The Boston Globe in the Digital Age

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:30:45 GMT

LGO Webinar: Matt Vokoun on Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 08:07:48 GMT

As the leader of strategic and integration planning for Google’s 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Matt Vokoun, LGO ’05, has played a key role in the Internet giant’s move into the mobile space. In a recent web seminar for the LGO community, Matt provided an inside view of this milestone event, which he said demonstrated that “mobile interaction is the most fundamental strategic force” driving Google’s strategy. Matt also described how his LGO training in management and chemical engineering helped put him in the position of taking on such a crucial role.

2013 Sloan Technology Conference - Afternoon Keynote

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:30:46 GMT

Walt Doyle

Recorded 2-23-13

2013 Sloan Technology Conference - Morning Keynote

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:30:46 GMT

Peter Coffee

Recorded 2-23-13

2013 Sloan Technology Conference - Panel 1

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:30:46 GMT

Leveraging the Connected Consumer through Social Media

2013 Sloan Technology Conference - Panel 3

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:30:46 GMT

Content Everywhere, the New Mantra of Television Viewers

Recorded 2-23-13

2013 Sloan Technology Conference - Special Keynote

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:30:46 GMT

Charles Phillips

Recorded 2-23-13

Sprout: a pencil with a seed

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 15:52:48 GMT

Students in Product Design (2.744) asked, "What if pencils could grow?"

Strategic UX for Drupal Projects

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:03:50 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Strategic UX for Drupal Projects presented by Dani Nordin

Add Usability Testing To Your Skill Set

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:03:50 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Add Usability Testing To Your Skill Set presented by Dharmesh Mistry

Code Without Thinking

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:03:50 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Code Without Thinking presented by David Moore

Designing & Implementing Beautiful, Flexible Interfaces

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:03:50 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Designing & Implementing Beautiful, Flexible Interfaces presented by Ken Woodworth

Creating Fireworks Templates For Drupal

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Creating Fireworks Templates For Drupal presented by Dani Nordin

Display Suite

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Display Suite

Improving the Content Editing Experience in Drupal with Spark

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Improving the Content Editing Experience in Drupal with Spark

jQuery Demystified

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: jQuery Demystified presented by Patrick Corbett

Keynote Address:Angie Byron

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp 2012: Keynote Address-Angie Byron

Opening

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Design 4 Drupal Camp Boston 2012: Opening

Scalable Stylesheets- Theming with Modular CSS

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:30:10 GMT

Scalable Stylesheets- Theming with Modular CSS presented by John Ferris

Unlock Your Social Media Potential - MIT Club of Northern California

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:30:12 GMT

Ever wonder how to set up your personal and corporate social media strategy? How do you leverage social media to build your start-up's presence? What's the technology that enables it and what are the differences between various platforms? What is the investment landscape like in this space? If you are interested in any of these topics, come join us on an in-depth discussion with our social media experts.

Wendy Lea - CEO, Get Satisfaction
Christine Herron - Director, Intel Capital
Akash Garg - Engineering Manager, Twitter
Jason Middleton - Director, Integrated Media NBC
Melissa Barnes - Agency & Brand Advocate, Twitter

Moderated by Taariq Lewis - Founder, Stanzr

2012 iCampus Prize Finalist - CasaNexus

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:03:03 GMT

2012 iCampus Prize Finalist - STEMid

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:03:03 GMT

2012 iCampus Prize Finalist - Tango

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:03:03 GMT

2012 iCampus Prize Winners - CourseRoad and Dormbase

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:03:03 GMT

2012 iCampus Student Prize final round presentations with CourseRoad, the Grand Prize winner, and Dormbase, the runner-up. Read more about the winners here: http://icampusprize.mit.edu/2012/05/2012-icampus-prize-winners-announced/

The iCampus Student Prize recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves living and learning at MIT. The competition builds upon the entrepreneurism and spirit of service exhibited by MIT students to solve the world’s problems by focusing attention of what might be improved closer to home in MIT’s education and student life.

