea of a Fab Lab with robust
tool set is not important. I think it's incredibly important, but in the
context of Detroit we wanted to do something that was as inexpensive as
possible, as accessible as possible, so that we could actually realize that
idea of as many of these workshops in neighborhoods as possible. So in
particular Detroit's challenge is actually transportation. Getting around for
people that don't have a car, and the bus system is not so great. You
know, what's the best way to get around? Well, a bike. Bike is the
cheapest way to get around, but if you don't have the tools to fix your bike
and you don't have the know how to do it, you can't get around. So that is
actually probably the most valuable thing we do there is we have a bike
shop where people learn how to fix their bikes and from there you can
innovate on your bike, make your own bike lights, decorate your bikes,
and make it awesome and amazing, not only functional.
>> I think it was in a conversation with Andy and I'm going to
credit him with it partially because he's here.
But the difference because the difference between like repair
and just designing something completely from scratch is for
repair you really have to understand what you're working with. You have
to understand how the thing works, whereas you sort of have to
understand what you're making how it works but you have to be much
more of a listener, and an understander, and it's much to your point about
love. There's a lot more context involved in repair in many cases than in
making and I think I think you need to be able to do both, but do you agree with that?
>> Yeah, well absolutely. And I think to speak to that, one of the first
experiences we do with most young people and older people when
they get into our programs is we actually do a project called "break make".
Where we take trash. We take recycled electronics from a
recycling center which they give to us and we have people rip them apart
and that in itself is an extremely enjoyable activity. It's also one of the
best and cheapest learning experiences you can have because you take
something apart and you learn about it as you disassemble it, and then
you get to a point where it's completely disassembled, you have all of
these cool parts which are beautiful and you can take home with you but
then the make part of the break make is, okay, we have all of these pieces
let's make something new out of it. And that could be as simple as
making some sort of a collage or making some sort of a non functional
robot, but what is even more powerful is we actually teach what all of
these parts do so you can take a motor out of a printer. You can take a
light out of the printer. You can take a button out of an old printer, and you
actually make your own little gadget and I had one kid, young kid,
probably ten, maybe nine/ten years old and he actually took apart a
computer mouse and a printer. So he had the motors and he he had the
computer mouse and he kind of burrowed some holes in the side of the
mouse, put motors in the mouse and kind of made like a little wired,
spinning robot. He made is spin around like this and then he was like Oh, I
need to reverse one of the motors. And so he flipped the wires and
actually made it go back and forth straight. So that in itself was a
powerful learning experience and it cost next to nothing and you've just
learned about motors, buttons, lights, mice, printers and all of these other
things to the point where you could probably think about begin to think
about making one of those things or making something else.
>> Yeah, so we talk a lot at the Media Lab about learning
through construction rather than learning through instruction,
but in a way you're doing it in Detroit and helping us show that
>> Learning through destruction.
>> Learning through destruction and reconstruction,
but I think the key take away for me is that a lot of times
people say well, you can do that at the Media Lab because you've got
MIT students and you've got all of this money, but I think
you're showing that you can actually do it anywhere right.
>> Mmm hmm. >
> Thanks, Jeff.
>> Thank you. [Applause]
>> Hello, I'm Markhoff [sp]. Very grateful to be here and for
the many interactions I've already had with the community here
at the Media Lab. I'm an entrepreneur, product designer and an angel investor
and one of the things that fundamentally motivates
me is taking complex product and system problems
and finding ways to radically unbundle them and simplify them,
and one story from my past, which always reminds me of it is we are
building a social network for travelers, the world's most frequent
travelers, called Doppler, and we are just about to launch it. The time we
launched it was just a place where you could indicate where you would
be in the future, and it would very privately share this engineer serendipity
and say hey you should go a day earlier and meet also with Barton Day
[sp] and so on, and it launched with just this big Helvetica text saying
where next? And all you could do is say where you would be and I said to
Matt Jones, wonderful designer, my colleague, can you really do just this?
He looked at me and said you are weak. And I always remember this.
That courage to cut and simplify and the kinds of products and systems
I've been recently thinking about the most have to do really with three
topics. This make it's sound more logical than it is, but this is what I can
now kind of make sense of the things that are where my attention is
going. The first one is products that improve human awareness, and by
that I mean also the qualitative aspects of awareness of our bodies,
particularly sleep, recovery, autonomic nervous system. I think there's a
lot of breakthroughs still to be done there compared with the dashboard
like interfaces that we have today. Just plain backyard data with basically
people aren't using those products very much. The other is human
expression. I was recently taking a walk with another friend of the MIT
Media Lab, Peter Gabriel, and he said you know the first generation of
every technology depersonalizes and dehumanizes us. It's only the
second and the third one that actually brings back breadth of expression
and that has to do with input methods, how quickly and effortlessly we're
able to communicate. One topic I'm right now obsessed with is why
photos haven't really moved onto how video hasn't taken over after
photos in terms of communication and sharing. How to make that more
lightweight. How more emotive and simpler. And third is then interaction.
I deal with products with a large software component, but typically
involve the hardware or the user interface. Something that's a great
legacy and future of here at the Media Lab, and two topics that I'm
working on right now. One is handwriting. It's remarkable how little our
handwriting and hand drawing, how it's disconnected totally from our
digital lives. People are taking photographs of their notebooks doing
different things. Why is hand written expression not more connected and
more computable. We know the all cognitive scientists basically agree
that when we write by hand and draw by hand we remember better. We
associate better. We're more creative in other words. Yet, that is not the
dominant mode of interaction or the dominant design, and the other is
conversational interfaces. By that I mean if you look at the fastest
growing applications right now on the mobile platforms it's different
forms of chat and messaging, what's up, Snapchat, looking at these. I
think more and more we'll be having conversations with things, with
objects, with our own bodies. They'll be asking us questions. This idea of
being prompted at the right time I think is very promising and also gets us
out of these silos of different applications that don't treat us as a whole,
and so where does that then leave the kind of projects I'm looking
forward to doing at the Media Lab? One particular area that I'm interested
in that I've been working with a doctor called Okie Hinsa [sp] who
coaches a third of the starting drivers in formula one on basically energy
management. How you stay focused and present and taking a very
holistic look at the world. A lot of those methods are quite simple really,
but they are also quite heavy, in accessible, expensive, and so I'm
interested in taking things at scale. I think maybe it's left from my time at
Nokia in four years we shipped I think 1.2 billion devices and gave a lot of
basic communication to people. How can you take those methods, make
them lighter, make them more accessible, and affordable to people so
that we could give them to tens or hundreds of millions of people that are
growing up into predictable lifestyle diseases. For those of you that are
interested in that, I just wanted to put a plug. First Friday, February 6th,
here at the Media Lab for in interested in behavioral interventions and in
how two people or groups can help you design behavioral interventions
come back to this space and there will be more online about this at the
Media Lab. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Michael
[Applause]
>> I want to poke a few things that you talked about.
