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Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

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Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#41

Post by vanderZwan »

jffhn wrote: post #34

I like his view on how interfaces should be self-revealing. I used to feel dumb and waste time trying to figure things out, but then I decided that if I wouldn't get something quickly enough, that's because it was badly presented, and I had better discard it and move on. This approach saved me both much ego and time. (This can be read as a joke, but I'm mostly serious. I also use it when I design: I keep reworking th…

> This approach saved me both much ego and time. (This can be read as a joke, but I'm mostly serious.

As an interaction designer I cannot stress how right you are about this and that it is no joke at all. There's a seven-year old comment here on HN[0] that really drove home the importance of looking beyond the tech-savvy bubble that we live in for me:

> I look at UI changes in a totally different way now. My saw me come online on Skype, so she called me. There's an ocean between us currently. She said she called me because she was writing an email to me, but couldn't find the Send button, so didn't know how to send it. Either it made her feel stupid or frustrated, or she felt so sad that she couldn't send an email to me that she had spent some time writing, or whatever, but she started crying. She was crying because she couldn't find the Send button in gmail.

It's fine to be proud of our ability to navigate technology, but to let that become a form of gatekeeping due to carelessness is terrible. Whenever I'm designing something now I try to think of my retired parents and wonder "will they be confused by this?" as a basic smell-test. If an interface makes my users feel intimidated rather than empowered, I have failed as a designer.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6429848

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#42

Post by Chinjut »

diydsp wrote: post #38
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #2

This is well known in academia and exist outside of Media Lab as well. For example, I asked a professor (not associated with the Media Lab) about using hype to get grants. He said: "It's just like the stock market right, money goes here, it goes there, it's all story telling. I have to tell stories too because if I don't, then other people will tell this story and get the money. But I think I can use it better than o…

>they're really selling the image of technological progress. That's such a broad brushstroke. Consider, for example, Echo Nest's research in machine listening in Barry Vercoe's Music, Mind and Machine group. This all made it into Spotify when they acquired Echo Nest. His work led and pushed other researchers in the field at ISMIR, etc. Hard to downplay the impact of Spotify on our culture. This is not "hokum." And as…

Spotify's impact on our culture is "People like to stream music. Here is a service that lets them do so.". You didn't need the Media Lab to come up with that idea, and indeed, it didn't.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#43

Post by look_lookatme »

cambalache wrote: post #9
hprotagonist wrote: post #6

I don’t think i’ve ever taken Media Lab “seriously” — or if i did, my age still started with a 1. To take media lab seriously is to miss the point. They aren’t supposed to be serious! If i may coin a term, they’re not even doing blue sky, they’re doing crack-of-dawn. 99% of what they think about will turn out to be a funny shadow on the wall from the laundry hamper that looked cool for a minute until the room brighte…

So what is its point?

To generate content for Gimlet podcasts

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#44

Post by vilhelm_s »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #2

This is well known in academia and exist outside of Media Lab as well. For example, I asked a professor (not associated with the Media Lab) about using hype to get grants. He said: "It's just like the stock market right, money goes here, it goes there, it's all story telling. I have to tell stories too because if I don't, then other people will tell this story and get the money. But I think I can use it better than o…

I guess it's not specific to academia either. Startups work exactly the same, they tell stories to investors to get grants, and are often staffed with idealistic people straight out of college.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#45

Post by Teever »

Chinjut wrote: post #42
diydsp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're really selling the image of technological progress. That's such a broad brushstroke. Consider, for example, Echo Nest's research in machine listening in Barry Vercoe's Music, Mind and Machine group. This all made it into Spotify when they acquired Echo Nest. His work led and pushed other researchers in the field at ISMIR, etc. Hard to downplay the impact of Spotify on our culture. This is not "hokum." And as…

Spotify's impact on our culture is "People like to stream music. Here is a service that lets them do so.". You didn't need the Media Lab to come up with that idea, and indeed, it didn't.

Yeah OPs comment is some sort of idealistic historical revision that ignores the fact that there were a myriad of streaming services that predated Spotify.

It's a pretty weird thing flex about too. Like isn't streaming music based on preferences pretty easy?

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#46

Post by diydsp »

tudorw wrote: post #28
floren wrote: post #11

Pot, meet kettle. Ted's been banging on the Xanadu drum for 50 years... if he'd have just bothered to learn to program, he could have implemented it himself, but it seems he'd rather give interviews about it than sit down at a keyboard.