The competition is open to all current MIT undergraduates and graduate students, both individuals and groups. Entries must involve the use of technology to enhance living and learning at MIT, and they must be developed to the point where MIT could adopt them and integrate them into MIT.

2012 iCampus Prize Final Round Presentations

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:03:33 GMT

Final round presentations from the 2012 iCampus Student Prize competition on May 4, 2012.

2011 iCampus Prize Final Presentations

Tue, 22 May 2012 07:03:13 GMT

Recorded April 2011.

Civic Media Session: "Effective Citizenship in a Connected Society"

Fri, 18 May 2012 07:03:10 GMT

In this age of streaming data and 24/7 connectivity, the options for civic engagement are many. But what does it really mean to be an effective citizen? Is there an app?

Tom Steinberg is founder of mySociety.org, a UK-based consultancy that's become one of the innovators in helping individuals participate in civic life and demand accountability from their government.

He joined Center for Civic Media director Ethan Zuckerman for a conversation about tools and techniques to encourage civic engagement in a connected society.

Communications Forum: Electronic Literature and Future Books

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:03:04 GMT

How has electronic literature influenced other media, including the Web and the book? What are the implications of having literary projects in the digital sphere alongside other forms of communication and art

EdX: The Future of Online Education is Now

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:19:22 GMT

EdX is a not-for-profit joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer online versions of their classes and those of other universities.

Press conference: MIT, Harvard announce edX

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:30:13 GMT

MIT President Susan Hockfield and Harvard University President Drew Faust, accompanied by top officials from both institutions, announced on Wednesday a new collaboration that will unite the Cambridge-based universities in an ambitious new partnership to deliver online education to learners anywhere in the world.

The new venture, called edX, will provide interactive classes from both Harvard and MIT -- for free -- to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. But a key goal of the project, Faust said, is "to enhance the educational experience of students who study in our classrooms and laboratories."

Read the initial announcement -- http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mit-harvard-edx-announcement-050212.html

FAQ: What is edX? -- http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/edx-faq-050212.html

Read the event coverage -- http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/edx-launched-0502.html

Company of the Week - Wefunder.com

Thu, 03 May 2012 01:56:02 GMT

Mike Norman and Wefunder.com is changing how startups raise money through crowd funding.

Professor Anant Agarwal on MITx

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:03:09 GMT

Open Learning Enterprise head Anant Agarwal discusses MITx, the Institute's new online-learning initiative.

Caroline Woolard, "SolidarityNYC, OurGoods.org, and Trade School"

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:02:48 GMT

April 5, 2012 - Civic Media Lunch
Caroline Woolard speaks about her work with SolidarityNYC, OurGoods and Trade School, two barter economies for cultural production. OurGoods.org connects artists, designers, and craftspeople to trade skills, spaces, and objects to get independent projects done. Trade School, a program of OurGoods.org, is model for barter-based education that has spread from NYC to London, Cologne, Guadalajara, Cardiff, Singapore, Leon, and Milan since it started in 2010.

Woolard is a Brooklyn-based, post-media artist exploring civic engagement and communitarianism. Her work is collaborative and often takes the form of sculptures, websites, and workshops. Woolard is a co-founder of OurGoods.org and Trade School, two barter economies for cultural producers, and a coordinating member of SolidarityNYC, an organization that promotes grassroots economic justice. These projects have been supported by a Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund, an Eyebeam Fellowship, EFA Project Space, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, the Queens Museum, Creative Time, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Dormbase

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 07:03:38 GMT

5 minute pitch for the 2012 iCampus Prize First Round competition. Dormbase was selected as one of First Round iCampus Prize winners. See http://icampusprize.mit.edu/ for more information.

VoIP Drupal webinar: Building sites that make and receive phone calls

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:03:18 GMT

As part of this webinar, you will learn about VoIP Drupal, a new open source framework that makes it easy to build websites that almost literally pick-up the phone.