You talked about the quantified, but you also used the word qualitative,
and a lot of the tools we have right now are giving people
feedback about their rate, heart rate, whatever it is, but clearly
knowing the data doesn't necessarily change your behavior to
your last point, and how much first of all, where do you think we're going
in terms of behavior change and sort of the quantified self-movement,
because obviously if you're extremely motivated getting all of this data
helps you but most people aren't even there yet. I mean is that a problem
you're addressing?
>> Yeah, I think so. It brings to mind I was recently interviewing
(indiscernible) it was the principle conductor for the Philharmonic
for 17 years and I asked him like what's conducting? And he said
like in any human endeavor there's a highly quantified description of
it, which actually doesn't catch the essence of the activity. So a
composer or a conductor would be distribute be music over time and
giving a pulse, but ultimately it's about the sort of micro second
interaction with the orchestra and saying I'm going to through a
(indiscernible). We're going to go that way and they'll either accept it or
not and then another musician would be and so I think we're just
starting to understand that side in general. I think if you're talking about
commitment to behavior change, that is not a quantifiable phenomenon.
That's a basic value commitment. I think it's also deeply social so the
more you have other people involved in it that's more likely. I think what I
would say is the awareness class that you were doing here just last
semester is like a real early signal, a very, very interesting coming
together and an intersection of people that have been have years of
practice in a discipline. Be that Yoga or meditation of mindfulness of
different kinds. So you really actually have a data set, at least a personal
one, from years of practice and what that might be doing to you
physiologically but then combined with technology and interest in
measurement and measurement that we didn't have access to before and
I think over the next ten years you'll see more and more of real
practitioners combined with harder and harder technology and then we'll
have a better sense of even measurement of some of these qualitative aspects.
>> Yeah, I mean Kevin Slavin when you're doing this project with
I think I gave a pretty interesting presentation at the culinary institute at my
Media Lab event and his point was there were all these
presentations about labeling and facts and he was arguing that doesn't
really change anything and he showed a picture, I think it's called the
cardiac arrest burger shop in Las Vegas where there's like a 30 minute
weight if you're 350 pounds or over it's free and there's like a triple bypass
burger and quadruple bypass burger and the people who work there are
in white lab coats, but it's packed. He says it's clearly not a matter of
information right and he argues that it's agency. It's this ability to feel like
you're in charge, and I think as you start to design these products I think
what's really interesting and there was also deception right. The fact that
basketball was designed by a teacher/pastor, who was trying to control
unruly students in the winter. It wasn't designed originally as a
competitive game, but he would see the kids and made it sound like it
was a game in order to get them to tire themselves out so they would
stop beating each other up right and so one question I have is as you
start to design these systems, do you think, because our faculty are like
50/50 on this. Do you think that the ends justify the means? Is it okay to
deceive your users into being healthy or mindful or do you think they need to be aware?
>> It's a good question. I'm generally of the belief that in a networked
system transparency always wins. So there's really no actually sustainable
way to be deceptive, does that make sense? The data's
always going to be out there. So what I would say is there is advantage to
making some behavior. We were talking about this earlier in the session
workshop yesterday morning is making something visible that you're
doing to a group of people, and he talked about sort of reactiveness
versus proactiveness, using slightly different words. I think one
fundamental thing is that if you feel like you're getting controlled, an
agency, that leads to better behavior change, and one of the ways was
contemporary informatics. I don't know how many people check their e
mail as their very first thing in the morning in this room. Very, very first
thing. Okay. So still quite a number, and we know that e mail is mainly a
reactive thing coming in. So how can you build different kinds of morning
routines there and was actually a nice idea about what I did this morning.
What I did before any of that other stuff to set intentions for the day. So I
think that's important to start the day off proactively rather than yeah.
>> So that's a design in practice?
>> Yeah.
>> In addition to product. And I'm so you're a designer.
So one of the things getting back to sort of quantitative and qualitative.
At Media Lab we talk about design a lot, and design's kind of a suitcase
word because it could be industrial design. It can be illustration,
but then you have people like Neri Oxman who thinks
about design in the context of sort of mathematics and biology, but
what's interesting to me is often designers say form follows function, for
instance, you get the iPhone. It's actually that's not you what come up
with if you're trying to create a form that follows the function. There's
something a little bit beyond just form follows function and what's this
is sort of a three minutes left, a very theoretical question but what's
the role of creativity in design and how do you think that creativity can be
induced through some of the quantitative or qualitative sort of wellness
and awareness stuff that you're working on. Does that loop back
>> Wow, three minutes. First on form follows function.
It's clear it's into the world. I'd rather not look at the past
but look at like the trajectories of what's coming.
So we're connecting more and more objects, but currently it's clear that
in the dominant assumed designs at the moment most of
the control for those connected object is going to into pieces of glass
that are requiring more and more attention or more attention than really
need be. Meaning smartphones or tablets right. So we won't be able to
open the curtains without looking at a smartphone or a tablet. So it's kind
of weird, all of the affordances in the environment are going to places
which clearly they are not where they're not functionally following and I
think that means we need to do better interfaces into those things. Better
mechanical interfaces into objects. This is obviously something that's
deeply in the culture of different groups at the lab and one of the reasons
I enjoyed being here and learning here. So, I think it's clear that for the
next phase we need new kinds of designs. As for creativity, I think it may
be also like music. That music is so associative and takes our mind to
another place. It's a mechanism for making a leap that's unexpected and
you need to create the conditions for making those leaps.
>> Yeah, I mean because it ties a little bit to the stuff that we
were talking about with Jeff. Where there's a certain level of
engineering design, which is about just solving problems. And sort
of understanding the problem and solving it and then there's something
that ties more with art and science, which is that you don't need to go there,
but it does sort of in order for progress to occur right, and
I guess this ties again with mindfulness and the quantified self,
versus the qualitative self, which is just making our lives healthier
and more efficient is that the goal or how do you induce creativity
and is it a quantifiable, inducible thing?
>> That's a tough question. I wouldn't talk about efficiency, but
I would talk about presence. I think a lot of people are motivated and
in the kind of work we do we don't really have permission
not to be present when we're here.
>> Yeah. >> And those you can predictably create conditions c
onditions for that. So.
