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."

Comments

Why care?

[Bryan Ischo]

For what it's worth, I'm a computer nerd and I could not care less how the mass media portrays me. Why should I? Why do you?

Re:Why care?

[peeping_Thomist]

Why should I? Why do you?

Pretty girls get their ideas about computer nerds from the mass media.

Re:Why care?

[bkaster]

For what it's worth, I'm a computer nerd and I could not care less how the mass media portrays me. Why should I? Why do you?

Well, media portrayal has a direct influence on your standing in society. Your standing in society has a direct influence on your life (ever notice the difference in the way people treat you depending on the way you dress?). More important than the way people treat you, look at mathematics in Europe. There the funding of departments is often very linked to the number of students they have (in one way or another). Mathematics being uncool certainly means fewer students, which in turn gives problems with the funding. I think for computer science there are currently no such issues (there is enough coolness, and there are other factors at work), but on the long run influence of the picture society has of a group of people is certainly important.

What I am saying is that it is reasonable to care about the image in society, certainly not that one should take a current picture personally.

Best,
Bart

Re:Why care?

[JGski]

:-) I'm always amused by techie's comments like this, in part because I used to say exactly the same thing when I was in my early 20s.

The reality is that value of your smarts to society as a whole is entirely fungible (your word-of-the-day) and largely determined by that image, for better or for worse. You may have your own internal compass of self-worth; bravo! it's a wonderful thing and I don't begrudge you it. But it won't buy you a cup of coffee.

The mass media is simply a reflection of a greater collective value assertion on your community and indirectly on you personally. You (like every other human being) have limits to your brilliance, power and control. One of those limits is on how you are valued in terms of economic and social resource allocation. Your allocation of those resources (aka Jobs, Mates, Favors, Respect, etc.) are solely dependent on your value to others as that value is perceived by others. Your only means of control is to be aware of and exert influence on that perception (sometimes called "marketing yourself" - yes, I know, despicable).

Is it unfair that people may judge your value as a person based on a stereotype of "the nerd"? Yes and no. They have a right to decide how to allocate the resources they possess; with that includes the right to decide the means for testing and assessing the value of what will be exchanged (you, your personality and your skills) for those resources. A lot of people might think justifications for case-modding and overclocking are unfair and foolish ways of valuing resources. But it's your money, your case and your CPU, and thus your right to decide how you chose to make your value decisions.

People use stereotypes and perceptions to avoid thinking too much. This is anathema to nerds since we do a lot thinking, enjoy thinking and respect thinking. Nonetheless, thinking takes time and energy. An entirely rational strategy followed by most humans is to "play the numbers" and use heuristic substitutes for detailed analytic thinking. If the heuristic is right 80% of the time but you spent only 20% of the effort that thinking would require, aren't you ahead of the game? Absolutely. But we nerds do it also.

Ask yourself this: do I rationally analyze every purchase I make or do I mostly just buy a brand I know? I mean, absolutely every purchase; like every time I buy toothpaste do I send it out for analysis to assure quality control? Of course not. You buy <insert your familiar brand> rather than intensely investigate what you're buying each time you make a purchase. This is what "branding" is: sidestepping the cost of rational economic analysis by relying on a symbolic representation and promise of a product that meets a need. You choose (explicitly or implicitly) to hold a belief that the product does what you expect, for example, due to the presumption that manufacturing is performed according to familiar, rational practices and processes so that the next time you buy a Coca Cola or an Athlon, it will probably be just as good as the last one. This is reasonable, but not a strictly rational belief or axiom. You are playing the odds on it, using your own stereotype (aka a brand perception) to convince yourself that you don't need to think about it. Go to some developing nation some time and you'll see product quality variance that may force you to question that assumption.

So why do I (you) need to worry about what the mass media thinks about me? Well, I won't say "worry" is the right word. Specifically, your value to society is on the line with how you and your profession is perceived. Economic, social and romantic decisions are being made right this minute based on it! You should be aware of the implications of what a negative image means in terms of your career and personal satisfaction. How important those are to you is your privilege to decide how important you decide they are

Coding as an artform

[Space cowboy]

I've always considered coding to be an artistic pursuit - the perfect form, in coding's case, is the elegant form IMHO - the creation of the simplest tool to do the job well (and fulfill the requirements spec, of course :-). In music, the art is the whole expression: the rise and fall in volume, the tempo changes, the different instruments, the silences, the mood-creation. Music is the pursuit of immersion. Coding is the pursuit of elegance. At least for me.

On the other hand, I can't really see "Spreadsheet in D minor" becoming too popular... entering incrementing data by performing a crescendo on the keyboard will take a while to catch on :-)

So whereas there are similarities, I think there are differences too, and I think the two input mechanisms reflect that. There is the other point that not all of us are maestro's with a musical instrument... the user-interface of the ivories might be slightly less user-friendly than the traditional QWERTY (or AZERTY, or whatever is your poison :-)

Simon

Re:Coding as an artform

[cybin]

I have to disagree with you on this -- as both a composer and programmer in several languages - coding is not the same as creating artworks. In order for computer code to be useful, it has to make sense and operate logically. Art is in direct opposition to this -- it exists on the border (and sometimes across the border) of interpretation and the abstract. Computer code is not open to interpretation - it runs the way it was written to run. It doesn't match the same way a performer can offer a different interpretation of a work.

What you are talking about is "Craft" -- and yes, art involves craft too, that's why we study the technical aspects of piano, how the overtone series works, etc. And coding can be done "artfully" -- but the final product is not "Art".

A side note, I really don't want to get into a flame war over this, I'm just respectfully disagreeing, because I know we can argue about this for the next century :)

It's just a matter of time...

