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MIT Professor Michael Hawley

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the life-is-a-game dept.

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."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Media attention by kuhneng · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I knew and interacted with Michael Hawley lightly for a year (temporary advisor at MIT).

    From my experience, he was constantly chasing whatever research line was most likely to get him in the media while neglecting projects that seemed to have more research merit but less potential for media attention.

    1. Re:Media attention by raisin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work at the Media Lab and have often felt that there's a sort of inverse relationship between the amount of (popular) press that some of the projects receive, and the actual value of the project itself. Things like an interactive kitchen counter are a good example of this, so the really interesting work can easily get lost in that.

      For what it's worth, the Wired article, however, is way off, including some parts that are just completely made up and has all sorts of wild speculation from the article's author, much to the amusement of many of the people here. The author came in and was looking for dirt so that Wired could sell magazines (this was extremely successful, as that issue did really well on the newstand). This is not to say there's plenty of critique you could make about the lab, there was a Technology Review article, google cached here, written by a talented writer that made many more valid points by simply hanging a few professors with their own words. It's no longer particularly relevant anymore, but the author could teach the Wired guy a thing or two or seven.

  2. keyboards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I always thought it would be interesting for someone to devise an "instrument" out of the QWERTY keyboard. So many people are proficient with the standard keyboard they'd be instant musicians.

    It would be a cool addition to MMORPG games where you can have real bards that actually play music via keyboard.