>> I mean I guess the only maybe the meta thing that I'm trying to say
and I actually had a speaker here Anne Wells who talked about this a little
bit is the tricky part is when you're
you're doing engineering and science you tend to be goal oriented, whereas
awareness is sort of almost anti goal oriented, and it's very difficult for
those to sort of co exist well right.
>> Yeah. Well, what I would say is in the kind of products and the teams
I work with, there is no breakthroughs that
I've seen that have not been design and engineering together and I don't
just say that for lip service but that hybrid is where the tension comes
from. Also, I'd say that the people that I personally respect and gravitate
towards are hybrids. So those are people that have considerable hard skills
and then have a sensibility to that and that's something that the anti
disciplinary culture, the lab cultivates and that's very rare and when you
have that. Personally, like I'm trying to up the hard skills in my hybrid and
study a little bit of processing. Try to reengage the mind in a new way. Not
because you want to become an expert at it it's not hubris but you just
want to be on both sides. That's what excites me. That hybridness. So I
think that tension is fundamental and we should just like hug it to death.
>> And I guess I haven't been expressing it well but I think
Jeff sort of was poking at it too, which is you can pursue things to get
things solved, but that's sort of at the Maslow's hierarchy kind
of just getting the trains to run on time, which is sort of a very
engineery thing but we're actually here for a higher purpose and even
in downtown Detroit actually people probably are more concerned about
happiness and love than they are about making sure that trains run,
although the train's running is probably more important than it is for people
who don't have to worry about it but I do think it's always a challenge like
IAP so it's really interesting, but you do find when we were teaching
the awareness class here that students are driven by these goals
and these milestones and you end up really even for design
you end up being kind of goal oriented and competitive, which is really
difficult and sort of self-referential, and something that I'm not we can
talk about it later, but how do you build that into technology I think is a
tricky thing because it's not naturally co existent, but hopefully you're
finished, if you will help us here at the lab.
>> Thank you.
>> Last, but not least, Gabrielle.
[Applause]
>> Last but not least. So I come from Mexico City, and for a year
and a half now I have been running a new type of city department for
the mayor of Mexico City. So for this last year and a half I've been traveling
the entrails of government, which also means traveling the entrails
of city and my official title would be the chief creativity officer of
Mexico City but extraficially I am a recruiter for people such as yourself
because this thing here is a Trojan Horse to bring in other types of profiles
into folds of government. So, (indiscernible) laboratory for the city is the
experimental area/creative think tank for the government. We're not alone
in the world. We're a family of gov lab so to speak that are these types of
experimental spaces within government and funded by government and
basically we are poised at this slightly turbulent but very interesting space
of government, civil society, academia and also trying to give government a
space where it can take a lot more risk because on one hand we expect
governments to be very solid and sure footed but at the same time we
sometimes really hurt because we're lagging ten years behind the best of
ideas when we should be a space since governments create city in such
amazing way that things come in much more directly. This is probably what
makes us most different from other labs in the world. This is Mexico City.
22 million people in the Metropolitan area. 50% of that population is under
age 26. So even though this is the oldest city on the American continent as
well as the largest, it's actually incredibly young. Interesting challenges
because let's say, for example, a subway, 5 million people get on it every
day, which is the city of Chicago up and down our subway. We're also a city
of extremes. It houses both a number one, number two billionaire when
you're counting but it also has one of the lowest minimum wages in Latin
America. So basically one of the things that we've been thinking about is
how do we take the nature of Mexico City and have it become an
opportunity. As you have I'm sure heard ad nauseam, 50% of humanity is
now living in cities. By year 2015 it will be 70%. What doesn't get said that
often is that Latin America reached 50% in the 70s and we are now at 70%
and most of the mega cities as well as the new cities are going to come
from the emerging word. So, instead of becoming like the New Yorks,
they're going to look like this with all of the potential as well as all of the
challenges that hold. So one of the things that we're purposing from the lab
is that maybe places like my city can become a place for prototyping future
and what does that mean? What does education mean in a place like this?
What does a digital gap mean? What does mobility look like? Et cetera, et cetera.
So two of our main focuses are civic innovation and urban
creativity. Civic innovation is how can we start reimagining and reinventing
the way that government and civil society collaborate and come together.
Urban creativity has to do with thinking of the space of the city as the
traveling surface for ideas. Like how do we really become an intensive
space for prototyping, for projects, for research, for bringing different
people together to think about city. This is my team. Part of my team
because we've grown since then I have everything from artificial
intelligence experts to historians, journalists, editors, artists, designers. So
it's very multi disciplinary or anti disciplinary in terms of the Media Lab,
especially because I brought them all into government for the first time.
Only my lawyer there in glasses had prior experience in government. So it's
been incredibly interesting to start finding our footing as a very small
space, but a very strategic place because I report directly to the mayor of
how us with our accomplices can start thinking about all of these subjects
that are very, very important to city making. So we work by experiments
and I said many times before that we are actually the first experiment of
the lab. Like the creation of the lab in and of itself Since we're dealing with
open government and with civic innovation as I well mentioned, we thought
that we should both metaphorically and physically be able to talk about
these subjects. This is a rooftop. This is where we work from. It's 1,000
square meter rooftop that overlooks the city center of Mexico City. This is
our space and what we have been trying to do since the very beginning is
make government not only a place for complaints and for services, but also
a place for ideas and for conversations and debates and all sorts of things.