MITEF-NYC: Business Plan Presentations: Innovations in Digital Commerce

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 08:03:07 GMT

E-Commerce has come a long way since the early days of eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo. Users are constantly being provided with services and platforms that are more specialized and more in tune with their needs and tastes. And retailers are constantly seeking ways to make their offerings more targeted.

In this event video you'll hear from 5 early-stage companies, each of whom have 5 minutes to pitch their e-commerce-related business, followed by engaging commentary and critique from our distinguished panelists and audience.

Read more about MITEF: http://www.mitef.org/s/1314/main.aspx?gid=5&pgid=61

Social Media on a Shoestring - presentation by MIT social media & email marketing specialist

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:30:07 GMT

Stephanie Hatch, MIT's new social media and email marketing specialist, covers social media strategy, tips and tools for using social media with limited staff resources and methods for streamlining efforts.

Networks Understanding Networks, Pt. 6: Albert-László Barabási

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:27:18 GMT

Albert-László Barabási: Network Science: From the Web to the Cell

New Technology Brings Offshoring to Villages

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 04:00:00 GMT

The Xerox CTO describes research that allows manufacturing and office workers to avoid commuting to traffic-choked Indian cities.

Welcome and Opening Remarks, History

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:00:00 GMT

04/11/2011 9:00 AM David A. Mindell, PhD '96, Frances and David Dibner Associate Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing; ; Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, MIT; Victor Zue, ScD '76, Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Director, CSAIL; F. Thomson Leighton, Ph.D. '81, Co"Founder and Chief Scientist, Akamai; Professor of Applied Mathematics, MIT; Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington; Patrick Henry Winston, '65 SM'76, PhD '70, Ford Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science; ; Randall Davis, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering,Description: It's Day 95 in MIT's 150 days of sesquicentennial celebration, and all thoughts turn to the evolution of computer science and MIT's pivotal role in that history. As Victor Zue puts it so succinctly, "Computers sure have changed." They are even invading biology, and President Hockfield (who is also a Professor of Neuroscience) sees this history as another branch in the tradition, initiated by William Barton Rogers, of education bringing the "useful arts" (or as we now say, technology) to bear on the economic development of the United States. Tom Leighton asserts that "To say computers are transforming everything is an understatement." Leighton offers a brief lesson in theoretical computer science, defining an algorithm through the example of searching for the prime factors of a given number N, and identifying the key follow"up questions: Can you prove it works? How long does it take? How good is it? Then the big question: Does theoretical computer science matter? Leighton cites some powerful examples of the field's impact on our lives, from encryption to Google's page"rank algorithm to the content delivery system of Akamai Technologies (which he co"founded in 1998). Ed Lazowska asks a very different question: What four important events happened in 1969? If you guess the landing on the moon, the Woodstock festival, or the Mets winning the World Series, you're right but no cigar: the most important event was the first data transmission over the ARPANet, forerunner of the Internet. Since then, relentless innovation has produced computer systems that make possible digital media, mobility, search _ and set the stage for the next generation of smarts, i.e., computers embodied in our homes, cars, healthcare, and in a sense, ourselves, via crowd"sourcing. In all this, even when viewed from the "left coast," MIT's role continues to be central. But the rock star of this symposium is actually IBM's Jeopardy"winning Watson, whose glowing blue countenance beams in all three talks. Patrick Winston takes off from Watson to look for the beginning of artificial intelligence, and after a few hops backward through the late 20th century, arrives at Aristotle and then Neanderthals and the paintings at Lascaux. The modern progenitors of artificial intelligence, whom Winston honors one"by"one in a digital photo gallery, include Marvin Minsky (for focusing on human cognition), Roger Schank (storytelling), and David Marr (layers of explanation). Where is artificial intelligence headed? Winston is working on a "trinity of strong hypotheses" _ about story, perception, and social interaction _ and he promises to report on the success of this way forward at the MIT bicentennial celebration. About the Speaker(s): Victor Zue is the first holder of the Delta Electronics Chair endowed for senior researchers. His main research interest is in the development of spoken language interfaces to make human/computer interactions easier and more natural, and he has taught many courses and lectured extensively on this subject. Prior to 2001, he headed the Spoken Language Systems Group, which has pioneered the development of many systems that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages (English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish). Outside of MIT, Zue has consulted for many multinational corporations, and he has served on many planning, advisory, and review committees for the US Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Science and Engineering. In 1990, he became a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. In 1999, he received the DARPA Sustained Excellence Award. In 2002, he received the Speech Technology Magazine's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom

MIT Communications Forum: Online News — Public Sphere or Echo Chamber?

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Two panelists debate whether journalism in a digital age amounts to feast or famine, and differ on even basic questions.

An Engineering Career - 50 Years Out

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:00:00 GMT

12/01/2010 4:45 PM 10"250Kent Kresa, '59, '61 MS, '66 EAA, Chairman Emeritus, Northrop Grumman CorporationDescription: Returning to his freshman physics classroom after half a century, Kent Kresa still feels passionate about MIT: "It's a place I love; I feel good when I come back, and it's been very much a part of my life for the past 50 years." In his talk, Kresa describes how an MIT education helped shape his professional path, leading to a topflight career in the aviation and defense industry. Kresa came to MIT "in love with airplanes," but had no sense where he'd end up. Fascinated by fluid dynamics, he found student work at Boeing in the wind tunnel group. After witnessing "huge open rooms that had acres of engineersall grinding away on numbers," he left Boeing with "serious questions about his future career" in aeronautics engineering. He was so soured that he contemplated leaving MIT for a business degree at Harvard. MIT professors persuaded him that the engineering world was about to change dramatically, and Kresa decided to stick it out. This decision paid off, for Kresa soon found opportunities that were both exciting and cutting edge. He got an early taste of digital computing at a firm developing a commercial parachute system for satellite capsules. He worked at MIT Lincoln Lab in ballistic missile defense. One of his most "phenomenal life experiences" unfolded on a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he and a team of 100 MIT researchers toiled for two years on a missile reentry project. Cut off from the rest of the world, there wasn't "a lot to do other than to work and drink and party." After completing an advanced MIT engineering degree in the mid"60s, Kresa went to work for DARPA. He saw the first stirrings of the internet, and the evolution of infrared technology, precision weapons guidance, GPS, stealth technology and unmanned vehicles. After seven years in this innovative environment, Kresa feared he "had peaked before he was 35." But his next job "fortunately proved there was plenty left to do." He headed to Northrop as lead researcher, which led to a series of increasingly senior positions, culminating in company chairman in 1990. At Northrop, Kresa weathered the downsizing of the nation's defense industry, which spurred his company's acquisition of Grumman and other affiliated tech companies. He says he came to recognize that "engineering"related activities that emphasize broad thinking and innovation have the best chance of delivering good solutions and giving self"fulfillment and social value as well." These insights, he says, powerfully evoke his MIT experiences, where he first learned that "the most successful problem"solving stretches and crosses boundaries," and that the ideal environment for this involves "interaction with smart teammates, where everybody has mutual excitement about work, and the commitment to try out ideas." About the Speaker(s): Kent Kresa was elected CEO of Northrop Grumman in January 1990 and chairman of the board in September 1990. He joined Northrop Grumman in 1975 as vice president and manager of the company's Research and Technology Center, developing new proprietary processes and products. From 1976"82, he served as corporate vice president and general manager of the Ventura Division, a leader in the production of unmanned aeronautical vehicles. In 1982, he was appointed group vice president of the company's Aircraft Group and in 1986 was named senior vice president"Technology Development and Planning. Kresa was elected president of the company in 1987. Before joining Northrop Grumman, Kresa served with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he was responsible for broad, applied research and development programs in the tactical and strategic defense arena. From 1961"68, he was associated with MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on ballistic missile defense research and reentry technology. Kresa has also served as Chairman of the Board of Avery Dennison Corporation, a director of General Motors Corporation, and was appointed by President Obama as interim board chair of GM during the company's recovery. Host(s): School of Engineering, School of Engineering