[heironymouscoward]

Most nerds are men, and men change their priorities and attitudes over time. My rule of thumb is that the jocks mature early, the nerds mature late.

A nerd invests hugely in a technical subject and should, with time, be able to leverage that into a high value career. So it's quite normal that many men who were totally nerdy in their teens and twenties become relaxed, charming, social, and wealthy as they get older and more succesful.

Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!!

[almound]

People who want to do music ... and I'm IT staff, who is getting a statistics degree, yet writes classical music as a hobby for fun ... find that they are stymied by antiquated and just plain dumb music software.

The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is twenty+plus years old. Imagine if you were trying to do your networking using Banyan ... oh, never heard of Banyan? Think on it.

Yet MIDI is what someone who WRITES music must use to export notes over into a program that will PLAY the music they write (i.e. a sequencer) with any degree of real sound. By itself, MIDI just does not support the nuances and articulations of music desk-top publishing, the environments known as notation programs. And also, notation programs can't adequately play back the notes (the sound is cheesey at best).

So people, myself included, resort to composing in one or the other, or perhaps in both a sequencer and a notation program simultaneously, each program running on a separate machine! Is that stone-age or what!!! Imagine if that was what was required to do word processing!

With the current state of MIDI, the computer isn't even able to write what you play into it from a keyboard (without hours and hours of tweaking and guesstimation). We haven't even come that far, people!

Oh, did I mention that the special cables and splitters required to network MIDI devices together are about 2000% more expensive than any other cable connections you are likely to buy! $600.00 all told to hook up three PCs with a MIDI keyboard!!! This is true of Macs as well as PCs.

No, computers AREN'T music friendly and it is a needless shame. Something must be done about it.

Outlook versus "Inside"

[aepervius]

Again why should I care about a *ANY* girl (pretty or not) which get her idea from the media, and is completly close-minded to recognize that *I* am different than how the media portray me ? Why should I care about about any girl which judge on the outside apparence and media portraying and do not bother revisionning it when she meets me ? Is such girl even worth bothering, if she can't make her own opinion different than what the media sprout ?

Re:Media attention

[cvdwl]

As a postdoc on a trail of post-docs, I think it's safe to say that almost any professor or scientist seen in the national media will be faced with such accusations from his academic peers.

Not to say the detractors are right or wrong, but the problem, IMHO, really comes from a basic process:

1. the media is rarely willing or able to portray scientific problems in their true complexity, leading to:
2. any scientist who does speak to the media is often misquoted or portrayed as a hero, in order to "simplify" or "clarify", thus:
3. the popular scientist quickly earns equal marks of disdain ("the damned fool said WHAT?!") and envy ("yeah, I coulda done that.").

Unfortunately, "research merit" is decided when Joe Sixpack watches CBS and tells his congressman that he thinks that there scientist is cool. Your "research merit" is driven at least as much by Congress as by your personal belief in the quality of the work.

Musical Computing

[rMortyH]

Musical computing is what I do now, at this place, and it's definitely true that computers are not musical enough.

First, the computer is theoretically a completely general tool, but the ones we use come packaged as an office tool. Using them for other purposes generally requires alot of work against this, even in our favorite operating systems. (though FAR less so)

The next problem is computer hardware. It's quite a daunting task in most cases to connect a keyboard or other controller to a computer. It has to be easy for non-geeks. (USB makes this much better than it has been.) In addition, the vast majority of low-end keyboards are awful. They usually have undersize keys, and almost never have velocity, which both become a problem once you move beyond 'mary had a little lamb'.

Creative makes a keyboard that is integrated into the qwerty keyboard. I think this is a fantastic idea. However, the same problems apply, undersize keys (they can be shorter, but they must be wide enough) proprietary, or at least nonstandard drivers, and very cheap construction. It is basically unusable, if they're wondering why it's not selling. Great idea though.

It is a travesty that all 'toy' musical instruments for children are really unplayable. What are we doing to our kids! Even the adult ones under $300 all lack velocity, and often have cheap keys that 'bounce.'

Using the qwerty keyboard as an instrument is not a bad idea. It is fundamentally different from typing. As an adult student of piano I thought my keyboard use as a geek would help. Maybe a little, but one key difference is that key hits when typing are INTERLEAVED, hence we get letters in order. Musical key hits are SYNCRONIZED, you often hit several keys at once. Learning the difference can be tough at first.

It does allow monoponic (one sound at a time) playing, and for that it's pretty neat. Many synth packages already do this, but the feature's not intended to be useful outside of testing. The PC keyboard sends key down and key up messages, so it may be possible to have polyphony (multiple sounds at once and chords) on keyboards whose internal multiplexing doesn't prevent it. Libraries intended for text keyboard use won't work for this.

Learning the piano I also realize that all those hours mastering Bruce Lee on the c64 when I was 13 were exactly the time when my brain could have been mastering music. The idea that you can't learn later is a myth. You learn differently. But the willingness, and the ability, to sit there for 6 to 8 hours a day trying to master something happens when you're young. (Luckily I did this with electronics and computers, so I'm now employed!)

Computers make GREAT musical instruments, and allow music to be made in most of the old ways and many completely new ways. Of course it's up to the musician to use them to make GOOD music.

The computer and toy industries have to start making products that are really useful to normally skilled people in normal situations, which are neither too technical or so stripped down as to be useless. Also, there need to be more musical games, which teach fundamentals, and are also fun. The only reason why the techological revolution isn't also a musical one is that we just haven't bothered. There's an instrument in every home and classroom now, and if we aren't cheap and lazy about it, they would be useful.