So one of the, for example, one of the things that we've been hosting
where we call the rooftop sessions and we've had amazing people doing
residencies in governments such as Perry Chen, as you probably know is a
co founder of kick Kickstarter, or Nicola Twilley that did a month long
residency at the largest wholesale market in the world, which is La Central
de Abasto, based in Mexico City. So we also host much larger conversation
and it has been amazing to see audiences filling up auditoriums to talk
about mobility, for example. Now just like seeing how much interest there
actually is to be able to not only complain but sink your hands into the city
and find solutions with government officials. Language has been one of
our first Trojan Horses and one of our first ways of creating this safe space
for taking risks. So we work with what we call experiments. We have about
32 that we've done in this year and a half that we've been in existence, and
we also work with open ended questions as I believe you do so as well here
and what we call provocations. So one provocation is an open ended
question that can be sometimes solved with one experiment and
sometimes it's going to be questions that we don't necessarily have an
answer to but can hopefully have every time deeper questions about what
we're trying to do. One of the things besides the speculative and slightly
outlandish projects that we have in tow because of the profile of the people
we're bringing into government, we've also tried to find a stronghold within
the structure itself and really become politically relevant as well. So one of
the ways that we have thought of starting this conversation of the meshing
of types of profiles is the whole open government, open city movement. So
here we've been doing everything from working with more than 25 city
departments, changing technological infrastructure, and also nowadays
with Congress, what becomes very interesting when you play with these
toolkits that government has at its disposal but with new profiles is up, for
example, in terms of our open government lab, which will probably be the
first in the world, if we hurry up. We're thinking about dynamic laws instead
of stable laws. Like how can you actually create legal frameworks for
changing scenarios, and so these are the types of questions that other
profiles bring into Congress that Congress had not necessarily thought
about. So that marriage of people that know what they're doing and this
deep seated knowledge within government with new mindset is really
bringing up very interesting conversations, and our type of projects go from
very lighthearted, very quick things such as urban thermometers of just
seeing where Mexico City is at, being able to gather information for Twitter
feeds, et cetera, et cetera from citizens themselves, and also a little bit
more profound in terms of open innovation and trying to bring in through
open calls and all sorts of other projects. Different types of profiles to think
about city. Because even though sometimes we think that government is
incredibly bureaucratic than as a city making machine, it's actually one of
the most fascinating places to be at if you can make it work in the correct
way. Also, Mayors love (indiscernible) fans we've been doing our own and
we did the first data festival for Mexico City where we opened up 26 data
sets that had not previously been available. Everything from 28 years'
worth of pollution data, geolocalized and to our great surprise the fourth
day that we put out the call on social media we had 500 people already
signed up and 200 people on the waiting list. So there's a lot of hunger as I
mentioned to really join into government, which makes it exciting. We also
have projects that just code for Mexico City, in collaboration with code for
America where we placed six young programmers in six different ministries
trying to marry new skill sets with again like this entrenched knowledge
that exists within. We also prototyped the first laboratory of data that
became a road map for the official one. These are the ones that the data
sets that I mentioned and the things that have been coming out are quite
interesting because again Mexico City is very quirky in many ways so if you
want to gather data in Boston about mobility, there's many ways to do so
because of GPS and systems. In a city where 60% of the population moves
by informal transport it becomes a whole other different thing. So recently
we just won the Audi Urban Future Award for an idea that we had that we're
calling living moms through data donation and new types of platforms that
we will actually be able to get real time data on what is happening in a
mega city that will hopefully also be an example for other cities. I won't get
into it but if anybody wants to know more I would be happy to say. So those
things are very common to other innovation labs worldwide but since most
of my team, as well as myself, come from the arts and culture field we're
also very interested in playing with new political forums and open
languages. So we were trying to bring in artists as well as into the
conversation. This, for example, is a project by artist (indiscernible) and we
passed a very controversial mobility law at one point in time during this last
year and so on the left side you see people that were pro (indiscernible)
and on the right side you see people that were against it. So it's been very
interesting as well to see that we talk a lot about efficiency and usability
in terms of new technologies for government and civic engagement, but
what happens with fascination? Like that is not where cities are not only
about ease but also about how you engage minds in this business of city
building. Also working with some other artists. We've started to figure out
ways of not only do surveys on the street, but what happens when you
actually have weird things, and this is our urban artifact number 001 and
we will be doing more of these. You have these weird creatures that
suddenly inhabit the street and can also become these receptacles for
ideas and complaints and all sorts of other things but engaging people in
different fashions. Also working, for example, with Chris Woebken who has
these urban these ways of identifying and measuring different urban
aspects. So also very interested in not only thinking about the city but
looking at the city and sensing the city in different fashions. Also engaging
kids in the business of city making. So Minecraft I always forget it
with Minecraft we put out a contest for kids. I think their larger workshop
had been 300 kids and in Mexico City it was 7,000. So it's been very
interesting to see how the scale of the city really blows every conversation
up, and that's our office right there on the left. That little hovering thing, a
rooftop. And this plaza also by the end of this year, thanks to a sponsorship
by Cisco, will be completely wired to become a space for experimenting
with Internet of things and all sorts of sensing hardware and stuff and so
making this into a modern day (indiscernible) if you're familiar with
(indiscernible) is very much in the Latin American style. And for next year
we're even going to go a little bit further and bring in a speculative arm,
which is a department of fictions and futures. So how can we bring people
into thinking about the future of cities in much more playful fashions
because we have lost that futuring muscle in much of Latin America when
that was a hot bed for thinking about what was 30 years or 50 years or 100
years since. We've also had the great fortune of bringing into government
very interesting people. This is (indiscernible) an artist that's been working
with a lot of scientists and technologists. This is symbiotic creature
between plant, animal that can purify water from contaminated rivers. It
also runs away if you try to catch it. It's been doing all sorts of diagnosis on
the rivers, but it also becomes a conversation piece, like kids love this. So
instead of going up to kids and saying hey don't wash don't throw
garbage into the river you have them meet these types of urban creatures
and then you start a conversation about why it's important to take care of
the few rivers that Mexico City still has. Somebody on my team is also part
of the artificial intelligence lab at the NAUM, which is a 350,000 student
strong university in Mexico City and they've been doing crisis robots. As
you probably know during 85 we had a huge earthquake and Mexico City is
not for the fainthearted. 42 active volcanos surround our city and we also
are a territory of turbulence if you will of earthquakes and stuff. So how can
you start thinking about different type of ways that you engage citizens in
crisis management? And this is one of them that can basically look for like
quite sophisticated ways of looking for people in the bubble of knock on
wood, hopefully not. So basically I throw out a few examples and here I
focused more on the quirkier things for obvious reasons but basically at
the very heart of why we exist, if you will, and possibly what makes us
different to the other innovation labs out there is that in a way we think that
it's fortunate that modernist times are over and we have stopped thinking
about cities' only purpose as being practical and efficient, and one of the
questions is we ask how can we have cities that house not only the human
mind, but the human imagination and what does this mean actually for the
ways that we create city and we think about cities in general. So, thank you very much.
[Applause]
>> At the Media Lab we've been trying very hard to connect with Latin America.
We have some Latin American students and we did a workshop in
Brazil but Latin America has always been kind of interesting
but difficult and when I met Gabrielle I felt like you know when
you're hacking a computer and you find the backdoor that kind of lets
maybe you don't feel that way but it's like finding an exploit in a system
that's otherwise invulnerable, and so hopefully you can be our key into this
city, which I think would be an amazing place for us to do some work, but I
wonder having just spent some time here at the lab if you see anything that
seems like an obvious fit for the work that you're doing?
