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

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

#91

Post by cinquemb »

ethanwillis wrote: post #53
sbierwagen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a flamewar topic. There's a new controversy coming out of MIT media lab every week and we need to question whether whatever "culture" they're putting out is actually worth emulating. And don't forget MIT pushed out Richard Stallman in regards to Epstein debate while ignoring people who knowingly took childfucking money.

Yeah…

The sensitivities people have with the those mentioning rot and rampant prestige laundering in these institutions to the point its frowned on talking about it in association with the topic… banality of evil… lol

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

#92

Post by wombatpm »

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

And MIT threw Adam to the wolves.

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

#93

Post by unishark »

saeranv wrote: post #36
sbierwagen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think the parent comment is relevant since the blog post (and subsequent comments here) praises the hacker/anti-institutionalist mentality of the Media Lab. Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself. They've done a lot of cool things that I'm into, but let's not whitewash history.

> Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself.

MIT arrested him for breaking into a closet to access the network. I've never heard anything about them suing him. JSTOR did some kind of settlement agreement. It was the feds prosecuting him for wire fraud etc that undoubtedly led to the suicide.

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

#94

Post by Mizza »

I've been thinking about some of these guys a lot lately.

When are we going to collectively unpack the fact the Media Lab/Berkman Center project has been a complete failure?

I worked at these places and mingled on the outskirts, and for a long time really believed all the bullshit they were spouting at the time - that the internet was a positive force, if we just connected enough people, surely their "stories" and "empathy" would "revolutionize" the world, etc., etc..

They were all wrong.

Digital, networked technology seemed exciting for a brief and beautiful moment, but has turned 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.

And yet - they persist, despite their ever increasing irrelevance. Spineless hucksters like a Zittrain still get wheeled out occasionally for their take on some hot new trend in Wired magaize, they still get private and government grant money, and, of course, they still keep taking on hapless graduate students.

Just when will we call a spade a spade?

EDIT: This little tirade made me go back and re-read some of the Cluetrain Manifesto - I feel almost ashamed of myself to reread something like "markets are conversations" and remember thinking it was ever good, important, or even valid argument. I now see this as evil thought.

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

#95

Post by Retric »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #88
Retric wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as important is people are generally quite capable, so stuff people find annoying tends to be genuinely difficult. A mass market automated pill dispenser you can just dump your prescriptions in seems like an obviously viable product. But, building something that’s easy enough to use, reliable enough to be safe, and cheap enough to be affordable is a pipe dream.

You know I'll be actually surprised if that isn't a product, because that seems "As seen on TV" level amount of effort. Have some hopper with 7 compartments, put a disk with a hole underneath it, and hook it to some 3 cent digital clock module such that spins it around 50 degrees or so everytime it rolls over. Build the whole thing out of plastic, throw it at some factory in China, and before you know it you'll be se…

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.

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

#96

Post by dhosek »

dbcurtis wrote: post #79
lmilcin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble seems that there aren't many people that get software AND electronics AND mechanics AND on top of that marketing, right. It is rare enough to find people with good electronics and software skills.

After working in robotics for a few years, I came to the realization that people (applies especially to managers) don't recognize when they are bringing the wrong instincts to a problem. If you come up through software, you develop one set of instincts, EE another, and ME yet another set of instincts. When making a decision, step one must be identifying the appropriate set of instincts to bring to the problem. Once u…

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 dropped out of college to eventually get a BA in English).

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

#97

Post by dhosek »

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…

The building my wife was living in in Chicago when we first met had this sort of garbage chute (it was a 1920s-era building). Sorting recycling is not an issue: Chicago found a low-tech way to deal with the sorting: blue plastic bags are reserved for recycling only.

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

#98

Post by tzs »

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

> 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

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

#99

Post by extra88 »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #80
gowld wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the old MIT. For the past 15 years MIT leadership has been dedicated to destroying the creative hacker spirit.

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

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

#100

Post by juped »

Mizza wrote: post #94

I've been thinking about some of these guys a lot lately. When are we going to collectively unpack the fact the Media Lab/Berkman Center project has been a complete failure? I worked at these places and mingled on the outskirts, and for a long time really believed all the bullshit they were spouting at the time - that the internet was a positive force, if we just connected enough people, surely their "stories" and "e…

It's not for that, it's for giving people with prestige more prestige. The more irrelevant the work is, the better it is for its real purpose.
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