Civic Media and the Law

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:00:00 GMT

11/04/2010
5:00 PM
E14-633

Micah Sifry, Founder, Editor, Personal Democracy Forum; Daniel Schuman, Policy Counsel, Sunlight Foundation; David Ardia, Fellow, Berkman Center

Description: While these panelists diverge on the precise metaphor -- 'picking through a minefield,' 'hacking through the underbrush,' 'navigating uncharted waters' -- they all agree that the web poses novel dilemmas and hazards for truth"seeking and speaking citizens.

First the good news: "There was a conscious decision by Congress to give online space some breathing room," says David Ardia, shielding website operators "who allow others to use their site to speak out" from liability for some published content. This has permitted the explosive rise of YouTube and blogging services that serve as platforms for the masses. On the other hand, copyright and other legal claims are being successfully prosecuted against website hosts and posters.

Ardia worries about the underreported phenomenon of citizen journalists who post on the web and find themselves "fighting an authority." There is "an extensive chilling effect," says Ardia "If you discover information that shows government corruption or puts powerful institutions on the defensive, you run the real risk of having them lawyer up, come after you, or put you in a position where you can't afford to stand up for your rights."

Another emerging issue: When web content is construed as invading privacy, legal suits arise that lead to a delicate dance between free speech and privacy. "Horrible things are said and done through the internet," says Ardia, "but overall the impact is far more beneficial than harmful. As we start to fix instances of bad conduct, we run a great riskof correcting one thing, but at the cost ofspeech that should be protected."

While the Obama Administration has pledged to make government more transparent, there is wild inconsistency in how federal, state and local governments make their work available. Daniel Schuman describes how some public authorities offer "giant data sets" lacking the kind of sophisticated formats that enable fruitful vetting. Congress members must post an earmarks request online, but Schuman says, "If you want to find it, good luck." And in certain areas, there is no web data at all: For access to congressional ethics information, someone must visit Capitol Hill in person at the right time, and copy pertinent pages. Schuman researched a "fantastic, sortable, downloadable" database describing the disbursement of Wall Street bailout money. The drawback: license provisions that permit the database owner "to pull back" the information, posing a major "impediment to people who want to use this information to talk about what's going on."

Another problem involves credentialing of online journalists. "Members of the civic media simply can't get in the door" of press galleries in some House and Committee meetings, and forget recording Supreme Court justices by cellphone or other electronic devices. "As a private citizen, it's hard and expensive to push back," says Schuman. The Wikileaks disclosures are shaking up discussions of government transparency as well as those about online freedoms. Says Schuman, "It makes the political climate more difficult. Irresponsible journalism will need to be protected, and condemned when done in this kind of way." Moderator Micah Sifry sees an overreaction: "Leaks happen every day in Washington; secret information is out there all the timeNo one is prosecuted. It's the currency of information there." Ultimately, says Ardia, we want to "bring information together in a way that moves us from a glut of data to real knowledge, and hopefully to wisdom, to make better decisions as a society. We are moving in that direction. I'm optimistic."

About the Speaker(s): Micah L. Sifry launched Personal Democracy Forum, a daily website and annual conference on how technology is changing politics. He is also the editor of the group blog TechPresident, which focuses on how campaigns use the web.

Sifry also consults on how political organizations, campaigns, non"profits and media entities can adapt to and thrive in a networked world. Current clients include the Sunlight Foundation, the Campaign for America's Future, and Air America.

From 1997 to 2006, he worked closely with Public Campaign, a non"profit, non"partisan organization focused on comprehensive campaign finance reform, as its senior analyst. Prior to that, Sifry was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for 13 years.