>> Well, to be honest I found many matches and one of the things
that I didn't mention is that one of the ideas that we're looking into
is rearticulation of the apparatus of government in
and of itself is huge as that sounds and this many times has
to do with creating those backdoors as you well mentioned.
So we will have in February, in Puerto (indiscernible) which is
part of the Media Lab she will be embedded within government for five
months which I think from what I heard yesterday is possibly the most
intense collaboration that somebody that's still doing their doctorate at MIT
will have. And so she's thinking about networked places and what children
and public space and so we are putting her in contact with about four
different ministries and she will have all of the creative licenses that we get
going to the ministries on behalf of (indiscernible) I must say that we've
had amazing and I'm going to say very surprising openness from the rest of
the government to actually play with them and bring in like these
sometimes wild ideas and sometimes more strategic and they've been able
to withstand like the tension between us sometimes being you know
sometimes doing, the digital agenda and these messier matters with these
more playful so we'll let you know Edwina is coming down with about
eight different people from the Media Lab as well because we got one of
the grants that MIT gives out so I think this will only be the hopefully the
beginning of a collaboration.
>> Yeah definitely look forward to taking our gang down for a workshop in Mexico City.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[Applause]
>> So we have a few more Fellows here who are in town who had already
been on stage, so we didn't have them do full presentations but maybe
I can get them on stage so that we can get updates and maybe
have some interactions. I'm going to get the chairs up.
So some of you may not have seen their presentations.
So I'll just do some quick introductions. Or maybe I should let you guys
introduce yourselves. That's probably better. I'll
add if I think you missed anything, but Colleen.
>> Cool. Hey, everybody. I'm Colleen Macklin.
I'm a game designer and about a year ago I was up on this stage with Joi,
so you can probably look into the archives and see a little
bit more about what I do. But I make games in the social interest. A lot
of those kinds of games and really excited right now working with the lab
as a Fellow and working with my Fellow Fellows on games, in particular
one about the human microbiome. You know it's a natural topic for a game,
and really looking forward to working with some of the folks here including
David Kong and other students on designing a game that will be showing
itself by Southwest Interactive with MIT crew so.
>> Colleen's also a professor at Parsons.
>> Yeah, I am. I should have mentioned that.
>> This is sort of joke, sort of true.
So I think Media Lab we range between 20 to 30% women, and I was at
the graduation at Parsons getting an honorary degree, thank you very much.
But I looked in the crowd and it was 80% women.
I said this is a perfect match with the Media Lab, and so we're trying
to build a bridge. You brought two women this time with you.
>> I did. Three more. We definitely need to have some socials
you know and see if we can have some dance parties or something.
>> Some love making right [Laughter] sorry. Not exactly. Sorry about it.
But no, we are trying to build a bridge with Parsons. Thank you.
>> Absolutely.
>> Yeah, you should build a Hyperloop from here to Parsons directly.
Have Elon Musk on it. My name is Baratunde Thurston.
I'm a writer/television host/comedian, humorous type. I'm in the second year
as a Fellow here trying to thoughtfully combine humor technology story
telling to create that better world in some ways that's what Alton
was talking about to have that basement love making that
Jeff was talking about to avoid calculating a 318 billion possibility that
Maurice was talking about. I'm running out of time. I'm not going to do
everybody. And so some of the things that I've been able to work on here
are a lot of fun. We pulled off I have a company called Cultivated Wit and
we do comedic hackathons and it really built off of the talk that Joi and I
had on this stage about two years ago now to take the concept of making
and hacking and this concept of joke telling and humor and smash those
together. We pulled off our third one of those right on this stage in this
room with students from the lab, the Boston developer, and comedic
community and folks from our team and it works out really great. People
made toilets that masked the sound of your using the toilet, which is really
thoughtful for people around you, covering it with classical music, and then
I also worked with a student here, Scott Greenwald, to combine improv,
comedy with Google Glass in the early concept phase for something that
he's continued to run with called Glass Prov. That really changes the
experience with the audience of the players with each other and how both
of those directions and sets of interactions can happen, yet still be fun, not
just all mechanics, all algorithmic. I think one of the higher callings I've
enjoyed playing with here is humanizing technology, and there's not much
more humanizing than humor. Thanks.
>> And you do a lot of interface design at the Media Lab and I think
that because you used to not be funny right.
>> Oh, yeah, I was super the opposite. Like right now. Like I'm super funny right now.
>> But I think you use humor as a user interface to
difficult information and I think in that way it is
>> Flash shield.
>> Because I find that there are some funny people
at the lab, but we could always use more.
>> No and then quite honestly the comedy hack data we pulled off here the students,
and even some faculty, which is often not easy to get those two groups
to be excited about the same thing at the same time,
they were really excited about that. I think they had an excuse to play
across divisions, which was a really great thing for us to help be a part of
and also we had a chance to bring people into this space who weren't
always in the space. So it was one of those triple win type of things.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks and thanks for that comedy as user interface thing. I use that all the time.
>> Philipp?
>> Yeah, my name is Philipp Schmidt. Hello, everyone.
I'm kind of an odd Fellow because I'm a Fellow in residence.
So I'm based here at the Media Lab, but for quite a long time now
I've been working on this conundrum that ability and curiosity and
motivation are pretty evenly distributed but opportunity is not, and how
could you use technology to bring people together to learn and change
that. So more people have opportunities. I co founded an organization
called Peer to Peer University, which is an online community of people who
kind of have that same idea and are working on ways of doing something
about it, and here at the lab I've been working closely with Mitch Resnick on
creating an online course called "learning creative learning", which is really
a course about the learning philosophy of the Media Lab itself and it
doesn't look like a book. It was very different, very interactive where people
worked on projects that they cared about. It gave them a lot more flexibility.
They shared. They worked with each other. We had life meetings. We built
up this community of thousands of people around the world and I'm kind of
looking at the next course at the moment with one of the students here.
We're thinking about maybe how to make almost anything, almost
anywhere. So it's one thing. I've also been running around the campus and
trying to find out how MIT really learns, and so I've talked to lots of
students, administrators, professors, people who got kicked out of MIT,
people who left MIT before graduating. People who got straight A's all
through their careers and I heard a lot of amazing stories about how
learning really happens here, and I've recently become interested in
libraries as a kind of a physical layer that we could connect to online
learning and that would maybe let us do kind of the best of two worlds. The
things that work well online, massive communities, access to free content
and then the things that work really well face to face, which is small
groups, deep relationships over time, investing in people, but I can't say
much more about that until after next week. There will be an announcement.
