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Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

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Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#71

Post by [deleted] »

CalChris wrote: post #50
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

[deleted]

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#72

Post by xiaolingxiao »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #18
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 see nothing wrong with professors communicating the value of what they are building as effectively as possible. If you believe a problem is an important problem to solve then you should work hard to convince other people it is important. >As for the Media Lab, they're really selling the image of technological progress. Disclaimer: I've worked with researchers at the DCI group in the media lab on hash function crypt…

> I see nothing wrong with professors communicating the value of what they are building as effectively as possible.

Oh for sure, the grad student get value out of it because there's someone established advocating their work. For people w/ no reputation and marketing know-how, being cross-selled like this is of value, in fact it's one of the primary value add of the PI.

> The media lab is made up of a large number of research teams doing very different stuff.

Yeah fair, wish I knew more about cryptography so I can comment. In general, I don't think narratives are "bad" per-se, or they are strictly less valuable than rigorous mathematically proven technical work. For example every nation has a shared myth/narrative right, and US's myth of freedom of thought and social equality encourage lots of people to try hard, which I think of as a good thing in general.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#73

Post by floren »

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…

I've never seen any indication that Ted has implemented any of his own projects. ZigZag's first demo appears to have been built by Andrew Pam, and a later Java implementation was done by some others.[1]

The page for the Xanadu demo a sibling comment mentions says "The enthusiastic and talented programmer, Rob Smith, of Manchester England, did a beautiful job combining a lot of our ideas" but "Unfortunately this made it a very complicated package, eventually too tangled to improve further, and Rob had to get on to other things. John Ohno and Jonathan Kopetz, in Connecticut, spent several years trying to refactor it, but it's beyond fixing" [2]. I read this as 1) someone implemented a demo for Ted, 2) some other people tried to fix it but gave up, but 3) there's no sign of Ted actually doing any of the work.

If there's proof Ted has actually implemented his own ideas in the past, I'll retract my criticism and refrain from posting it further. I certainly don't argue that the man has been influential, in any case!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigZag_(software) [2] http://xanadu.com/xuspViewer.html

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#74

Post by netcan »

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…

If you are funded by a grant process (or similar), you are shaped by it.

The most common complaints form the inside are political games or PR games... like here. Either whoever has the best connections wins or whoever has the best (most?) image wins.

Remember Banksy's shredder prank? He shredded a multi-million-$ drawing at the auction. Presumably this was some sort of angry gesture towards the art-buying world. I think it's the same sentiment Ted expresses here.

A lot of researchers are idealistic, like many artists. They don't like "hype and hokum," and they take offence at how much influence PR has. It's cheapening. The value, potential or importance of research is being determined by a spokesman who doesn't understand (or care) about his own inaccuracies. The granter is obviously dumb too, judging by the dumb PR used to court them. Neither seem to care about truth. How is it possible that these dummies decide so much.

I'm guessing Banksy hates that idiot art dealers and buyers decide the value of art.

Them's the breaks though.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#75

Post by ip26 »

azinman2 wrote: post #65
Glyptodon wrote: post #16

As a high school student I got a chance to visit MIT's CSAIL with some other high school students and it killed all interest I had in attending MIT because what I previously thought would be a total hacker and mad scientist sort of place turned out to be a bunch of marketing gimmicks (with a couple carefully managed demos of things that were "cool" more so than useful, new, or innovative).

First, you know that CSAIL is not the media lab, right? Secondly, there’s nothing gimmicky about CSAIL. Perhaps nerds sitting around writing code or proving lemmas on a whiteboard isn’t so “cool” to look at as a high schooler, but that doesn’t mean it’s isn’t an exciting place when you’re old enough, knowledgeable enough, and creative enough to enjoy it.

Ah, so your parent was just too young, dumb, and boring to appreciate the magic. Subtle.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#76

Post by bobosha »

CSAIL alum here, at the risk of being accused of inter-lab rivalry, I have got to say the Media lab has a reputation of being the "Marketing dept of MIT". A Wired article a while back referred to them as "all icing and no cake". The "sixth sense project" for example, was one I thought was more worthy of an undergraduate project, than MIT Doctoral research.

I wish Media lab refocuses in enormous resources & talent on advancing science, and significantly dial-down the show-biz aspects of the Media Lab.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#78

Post by bobosha »

Glyptodon wrote: post #16

As a high school student I got a chance to visit MIT's CSAIL with some other high school students and it killed all interest I had in attending MIT because what I previously thought would be a total hacker and mad scientist sort of place turned out to be a bunch of marketing gimmicks (with a couple carefully managed demos of things that were "cool" more so than useful, new, or innovative).

I think you are incorrect to confuse CSAIL with the Media Lab.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#79

Post by appleflaxen »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #18
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 see nothing wrong with professors communicating the value of what they are building as effectively as possible. If you believe a problem is an important problem to solve then you should work hard to convince other people it is important. >As for the Media Lab, they're really selling the image of technological progress. Disclaimer: I've worked with researchers at the DCI group in the media lab on hash function crypt…

> The media lab is made up of a large number of research teams doing very different stuff. It is unfair to just say "the media lab does X or operates like X". Look at the research from the DCI group at the media on zero knowledge proofs systems [0], hash-based accumulators [1], or work on Ring Signatures [2].

I have no dog in the fight, but I feel like if any entity is branding itself as a discrete entity, then you take the lumps of the branding just as you take the brand recognition. If you're "part of the MIT Media lab", then this affects your reputation in the eyes of the public.

Re: Ted versus The Media Lab [video]

#80

Post by mattkrause »

exdsq wrote: post #62
jvilk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd bet that anyone with a PhD could have made more money with a masters degree and a switch to industry. This is common knowledge for those pursuing CS PhDs. You don't do it for the money. If you only care about money, a master's degree is what you want.

A lot of jobs I have seen recently say a PhD is highly desirable while a Masters is essential. Obviously I don't suggest people start doing a PhD for the money, however I'm surprised to think that you can't out-earn your alternative self with a Masters seeing as the difference in study time is 2 years but you'd be entering industry as an 'expert'. Especially if you target your PhD at something like computational fina…

I'd lump those fields into "ML" and the difference is probably more like 4 years in the US (2 vs ~6).

The career consequences are also weirdly mixed. Some places seem to recognize that, along with your area of specialization, getting a PhD also involves a fair amount of project management, writing, etc skills. Other places (or even different people at the same place), seem to think it's a glaring red flag that you can't "get real work done" because you sit around all day in a smoking jacket, thinking. (I think that's mostly bunk--academia moves fast these days, but that sentiment is nevertheless not uncommon).

And, if anyone has actual advice on monetizing a comp/neuro PhD, I'm all ears :-)

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