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

Lies!!!

[Piethon]

"with much more to their lives than hardware upgrades, programming languages and pocket protectors" Lies! There cannot be anything more to life!

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?

[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

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

The book...

[Anonymous Coward]

"For him, there is 'no difference between an ivory keyboard and a QWERTY keyboard.'"

I don't know if I want to read his book.
I imagine something like...

akldsfjasjgl;aghjaklgfajgsafjklaa;fsadh

Media attention

[kuhneng]

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.

Re:Media attention

[raisin]

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.

There are many books you can't put down

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to be one of the few that has the opposite problem.

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.

keyboards

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I can't be a nerd!

[Digital Dharma]

I have a platinum-plated pocket protector of +5 charisma!

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.

Re:Outlook versus "Inside"

[minusthink]

Because if pretty girls like you, then pretty girls may touch you. And that's what it's all about.