>> So again last but not least, Shaka, who I can't remember exactly when
but the last time you were here we were on stage with you and Martha Minow,
the Dean of the Harvard Law School and it was actually one
of the most interesting conversations I've heard about incarceration and
forgiveness and maybe you can give us an update on what's happened since then.
>> I'm super excited. Like Baratunde I'm on a my second year as a Fellow.
This experience has been incredible, being able to work with so
many amazing people, specifically the civic Media Lab where I started the
atonement project, which is on our platform that we use across sectional
arts to engage people around the idea of restorative justice practices which
we think is very important when it comes to our deployment of corrections
system and after the talk with Martha Minow we really sat and thought
about expanding the reach of what the work that we're doing in that space
and I ended up connecting with a new Fellow, Van Jones, and we started
talking about the cut 50 initiative that he was working on and it just made
sense for us to partner on that and the idea and the goal is to cut the
prison population in half by 50% over the next ten years using very smart,
innovative and well thought out processes to help men and women who
are currently incarcerated transition back into the community, but also to
think through the process of what happens when men and women are
convicted of crimes and what are some things we can do, instead of
warehousing them. So we're thinking it through. It's a bipartisan project, so
this is one of the first times in the history where both parties have been on
the same page about what we need to do. We incarcerate more people
than anybody else in the world and we just think that the timing is perfect
for us to change that and turn some of the trends around.
>> Thank you, Shaka. And now we have a couple of different options,
depending on how whether the audience has questions
and whether there's anything from Twitter, which I'll ask
there's two from Twitter? Is there something actually, Laura,
can you give Stacie the mic and start with one unless there's a burning question here?
Go Stacie.
>> I don't remember who this was asked to but the question was topics
become cool when people understand the topic.
How do we use ideas to increase understanding of international politics?
>> Did you hear the question?
>> How do you use ideas to
>> Your idea? How do you use your ideas to increase understanding of international politics?
>> I got an idea, which is use your passport and leave
[Laughter]
>> Back to you.
>> Okay, so how do you use ideas to understand international politics or to
>> Or you could use that and then say whatever you want.
>> Okay. [Laughter]
>> There's a saying that goes with great powers comes great responsibility
aside from that of course.
So last month there was a there was a one of those rankings that
puts me as one of the I think number 12 more followed journalist by
world leaders, which means that they surveyed 600 world leaders and they
saw who these world leaders follow and I turned out to be at number 12.
So it's kind of humbling because you start thinking that you can't clown
around online. You can't post jokes because you think what if someone
important reads this and then but it also presents you with an opportunity
that if you are if you are using your reach if you are using your
instruments online and that you could potentially change people's
perceptions and people's ideas and you could potentially make them
understand your point of view, and bring worlds together, bring people
together. So, again there's a lot good to be done online.
>> Does anybody else want to refund that? Do you have another one?
>> The other one's more of a statement than a question.
>> It's not a question.
>> You're being so gracious. You're the most polite moderator of Twitter ever.
>> By the way I haven't met a question for the
is this is there time left can you set this to the total time left.
Does anybody have questions or even comments from the audience?
Okay, but we can also ask each other questions.
I mean that was the other idea.
I didn't know you have
>> It was a fun thing in terms of what I'm thinking of next.
It's shifting toward more media making and more storytelling and as I
look across this stage I've actually been influenced heavily by, or included,
a lot of people up here in areas where I've had a chance to tell their story.
That Detroit trip, which began this journey with a lot from me where I first
met Shaka and Jeff ended up being an episode of a web series for AOL.
My most recent column and companies focused on Shaka's work with the i
dea of DIY hacking innovation and prison and seeing that space, which
we tend to toss away mentally, spiritually, economically as a source of
ideas and inspiration and innovation. That's a long winded way of saying
this is a great stage and I'm honored to share it with the people up here
and you haven't been in a story you will because you're the source of all of
the future media making that I'm going to be able to do as well. Yeah.
>> He thought of a question.
>> Yeah, thanks. Thanks for covering me.
>> You got it. We're like a team here.
>> Okay. So I realize as a technologist as I get a little older than
I'm perhaps losing touch a little bit with who are the up and coming stars.
Like who are you know, the people we are surrounded by here in the lab
who are going to be the great next big thing.
For everyone here really who's working all these different fields, how do
you connect your work to the next generation? How do you both make
sure that they feel that this work is worth continuing and how do you keep
yourself informed about the brighter stars who are coming up?
>> Snapchat. [Laughter]
>> Yeah. I mean for me I'm really dedicated to making sure that people
who are making games are diverse, have different
perspectives and voices. So any chance I get I go visit college
students, different universities, of course, I'm teaching at that level too.
But also making things like a game design curriculum for boys’ and girls'
clubs. That's like really like they're up and coming you know in a while
now, but the idea is and a lot of the work that you're seeing here from
Jeff's work on is about that right. It's about making sure that young
people have access to the tools to create, not just consume new media
and technology.
>> I would like to add some to that. I have an amazing opportunity where
I get a chance to teach at the University of Michigan, and
so I've been teaching this class for two semesters now around
importance of restorative justice practices and the thing that I found the
most amazing is really just taking the time to listen and understand young
people and what's really important to them and realizing that they're going
to be the decision makers of tomorrow and the more you listen the more
you can strategize in terms of how to provide wisdom, access and
information the way that's going to allow them to grow and flourish into
their best selves.
>> I mean I would say to speak to connecting to stars is two things.
One, I feel like a lot of the work with Makerspace is being
done by myself, but also many worldwide we're trying to create those
innovative geniuses and stars, and also instill in them the value of making
love and being considerate of one another, but also the value of being
open and being transparent and sharing and how to share, and I think I'm
actually learning a lot from the younger generation because I'm really bad
at share. I'm not very good at social media. I was brought up with sort of
that Catholic humility thing where you're not supposed to talk about
yourself, and sharing is much more than that, but also I'm learning a lot
about the value of making the time to share, and making the time to
listen, and I think I've learned a lot about, particularly in Detroit, about
what it really means to collaborate on something and what co design
really means if you're collaboratively designing something, and it means a
lot more than hey I've got an idea, let me share it with you, you do you
think it's okay, let's do it. And that's the way I had been doing thing for a
while and slowly but surely I've learned that no, it's much deeper than that
and learning from people who are good at drawing ideas out of people
and good at connecting with other people has been very beneficial to me
and I would say extremely important.
>> Excuse me one of the great things about the game that I play,
Chess, is that it's actually a young person's sport.
The youngest Grandmaster of up all time is 12 years old.