He is the author or editor of four books, including Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), written with Nancy Watzman. He is also an adjunct professor of political science at City University of New York/Graduate Center.

Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum (From the MIT World collection)

From Experimental Physics to Internet Entrepreneurship: One Scientist's Journey

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:00:00 GMT

10/07/2010 4:45 PM 10"250Dr. Charles C"Y Zhang, Ph.D. 94, Founder, Chairman CEO SOHU.COMDescription: Few better personify the vitality and ambition fueling China's economic surge than Charles C"Y Zhang. In this energetic and revelatory talk, Zhang relates his personal evolution from MIT physicist to leading Chinese entrepreneur. An industrious student from a poor family, Zhang was one of the fortunate few in his university to qualify for an education in the U.S. "In terms of IQ, I'm OK. Everywhere, smart kids were studying physics and math," he says. While completing a Ph.D. at MIT in the early '90s, Zhang discovered "the wonderland of computers." During post"doctoral research, he became involved in a program fostering MIT/China cooperation, and decided to make a career of the "two big trends of the time": an emerging China and the internet. "For a Chinese student in 1995, returning to China was considered crazy," says Zhang. He joined an internet company opening offices in emerging markets, and set off for China on his 31st birthday, committed to making "major changes in my life." With his MIT background, Zhang found he was well situated to "crack open the wall" in Chinese society and forge a path for this new company. But Zhang soon became restless, convinced that the internet could be more than just a means of communicating financial information. He set about raising money for his own startup, leveraging investment and help from such MIT friends as Ed Roberts and Nick Negroponte. In 1996, Zhang's new company, Internet Technologies China, went online, using China's first internet backbone (a $1000 PC running Linux). Zhang's directory of links as well as navigation assistance to sites on China's early internet, became SOHU.com in 1998 -- a company, Zhang proudly recounts, of many "firsts." It was China's first free and open website; the first Chinese company to use venture capital, and professional marketing. Says Zhang, "The first few years, I ran SOHU like a presidential campaign operation, and I became the digital power boy and messenger of China." Many internet entrepreneurs followed hard on Zhang's heels, and a group of companies now jockey for dominance in China. So Zhang is intent on recreating his company in the next two years, to establish unassailable market share in online video content, microblogs, and gaming among China's 400 million+ internet users. To achieve this, Zhang says he must inject "more technology genes" into the company, broaden management talent, and continue pushing China for judicial relief from intellectual property "piracy." Says Zhang, "We either become an internet giantor we will shrink into history. There is no middle position -- winner takes all." About the Speaker(s): Prior to founding SOHU.com, Charles Zhang worked for Internet Securities Inc. (ISI) and helped establish its China operations. Before that, he worked as MIT's liaison officer with China. Zhang has a Ph.D degree in experimental physics from MIT and a B.S. from Qinghua University in Beijing. In October 1998, Zhang was named by Time Digital as one of the world's top 50 digital elite. He has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader of Tomorrow. Zhang regularly participates in leading international conferences, including the Fortune Global 500 Forum, Fortune Magazine roundtables, and World Economic Forum meetings. In May 2003, Zhang joined the SOHU"sponsored China Mount Everest team to a height of 6,666 meters in an expedition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the tallest mountain's human conquest. Host(s): School of Science, School of Science

Leading through Change

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Tom Glocer says the financial information company Thomson Reuters has been determined to deploy the latest technology in the service of information-hungry customers

National Academies Press

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:54:43 GMT

"Pricing Digital Content Product Lines: A Model and Application for the National Academies Press"
by P K Kannan of the University of Maryland, Barbara Kline Pope of the National Academies Press and Sanjay Jain of Texas A&M University.

