To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab • Hacker News Board

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#121

Post by acituan » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 6:19 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #116

Mizza wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying very specifically: The material conditions of people alive in the west today are significantly worse than they were in 1999, largely as the result of the ascendance of the digital platforms and economic arrangements that organizations like MIT and Berkman were taking money to promote. Ordinary people today are more lonely, overwhelmed, polarized and impoverished. The "new" econo…

The Media Lab’s arguably most widely adopted product, the Scratch programming language... is that leading to the “collapse of dignity?” What about Guitar Hero? Are those guys, Media Lab grad students who spent a decade after graduation until they found hard earned success... did they create a “new serfdom?” The Berkman Center houses the historic DoJ tech antitrust lawyers. Do you think antitrust won’t play a role in…

You are strawmanning OPs argument by giving those examples as if that’s what they said. OP seems to criticize the ethos of Media Lab as professed, not any particular products. Not only that, you criticize their form and dismiss them as inaccurate but don’t actually posit any counter-arguments.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#122

Post by vkou » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #12

Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building. They would leav…

> I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building.

The problem with those little hatches is that they create a breeding ground for rats and cockroaches.

They also serve as a fantastic means for idiots to grind your building's trash disposal system to a halt - when said idiots toss oversized items into them. (Christmas trees were a popular failure mode in my apartment building. How people got them into the trash chutes was beyond me.)

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#123

Post by morelisp » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

axaxs wrote: post #17

squarefoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building. They would leav…

For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom. One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

I thought laundry chutes were pretty common, they were in all three houses I grew up in in the US. (Second floor direct to basement in two, 1st and 2nd to basement in another.) One was built in the 30s and the others in the 70s.

If you want to something really "genius" look up razor blade wall banks.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#124

Post by montereynack » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #90

raverbashing wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also see: every "smart lock" startup around.

I have a great smart lock. The secret is, it's dumb. It has a keypad and a keyhole and a 9V battery that lasts about five years. About three months before the battery wears out, it starts beeping and blinking every time you open it, so you know it's time to replace the battery. You have to look in the manual to add or remove a code, but it remembers at least a dozen codes. It doesn't talk to a smartphone. It doesn't…

Which lock is it that you’re using? I’m kind of in the market atm.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#125

Post by morelisp » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:04 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #116

Mizza wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying very specifically: The material conditions of people alive in the west today are significantly worse than they were in 1999, largely as the result of the ascendance of the digital platforms and economic arrangements that organizations like MIT and Berkman were taking money to promote. Ordinary people today are more lonely, overwhelmed, polarized and impoverished. The "new" econo…

The Media Lab’s arguably most widely adopted product, the Scratch programming language... is that leading to the “collapse of dignity?” What about Guitar Hero? Are those guys, Media Lab grad students who spent a decade after graduation until they found hard earned success... did they create a “new serfdom?” The Berkman Center houses the historic DoJ tech antitrust lawyers. Do you think antitrust won’t play a role in…

GuitarFreaks did not come out of the Media Lab. No disrespect to Egozy and Rigopulos, but HMX's success (even before GH) seems to have come specifically after they dumped Media Lab-inspired plans and started drawing inspiration from the Japanese arcade scene.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#126

Post by burntoutfire » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:28 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #76

squarefoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building. They would leav…

I used to work in a place that put me in contact with a lot of architects who worked on skyscrapers. I asked one why new apartment buildings don't have trash chutes as often as they used to. He said a lot of developers don't want the expense that goes into building them. And a lot of owners don't want the maintenance expense. They get clogged up more often than most people realize. That said, when I lived in Seattle…

They were pretty standard for higher buildings in communist Poland, but they quite quickly got disabled in many of them. The reason was that, without good and reliable maintenance, they were too good of a source of food for bugs, which would then spread around the apartments.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#127

Post by burntoutfire » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #107

an_opabinia wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> into nothing more than a global system of surveillance, advertising, propaganda and skinnerboxing, far worse than any television ever was - forget about your "global library" dreams. I don’t know, if you’re basically saying your stylized, hyperbolic, generalizing, imprecise, inaccurate discourse is better than theirs just because it’s negative and theirs is positive... I would rather have the positive?

I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying very specifically: The material conditions of people alive in the west today are significantly worse than they were in 1999, largely as the result of the ascendance of the digital platforms and economic arrangements that organizations like MIT and Berkman were taking money to promote. Ordinary people today are more lonely, overwhelmed, polarized and impoverished. The "new" econo…

Maybe the lives of people in the West did get worse due to Internet (debatable), but the lives of everybody else might have gotten better.

If not for Internet, I'd be a completely different and I suspect much more limited person (I'm from EE). Internet provided me access to role models in my areas of interest who showed me how high the sky can be in our industry (if not for that, I'd be some depressed J2EE developer/Project Manager in a local telco or something). People in the US can just have in-person access to such role models (e.g. by getting a job at some cool company, doing a PhD at strong US technical school etc.), while in backwater areas of the world, if not for Internet, you would not even be aware of this whole cool universe.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#128

Post by mjevans » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

tfigment wrote: post #105

Retric wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of devices have little bins you fill, some then automatically open those bins on the correct days. However, pills are of wildly different shapes and sizes, which invalidates most of the seemingly obvious sorting solutions. Prescriptions can also call for multiple pills in the same day.

Very much this. Last time my dad visited he had 4 pill boxes: 7am,10am,2pm,6pm. We had to color code so he knew which ones at which hour. They had to be portable, at least 10 and 2 did. He had slight dementia so he would get confused about colors and sometimes the day. Even worse was trying to decipher the instructions for each medicine to refill the boxes especially after some would change doses after initial couple…

It's really sad, but the automation for this is a pharmacy that creates custom plastic sealed single-dosing packets. Some people, most older people, are on THAT many meds and just need to take the next one off the roll.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#129

Post by lz400 » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #107

an_opabinia wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> into nothing more than a global system of surveillance, advertising, propaganda and skinnerboxing, far worse than any television ever was - forget about your "global library" dreams. I don’t know, if you’re basically saying your stylized, hyperbolic, generalizing, imprecise, inaccurate discourse is better than theirs just because it’s negative and theirs is positive... I would rather have the positive?

I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying very specifically: The material conditions of people alive in the west today are significantly worse than they were in 1999, largely as the result of the ascendance of the digital platforms and economic arrangements that organizations like MIT and Berkman were taking money to promote. Ordinary people today are more lonely, overwhelmed, polarized and impoverished. The "new" econo…

I think your argument is the start of a very important and stimulating discussion, and you've worded it perfectly. I think the negative aspects of the "digital revolution" definitely exist and starry-eyed Silicon Valley positivism will never find the solutions or even detect them.

That said, I deeply disagree with your conclusion. I think, barring politics or pandemics of course, the world is objectively better due to the digital revolution. It's not only a positive force, but it's an overall positive one.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#130

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 7:54 AM UTC

mrgordon wrote: post #61

nangz wrote: post #16

Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic who died of covid? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba... Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a civil disobedience award? Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey E…

You realize the author of the linked article resigned over Epstein and frequently fought to improve things? Why try to link him to some trash that he vehemently opposed? And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR not the Media Lab FYI

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured "appropriate" out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the "criminal" who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

-- Lawrence Lessig, "Prosecutor as Bully"

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aaron-swartz-suicide_b_246707...