In fact, Bobby Fischer became a Grandmaster in 1957 and he was 16 and
it took 30 years to break that record to become a Grandmaster. Judit
Polgar broke the record in the late 80s. Since then, it's been broken 50
times, and the reason is solely technology. The technology has
transformed the game so dramatically because now kids can go online
and back in the day I had to go to the parks to play hustlers in Brooklyn.
Kids now can just go online and play anybody in the world anytime
immediately. The access has been so dramatically changed because of
that, and really now you have to be a young person to play Chess. I mean
literally. If you want to become a Grandmaster, I would say go back to
when you were five years old and start. Because that's the way it is now,
and so you remain connected because of this freshness because of this
game, and it's cool to see that learning has transformed that dramatically
because technology has allowed it to and to see how it keeps pushing in
this way and I still work with young people. I was teaching at a high
school in Brooklyn three days a week. I go coach kids and those kids are
from tough neighborhoods and they're not getting the top technologies
and I want to bring that and the stuff I'm doing at the lab and give them a
taste of what makes Chess so exciting and they love it and they want to
be better and they go to national championships and play and participate,
but the marriage between technology and your subject if you don't do it,
you're dead. You're far behind the curve.
>> It's funny because that question is actually my job right.
It's defined we have creative young people everywhere,
and I've been sort of asking that question to just about everybody
I meet, and there are a couple of keys that I realize. The
one interestingly, which is just for any job it's more like thank you that
somebody the age of the person that you're trying to find will have a
friend that is suitable for the job than you will. If you're not in that age
bracket. So one is sending people the same age. The other is just extreme
diversity. So this is actually part of the process. So, for instance, we have
a really wonderful Kenyon student that we found when Ethan was there
working in Kenyon and he's now becoming a conduit. I think so going to
places like Detroit and Mexico and other places is really important and so
the Director's Fellow's program is really one the weak time. So how do you
get somebody that gives you a key to a place like Mexico? Then you
deploy the student who's are like younger, and then you get them to find
cool people, but then you find those cool people and ask them who their
coolest, younger friends are, and so networking has this sort of dirty word
image of like businessmen with like to use Marco's favorite thing skinny
neckties and Bluetooth headsets. Like looking for the most important
person in the room. That's not it. Networking is actually intentionally
going out and saying how do I find the weirdest, coolest person who
wouldn't fit in anywhere else but happens to be stuck in Brazil? How
would I get to that person? And then how do you do it intentionally and it's
really an ongoing process that the Media Lab is doing. So if you look at,
for instance, online, and I'm just sort of advertising now. I urge you to look
at the professor of other job description, Nicholas (indiscernible)
foundation is running the search but it basically says if you can get a job i
n any other academic institution don't bother applying. Basically, we're
looking for the people who aren't none of the above, and so there's two
pieces. So one is actively going out and looking but the other is this
beacon. So if you set up the beacon properly, you get a certain percentage
of people who just find you, and then the other is you actually have to go
to places where that beacon doesn't shine and convert them. It's really
hard but it's really fun. I don't know if anybody else has any
>> Snapchat. Snapchat. [Laughter]
>> So a lot of you talked about the young and the youth.
I would love to hear some experience of changing the people in
30s and 40s. People who are working. How to engage them? How do you
change? Otherwise it always becomes a discourse about the future and
not about changing the people who can change things now and not in 20
years. I would love to hear something. You have a great work all of you.
>> I mean I definitely have something for that.
Since our Makerspace is our intergenerational purposefully
I would say some of our most powerful experiences have been with
working with adults. Because certainly those adults have kids
so it's important to work with adults. One specific
case is a woman who is in her 50s who actually was in a car accident and
is on social security disability who had very little digital literacy but a very
high degree of artistic ability. So we actually introduced the idea of a
screen printing shop in our Makerspace and we had actually taught her
daughter how to do the screen printing and her daughter taught her how
to do the screen printing of T shirts. She got really excited about doing
that so she started screen printing T shirts, and then she she's a very
good sewer, seamstress, she started sewing pot holders and making pot
holders and then screen printing the pot holders, so kind of the
interdisciplinary thing happening, and then people said wow we like these.
We want to buy them. So she started doing contract work you know,
contract making T shirts. Things that were her own designs that she was
sell, pot holders as well. I've got a few as well and people got them as
Christmas gifts, and it was very powerful because she was getting
commissions but she didn't have the digital literacy skills to communicate
properly and effectively to agree on designs and to kind of make
contracts and to also calculate the materials and so forth that she was
putting in. So I worked with her to develop her skills with spreadsheets
and adding those things up so she could actually make quotes that would
allow her to make some profit and then also to have at proper
communication so that she was reaching out and selling her stuff, but
also making deals where people would agree on the designs, not get the
shirt back and be like hey those 100 shirts aren't the design I decided on.
What heck happened? There was certainly a lot of snafus in that case, but
now that woman in the span of a year learned out to use e mail
effectively, learned how to write contracts effectively, learned out to use
spreadsheets, and I think that's difficult for anybody, but let alone a
woman with a brain injury on social security disability, supporting three
kids, and managing the stress of that. So that was a very powerful
example, which is also on our website shameless pitch
mt.Elliott@makerspace.com where you can actually watch the video of that.
>> And again that was mt.ElliottMakerspace.com. If you picked that
up. The intergenerational point is a great one and it reminds me. It's not a
lab project, but it does relate to my work. I wrote a book that's called "How To Be Black"
and it's a comedic memoir looking at race, relations and
identity and I get e mails and messages from people on a somewhat
regular basis but one really stood out in the past few months and it was
from a mother, who was not able to talk to her own son about race. She
didn't feel that he respected the efforts of the prior generation. He felt she
took everything too seriously and had no sense of humor and my book,
they both read it together, and they were able to have a conversation
across generations instead of being so heavily dismissively judgmental of
each other. So I guess maybe you guys invented e mail. That's the
connection. Is that how everybody like the stage, but their conversation
between generations is a very important one and one that I don't find in
my own life happens very often. We tend to socialize, live with, work with,
hire and recruit people from our own sort of age bands and in American
society especially we're very disconnected from extended family so we
even have that excuse and more on the holidays with the exception of
maybe on Facebook. So.
