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

ethanzuckerman.com

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

#161

Post by rsynnott »

OJFord wrote: post #134
eitland wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where electrical regulations don’t allow it, banishing the washing machine to the kitchen. That explains! I've wondered why people in movies/series would keep washing machines in the kitchen. Around here in medium size houses like mine the washing machine is typically placed in the same room as one of the toilets and the room is referred to as the washing room (vaskerom).

That would actually be allowed AFAIK - it's the bath/shower that makes it a bathroom (both in British English usage and electrical regs!) and banishes the white goods. But WCs tend to be v. small (as if given a little extra space architects say What shall we do, Fred, cupboard or loo?) so can't house them either. Usually (flats/small houses aside) they'll be in the scullery (adjoining the kitchen) though, not actuall…

I’d say in the vast majority of house they’re in the kitchen; most don’t have a scullery/utility room.

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

#162

Post by dhosek »

ascar wrote: post #157
dhosek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the cool things about the Harvey Mudd College Engineering major. Rather than doing Mechanical Engineering, or Electrical Engineering or Cheese Engineering or whatever, you just do Engineering. Graduates leave with a full toolbox of skills. I kind of wish when I was an undergrad, I hadn't had such an aversion to practical knowledge (I started out majoring in Physics/English, then Math/English then dropp…

That might be a start, but higher education only scratches the surface of on-the-job skills in engineering. You learn the basic tools, the way of thinking and the skill of acquiring additional knowledge. You get near to zero experience on real engineering problems as encountered in business. So in the good case this degree might broaden your horizon and teaches you that you don't know enough and in the bad case it mi…

The capstone of the engineering major is the engineering clinic project which has students working on “real engineering problems as encountered in business”. Companies pay the college to have teams of senior engineering majors solve a problem they face. Two of the sexier projects were Disneyland hired HMC to come up with an anti-collision system for autopia and West Dorm had a clinic team refurbish a beloved vintage pinball machine.

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

#163

Post by Simon_says »

mjevans wrote: post #128
tfigment wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what all pharmacies in South Korea do.

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

#164

Post by geitir »

burntoutfire wrote: post #127
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…

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/…

People in the US in maybe 6 cities

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

#165

Post by craftinator »

mrgordon wrote: post #70
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #4

There's something so beautiful about a place so dysfunctional that you can't even replace standard office equipment; I know it was alluded to in the article, but in case anyone forgot, the MIT Media Lab played a part in Jeffery Epstein and he often leveraged it for good PR https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-je...

People do a lot of creative experiments around that building so it’s not surprising you would want to ask before disassembling someone’s thesis project. To call the place “dysfunctional” because some brilliant grad students constantly try new things is to miss the point (and the spirit of the place) entirely.

Maybe a better wording would be disorganized =)

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

#166

Post by foldr »

mrgordon wrote: post #112
tzs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR Huh? What in JSTOR's behavior [1] do you think caused Swartz's death? [1] https://docs.jstor.org/summary.html

By their own account, “We also reiterated our desire that MIT identify the individual(s) responsible” They pushed for aggressive chasing down of an individual for stealing some articles that were largely publicly funded as I recall. This escalated to the FBI and led to a laundry list of charges that scared him into suicide. Not great for some research we should have just had available for free after already paying to…

JSTOR has to at least make a show of respecting the licensing agreements that they have with publishers. It can't be seen to wink at an attempt to make its entire archive available for free.

JSTOR actually does a ton of useful work scanning old journal articles. Someone has to pay for this.

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

#167

Post by sircastor »

bsder wrote: post #26
zxcmx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a comparison between "CNC retrofit" and "CNC from the factory" machines. What are buildings after all but big machines around us. CNC retrofits (even when successful) tend to be never ending projects. This is partly because the kind of person who retrofits a machine is seldom satisfied with it. But also one tends to end up replacing the whole machine over time - the motion and way the machine gets used is diffe…

> CNC retrofits (even when successful) tend to be never ending projects. This is partly because the kind of person who retrofits a machine is seldom satisfied with it. There are two primary reasons for the infinite refit: 1) No definite project for the CNC If you have a definite project, you have a deadline and want that project done. The project also has a monetary implication so you have a budget. I bought a Formla…

I had this problem early on When I wanted a 3D printer. I ultimately spent more time working on my printer than printing things. It was very frustrating. Whenever I talk to people who are looking at getting a printer I always ask them “do you want to work on a printer or print things?”

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

#168

Post by digitalsushi »

This is the same reason I'm never going to be able to move into a nicer/bigger/cuter/better view house. I have my house and the barn behind it all laid out exactly as I see fit, and I know that if I ever sold this place, no amount of impassioned pleas to understand the nuisance and rationale will ever be heard. It's always going to distill into "great, but strip it all out, all of it, paint it white and make it able to store a boat". So much of my ego is programmed into the layout of the building that it would be a denial of self to let someone else have it.

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

#169

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

extra88 wrote: post #99
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence?

I’m not agreeing with the premise but MIT’s disavowal of Star Simpson when she was arrested in 2007 could be evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Simpson

Yes, choosing the Christian tradition, MIT seems to have acted like Peter denying knowledge of Jesus. But, like Peter ("The Rock") it seems as if neither MIT nor Star is worse for the wear; in fact, her email is still listed as @mit.edu in the alum directory! Not @alum.mit.edu, but @mit.edu. Thanks, I had forgotten about her, at the time I thought "good for her! doing nothing wrong". ALSO, fwiw, she lived in the two campus housing units that, shall we say, are meant for those not on the 'straight and narrow' path. Not an excuse; praise. I might have lived in one of them, too... ;-)

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

#170

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

saeranv wrote: post #32
mkeeter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like something coming out of the Responsive Environments group ( https://resenv.media.mit.edu/ ).

Thanks for the link, I think I found our guy! https://resenv.media.mit.edu/#Projects#personalized-building... He published his thesis 2010, which aligns with when Ethan arrived at his office, and if you watch the video at that link, you can see the automated window control system at 1:47. (Also the video is kind of hilarious and awesome in its own right).

Awesome internet-search foo! I gotta talk with Ethan, I mean, it's cool the window opens automatically. He could have put his wood knob on the open (clockwise) and close (counterclockwise) buttons and achieved preserving the past, and making things easy to use for the present. All good.
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