This is the most ridiculous recurring accusation against someone who has championed the human-oriented use of computers since day one and it's partly his work that means we have PCs at all. So, firstly, Ted can program, secondly, there are versions of Xanadu and ZigZag you can download and try. Bill Lowe of IBM fame on Ted; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kasu0BhRFGo A zigzag demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yF…

>there are versions of Xanadu and ZigZag you can download and try.

I tried here: http://xanadu.com/xuspViewer.html

I got this file: http://xanadu.com/xuspD9y,2013 which is a .zip file. So it's ~7years old, Windows only (though full of _MACOSX files). Keyboard only. No installer. No source available. Described as "spent several years trying to refactor it, but it's beyond fixing"

But yeah it does run on my laptop, at least! Any other versions out there?

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#47

Post by diydsp »

Chinjut wrote: post #42
diydsp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're really selling the image of technological progress. That's such a broad brushstroke. Consider, for example, Echo Nest's research in machine listening in Barry Vercoe's Music, Mind and Machine group. This all made it into Spotify when they acquired Echo Nest. His work led and pushed other researchers in the field at ISMIR, etc. Hard to downplay the impact of Spotify on our culture. This is not "hokum." And as…

Spotify's impact on our culture is "People like to stream music. Here is a service that lets them do so.". You didn't need the Media Lab to come up with that idea, and indeed, it didn't.

Why do you think they acquired Echo Nest for 50 million euros? It's the music discovery engine, not the streaming.[0]

[0] http://the.echonest.com/pressreleases/spotify-acquires-echo-...

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#48

Post by mattkrause »

zaroth wrote: post #29
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #2

This is well known in academia and exist outside of Media Lab as well. For example, I asked a professor (not associated with the Media Lab) about using hype to get grants. He said: "It's just like the stock market right, money goes here, it goes there, it's all story telling. I have to tell stories too because if I don't, then other people will tell this story and get the money. But I think I can use it better than o…

> I know several people who graduated from the Media Lab with masters/doctorates, and they are all of this exact mold: taken captive by pipe dreams and their own delusions of what this stuff could do, while their advisors are churning through students and packaging new narratives. I have a pretty hard time with the theory that Doctoral MIT graduates are an exploited underclass. Doctoral students everywhere are overwo…

> Doctoral students...heavily monetize that credential at the end of it.

Ha! If only! To continue doing research, the usual next step is a postdoc (~$50k/yr). Industry positions pay better, but outside of ML, there aren't tons of them and biotech (for example, which the media lab does) salaries aren't crazy high.

I'd bet that anyone with a PhD could have made more money with a masters degree and a switch to industry.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#49

Post by Chinjut »

diydsp wrote: post #47
Chinjut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify's impact on our culture is "People like to stream music. Here is a service that lets them do so.". You didn't need the Media Lab to come up with that idea, and indeed, it didn't.

Why do you think they acquired Echo Nest for 50 million euros? It's the music discovery engine, not the streaming.[0] [0] http://the.echonest.com/pressreleases/spotify-acquires-echo-...

Companies make all sorts of acquisitions, insightful or random. The acquisition of Echo Nest certainly isn't the reason for "the impact of Spotify on our culture". I assure you, Spotify's success was in its licensing a very large selection of music to stream. Everything else is marginal.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#50

Post by CalChris »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #8
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parallels to SV, VCs, and the startup ecosystem are striking.

Yeah I think overt exploitation is what happens when you have a situation where there is very thin or no layer of management between the most savvy players of the game ( professors, founders or VCs ) and fresh meat ( engineers or grad students ). They're both situations where the predators walk freely amongst the prey and take as they please. Also SV was an extension of academic-military-industrial complex, and they…

You should group founders with the engineers and grad students rather than with the VCs. We have to figure out a market opportunity and a product to fit it, seed that ourselves, eat ramen, pitch it, recruit for it and then make it and sell it. We do all that for well below market rate wages for a chance a big return. Moreover, founders get common stock, same as engineers.

VCs get a management fee and a carry. They also invest some money into the fund. Their management fee de-risks them entirely.

You can't group VCs and founders on one side and engineers on the other. It just doesn't make sense.

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