In This Edition

People, Information, and Mediating Technologies

Part 1: Representing Information

Part 2: Moving Information

Part 3: Interpreting Information

Interviews

Cameron Marlow SM '01 Working on new communication technologies

Professor Joseph A. Paradiso PhD '81 Director of the Responsive Environments Group and co-director of the Media Lab's Things That Think Consortium

Andrew Pollack SM '77 Technology and biotechnology reporter for the New York Times

Han Shu '96, MEng '97 Contributed to the development of the technology of handwriting recognition, fully automated telephone number retrieval, face recognition, and speech recognition

Professor Sherry Turkle Founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self

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Interpreting Information

Putting information to work for human good means learning how to interpret information about human knowledge and behavior as well as develop new technologies.

Science, Technology, and Society Professor Sherry Turkle's new effort, the MIT Initiative on Technology and the Self, looks at how technology affects the way people think. "An unstated question lies behind much of our current preoccupation with the future of technology," said Turkle in an openDOOR interview. "The question is not what will technology be like in the future, but rather, what will we be like, what are we becoming as we forge increasingly intimate relationships with our machines?

Smart Environments

Project Oxygen, a collaborative project involving the just-merged Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is creating technologies that will flip the focus of computation to human needs. An MPEG clip shows how handheld H21s work with smart environments to provide information like a meeting location or a call for help. In Oxygen, users are effortlessly supported by embedded devices, software networks, perceptual interfaces, and myriad knowledge, location, and cooperation technologies.

The Responsive Environments Group, headed by Joseph Paradiso PhD '81, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, develops sensing modalities and enabling technologies that create new interactive experiences and expressions. His projects range from interactive music systems such as Expressive footwear, which won a Discover Magazine Award for Technical Innovation, to medical instrumentation like low-cost Portable Tele-Diagnostic Devices used by remote health practitioners to capture and send patient medical information to health centers for diagnosis. The Pushpin Computing project uses a 100-pin array to experiment with the massive sensor networks needed by responsive environments.

Smarter Responses

The Reality Mining project, part of the Media Lab's Human Design group, investigates the social network structure within a group through data collected using unobtrusive, wearable sensors. The results may suggest the better ways to organize people and manage knowledge in organizations.

The Media Lab's eRationality group studies how people behave and make day-to-day decisions, particularly in electronic environments. Current projects range from studying the effectiveness of computer agent advice to understanding how daily biofeedback could improve health.

The Affective Computing group, directed by Associate Professor Rosalind Picard, SM '86, PhD '91, asks questions like, 'Can the computer sense your irritation when it does something dumb and then learn not to do that?" The Affective Tutor - the Learning Companion, for example, tries to sense boredom and engagement so it can adjust its teaching style.

Color Helps in Face Recognition Computation neuroscience researchers have found that when images are blurry, the brain relies on color cues to pinpoint identity.

CISR Managing Information Center for Information Systems Research examines management and use of information technology such as a recent effort to define atomic business models, then examine resulting IT performance.