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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Moving Information

The World Wide Web, invented by Lab for Computer Science 3Com Chair Tim Berners-Lee, channels the ever-increasing flood of global information. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), directed by Berners-Lee, is collaboratively setting Web standards to assure universal access to this pipeline. W3C goals include accessibility as well as developing the Semantic Web to convey and give meaning to information.

Universal access to this moving web of information is a focus of the MIT Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence (ITC) directed by David Clark '68, PhD '73, a LCS senior researcher scientist and Internet architect. ITC, which champions the concept of the Internet as an egalitarian global tool, assesses the impact of telecommunications policies. Clark is also pioneering a new Extreme Communications concept unrolled in a recent conference.

Viral communications, headed by another Extreme Communications leader, Media Lab Senior Scientist Andrew Lippman '71, SM '77, is working on ways to make self-organized distribution systems that work in real time. The group works on structured and coded representations of sounds and pictures for an emerging decentralized network model for personal communications.

Expanding Media

Cameron Marlow SM '01, a PhD student in the Media Lab's Electronic Publishing Group, is tracking how information moves by web log or blog. His research, the Blogdex project or, more formally, the Weblog Diffusion Index, describes information epidemics among informal social networks. His own blog is named Overstated because, he says, he tends to exaggerate.

Story Networks, a Media Lab Europe project headed by Gloriana Davenport, brings emerging media, sensing, and communication technologies to story telling. Textable Movie invites storytellers to compose in real time with videos, images, and sound environments. Davenport also directs the Media Lab's interactive media group. Flights of Fantasy is an interactive research and installation project that focuses on receiving and sending video messages.

MetaMedia illustrates Comparative Media Studies projects on transforming humanities education including the Shakespeare Electronic Archive and Berliner sehen, which put multimedia tools into student hands. CMS graduate students showcase their own multimedia stories, music, and videos in CMS Magazine.

Word of Mouse

The Internet is such a powerful way of communicating opinions about products or services that business reputations are made or broken by word of mouse, says Sloan Professor of Management Chrysanthos Dellarocas, SM '91, PhD '96. He recently cohosted the first Interdisciplinary Symposium on Online Reputation Mechanisms to raise questions about how to use the vast flows of online consumer feedback flowing hourly to Web sites.

Thinking of a crossover car? Try out Sloan's Virtual Customer Initiative (VC) demo to vote for a favorite. This VC project illustrates how Web-based methods can improve the speed, accuracy, and usability of customer input to product development.

go on to Part 3: Interpreting Information

Communicating the Alien Experience Alien Staff: 3rd Variant, a Center for Advanced Visual Studies project, is a portable public address system that broadcasts immigrant experiences.

TR's Take on Telcom/Internet News Technology Review covers telecom news such as the potential of a new decentralized, peer-to-peer program, Waste.

OCW Transfers MIT Expertise OpenCourseWare, MIT's commitment to put materials for over 2,000 courses online, recently added Media, Education, and the Marketplace.

Moving MIT Scholarship into DSpace Improving the flow of academic ideas is the goal of MIT's digital archive, DSpace, and its inaugural symposium available on video online.