>> I would just briefly add. There's a project here at the Media Lab called
"making learning work" which looks specifically at adults
with very low basic math and literacy skills and we're coming up with
I'm working closely with one of the students in the life long
kindergarten group on this. It's interesting because there's actually a huge
population in the U.S. and in many other countries who are at this very
low level of numeracy and literacy to the degree where this prevents them
from getting family supporting jobs. So they're locked into kind of really
a situation where they will need help to move up to something that's
sustainable, and so we've been kind of developing some prototypes that
might be useful for them using technologies here from the lab so we have
one prototype where reading storybooks or really anything to your child
becomes an opportunity to learn English, for example, because lack of
time is also an issue and then one of the others is actually kind of goes
in the other direction which connects older people that have skills and
maybe free time with younger people who may need support and
guidance and wisdom, which actually reminds me of the question that
you asked because increasingly like being plugged into the Media Lab I
feel like I have this fire hose of new people and new ideas, and I am
increasingly trying to find old people who help me make sense of it all,
and I wonder if like that conversation doesn't seem to be happening
enough in many places and I think that's interesting.
>> One thing I was just going to mention. You know in terms of people
of all ages, I think as you get older you forget how to play
and it's something that is incredibly useful,
especially if you're a decision maker. So I've played games with
world leaders about climate change through work we've done with the
Red Cross and others and hopefully this microbiome project that we're
doing will also capture the imagination of people of all ages but ultimately
learning how to fail and learning how much fun failure is something that
like gets beaten out of us as we get older. So games create like an
inconsequential space. It doesn't matter right. So I think we spend a lot of
time talking about like how do we have impact? How do we make things
matter? I think one way in is actually to do things that don't matter at all
and give people the freedom to fail and desensitize yourself from failing
so that you try new things you know and innovate outside of that.
>> Just a very quick kind of riffing I'll need. Intergenerational point.
The education system in Finland is quite well known and sometimes
a lot of it has lots of good things
in it including a lot of autonomy for teachers. Teaching is a
dream profession but also a lot of things that can be improved a lot, but
one question and debate going on I'm not actively involved in it but
there's been a decision that over time we need to bring coding and coding
skills into all subjects in school. Now leave aside for a moment whether
that's a good idea or not. Let's seem that's a necessary idea and that's
going to happen. My view is that's a massive teacher learning activity and
a challenge right and the only way that's going to happen is if younger
people are going to teach the first learners, mainly teachers, and then go
on. So any ideas that people have on how the teachers of Finland would
be taught to code I'd be very welcome on that.
>> This is great. Awesome projects. So as a semester begins in a
week and a half or so, there's so many students campus
here that are looking to create projects that make an impact in the world
and we would love to have the chance to reach people in Mexico City
or reduce incarceration rights, bring humor into new technologies.
As the semester begins, what ways do you think you could
benefit from sort of student projects done in courses throughout the
semester here? How would we get in touch with
you, other than through Snapchat. [Laughter]
>> In terms of Mexico City, one of the things that Joi
mentioned briefly but there's a group coming down in September. So
right now we are actively thinking about how we can open up those doors
for people to collaborate both offering up what we already have because
possibly the difference to other cities that you've worked is that we are
set up to within the government to actually already have many of these
contacts and many of these ongoing projects so either it be that you can
enrich projects that are ongoing and that have everything like we're
working in 2015 everything from drug policy to health, education. So it's
quite a white breadth of projects and different people involved both within
the lab and my team, as well as the rest of the government, and also
different doctors from social society, academia and as well as private
enterprise. So that's one of them and the other is also projects that could be quick to deploy and interesting to try out in Mexico City we're always
open, besides the official channel that we're open up the Media Lab
there's also a residency program going on, on several others. So as I
mentioned I'm super interested in having people of these types of profiles
in Mexico City because they bridge some very interesting subjects for us
and would fit in beautifully with the strange compasses of my team as well.
>> I think for contacting the program should they just it's on the
bottom of the paper, but there's an e mail address for the Director's
Fellows. Can I take this as a cue to actually say something, and maybe wrap up.
>> Yes.
>> Yes, thank you. So, because right now it's an interesting time
at MIT where all of the faculty are looking through their admissions,
and they're trying to pick which students to admit, and it also
a lot of people ask me how do you become a Fellow and a lot of people
ask me how to become a student. So we're here to talk about how cool
we are and stuff like that and we do that, but I also want to explain that
it's not this kind of linear like you’re not linked, and there's a story, I won't
say it's a joke, but there's a story about this admissions person who has
1,000 applications her desk and then the provost walks in and the provost
says why are you looking so blue and she says well I've got to read t
hrough all of these applications. And the provost walks over, grabs most
of them, like 90% of them, and throws them in the trash and says well we
don't want the unlucky ones.
[Laughter]
>> But, you know, and it may feel that way and it sort of kind of is in a
weird way because at the Media Lab it's very different
than most other academic departments in that each faculty member
admits directly and you enter a group and then you work in a group.
We don't admit them as a department. We really don't care that
much about things like test scores and things like that. It's whether you fit
into a particular hole that that faculty member may have that year and
some people who are here have applied three years and finally get in
when that particular role is the role that we need, and similarly, I'm on the
MacArthur foundation board and we use the word for the MacArthur
Fellows, the word bouquet. So when we are presented the Fellows for the
year say this is the year's bouquet and the bouquet has to have this
interesting diversity and it's how the Fellows feel together and so for me
each year that we do a group of Fellows I think a lot about what were last
year's Fellows like, what are this year's Fellows like, and I'm not trying to
pick the ten most impressive people that I've ever met. I'm trying to pick
an interesting bouquet thinking about where is the lab and so all of this is
to say that it's a non linear algorithm in which people get chosen to get
into places like Media Lab or the Director's Fellow's program. So two
things. So one is a lot of the stuff that we're talking about you can do it
too and I see Neil there and he's created the network of Fab Labs and he's
duplicating and replicating and allowing and empowering things all over
the world. I think hundreds of places around the world, and so I think this
is we're known on a decentralized system. We maybe have an
advantage because we have a critical mass but I think what is really
important not to like think that this is the answer or this is the place only
place you can do this and that we're really what we're trying to do is
create an example that can then spread and you guys are all part of our
system of spreading, but I think I just really think that it's important for
us not to feel that it's sort of this hierarchy that you may think because
when I wasn't here I thought Oh those snobs at MIT. They think they know
everything. But you get here and you realize that there's a lot of non linearness
going on. I just wanted to say that because I know a lot of
people are probably watching this waiting for their admission or non
admission from the Media Lab in the next months. I don't know if anybody
else has any comments on sort of hierarchy, humility as well?
>> I feel lucky.
[Laughter]
>> I agree that people at the Media Lab don't know as much as t
hey think they do.
[Laughter]
>> That could be implication, I would like to amplify that.
>> All right, thanks everybody and thank you for watching.
[Applause]