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MIT Professor Michael Hawley
cyranoVR writes "Today's CBS This Morning ran an interesting profile on MIT Professor Michael Hawley. Aside from recently publishing a super-jumbo-sized book about the Kingdom of Bhutan, he has invented (among other things) an interactive kitchen counter, designed a heart monitor embedded in jewelry, contributed to the MIT Toys of Tomorrow project and has written several classical compositions for piano. What really struck me was Hawley's observation that 'today's computers aren't musical enough.' For him, there is 'no difference between an ivory keyboard and a QWERTY keyboard.' I think it's a good thing that the mainstream media is starting to show how 'computer nerds' (as the correspondent identified Hawley) can be rich individuals with much more to their lives than hardware upgrades, programming languages and pocket protectors."
See Prodikeys.
Throwing a box in the microwave isn't cooking. Similarily, hitting keys on your keyboard isn't making music.
I really have nothing against the idea, but if your only exposure to an instrument is a keyboard and various samples, the end result might not be terribly interesting. But neither is microwaved food.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Except that in the case of what I observed, Prof. Hawley would literally drop an in-progress project the moment the media buzz died down.
This is different from popular researchers such as Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking, who routinely give/gave simplified glimpses of their research to the public, but certainly haven't driven their research based on how much media exposure it's likely to generate.
Check his background, CBS and Slashdot. Hawley didn't get tenure because he didn't do much solid research (instead relying on hype and PR). He's no longer a professor at MIT of any sort.
He seems neither unpublished nor unaware. He won the Van Cliburn piano competition and has performed concerts around the world including symphony hall in Boston. His journal publications in computer music listed on his CV include "Windows for Unix at Lucasfilm," (USENIX 1985); "MIDI Music Software for Unix" (USENIX 1986); "Porting UNIX to the Bosendorfer" (Computer Graphics Workshop, 1986); "The Personal Orchestra" (Computing Systems Journal, 3(2), 1990; "Structure out of Sound" (1993). I see from his bio that he did work at IRCAM and at Lucasfilm, both helping to pioneer the digital audio field. That looks like early work, so he probably moved on intellectually but kept up the piano chops.
Perhaps you should crawl out from under your own little rock and ask him yourself instead of whining about what you don't know. His web page and email address are public information.