This work involves a specialist publisher, the National Academies Press, that was provided an opportunity to distribute multiple formats of its content via the Internet. While digital copies such as pdf files are possible substitutes for printed books, there is complementarity in the form of some consumers buying bundles of both. The authors develop a pricing model for both product forms (separately and together), allowing for both substitution and complementarity effects. The model is then calibrated using an on-line experiment testing different product and bundle prices. The results of this calibration are then validated using actual sales data after the model was implemented, and its recommendation was implemented in the marketing and pricing policies at the National Academies Press. The work both demonstates how to model the bundling problem and makes a substantive contribution in an important substantive area, addressing the distribution and pricing of digital and hard copy products, an increasingly important problem facing content providers.

Innovation Spotlight: Bringing Children's Media off the Screen

Tue, 18 May 2010 04:00:00 GMT

05/18/2010 11:00 AM Bartos theaterCynthia Breazeal, SM '93, SCD '00, Professor, Program in Media Arts and SciencesDescription: Working with motors, sensors, sophisticated algorithms and fuzzy puppets, Cynthia Breazeal may finally realize one of childhood's fondest dreams: imaginary characters that assume a physical reality, and stories that leap from the page into three dimensions. Virtual play can take a child only so far, suggests Breazeal, who was inspired by master movie puppeteer Stan Winston. They shared a vision of a "living, breathing droid" -- a fabricated creature that could exist off" as well as onscreen. Breazeal has refashioned this idea over the years to meet her evolving goals in artificial intelligence. She pioneered the area of social robotics and human"robot interaction, developing creatures that can actually learn from and work with people. More recently, as a mother of young children, Breazeal has turned her attention to how socially intelligent machines might offer children new forms of expression and better ways to play. She designed a simple robot for preschoolers to decorate and costume, like a "Mr. Potatohead." Children constructed and participated in a story, finding "the physicality of the character compelling." Robots that make eye contact and recognizable gestures -- who appear to have a life of their own -- allow kids to improvise around stories "in a way that might not have happened if the stories sprang from a single mind." Her Media Lab group has also concocted the "Huggable," a teddy bear"like creature with sensors that allow it to react to human touch. This creature might be used someday by a grandparent, via the Internet, to read a story to a grandchild, or to help a child learn English as a second language. Breazeal is passionate about energizing "kids sitting on their butts watching shows" to become actors in their own stories. She envisions a "mixed reality" medium, enabled by computer, where surfaces are digitally paintable. A kid"colored, computer"based character could interact with its creator in a pirate story, or a child could "cut and paste a program in one place" and lay it down somewhere else. "It's all about how to get what's in the mind of a child out in the world so others can riff on it and animate it." Breazeal believes that "we don't know what the world's going to look like 5"10 years from now," so kids must be armed not just with solid cognitive skills, but creative, collaborative and tactile abilities. Richer play, enabled by robotics and other digital technology, suggests Breazeal, will help prepare children for this rapidly changing world. About the Speaker(s): Cynthia Breazeal directs the Media Lab's Personal Robots group. She was previously a postdoctoral associate at MIT's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab. Breazeal is particularly interested in developing creature"like technologies that exhibit social commonsense and engage people in familiar human terms. Kismet, her anthropomorphic robotic head, has been featured in international media and is the subject of her book Designing Sociable Robots, published by the MIT Press. She continues to develop anthropomorphic robots as part of her ongoing work of building artificial systems that learn from and interact with people in an intelligent, life"like, and sociable manner. Breazeal earned Sc.D. and M.S. degrees at MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, and a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, The MIT Education Arcade

Bill Porter in Conversation with Howard Anderson

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:00:00 GMT

04/28/2010 12:00 PM Wong AuditoriumWilliam A. Porter, SF '67, Co"Founder & Chairman Emeritus, E"Trade Financial Corporation; Howard Anderson, William Porter Distinguished Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship, MIT SloanDescription: Some of the lessons Bill Porter picked up as a 13"year"old ranch hand in Colorado seem to have lasted a lifetime. When his boss told him to drive over a treacherous mountain pass into town for some chicken feed, Porter said he could not yet drive. He was told, "Just do it." And when he faced taking a team of horses out to pasture for the first time, he got the same advice. Porter says he learned from those experiences: "There are risks involved, but so what? What's the worst that could happen? You might have to get another job." This formative time helped shape a career that began with Navy service, then many years devising products for different industries. After a stint at Sloan, Porter decided he "didn't like his job." He was eager to "go commercial" with several promising new inventions, including an exhaust gas sensor, and a remote access back pack camera, and so started his own company. He struggled to raise capital, and had to "bet the farm." Finally "things were going swell," says Porter. Then came the crash of 1974, and his one big contract fell through. It wasn't fun telling his 250 employees he couldn't pay them, recalls Porter. Undaunted, he pulled his company through the downturn, and finally sold it to Warner Communications. Then came Porter's 'lightbulb' moment. He became fascinated by the possibility of analyzing and predicting trends in the stock market. At around the same time, he bought an Apple II computer, and discovered he could pull down stock quotes at night online, freeing him of newspapers and the monthly brokerage statement. Porter thought, "Why isn't somebody doing this right?" In the early 80s, with his "legally blind programmer" and $15 thousand, he started a company called Trade*Plus _ ushering in the era of online stock trading. By Porter's account, the company expanded so fast that it couldn't keep up hiring and training employees. In the 1990s, this company was renamed the E"Trade Group, and Porter in his own words, "became pretty wealthy." Porter has given generously to MIT, funding a new building at Sloan with the long"term goal of helping the business school become more effective in marketing the "neat new widgets" coming from the Institute's scientists and engineers. He has a few words of counsel for students and entrepreneurs: the "very best field to get into" is life sciences, and the best source of funding is "your own money," followed by that of your friends and family. Venture capital financing, says Porter, should be your very last resort. About the Speaker(s): William A. Porter, Jr. served as President of E" Trade Group Inc. until October 1993 and its Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Secretary until March 1996. Porter has held numerous senior management positions, including Chairman of Trelleborg Rubber Company; President of Tretorn Shoes; President of Commercial Electronics Inc. He founded E*TRADE Group Inc. (formerly Trade*Plus) and served as its Chairman from its inception to December 1998. He also founded E*TRADE Securities, Incorporated in 1992. Porter founded International Securities Exchange Holdings Inc. (formerly International Securities Exchange Inc.) and served as its first Chairman. Mr. Porter serves as Chairman Emeritus of E*TRADE Financial Corporation (previously E Trade Group Inc. Porter received a B.A. in Mathematics from Adams State College, an M.S. in Physics from Kansas State College, and a Masters of Business Administration in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Sloan Fellow. Howard Anderson, founder and former president of The Yankee Group, has 30 years of experience in the operations of a high"technology market research firm. He is also a co"founder of Battery Ventures, a venture capital firm in the Boston area, and, most recently, YankeeTek Ventures, a high technology venture capital firm in Cambridge. Anderson was recently selected by Network World as one of the 25 most important people in communications. He has presented keynote addresses at both Comdex and Network Interop. He is also a contributing columnist to Forbes Magazine. He earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

MIT Commnuications Forum: Jenkins' Farewell — Reflections on a Career at MIT

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:00:00 GMT

04/22/2010
5:00 PM
Bartos theater

Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California; William Uricchio, Professor of Comparative Media Studies

Description: In conversation with William Uricchio, Henry Jenkins returns to reflect on his time at MIT and offers insights into MIT's culture, his new life at USC, and the state of digital cultures, new media and collective intelligence.

Jenkins shares that complex feeling of loving and hating MIT, at the same time and often within the course of one day. Providing his own insights into MIT's culture and the legacy of IHTFP, he looks back on a long career and the evolution of film and media studies into the Comparative Media Studies program we know today. He attributes his longevity at MIT to the inspiration provided by the students, and makes a strong case for the value of humanities education, while questions remain for some on how the humanities fit into an MIT education.

The reflection ends with Jenkins reading The Cat in the Hat-his annual salute to Dr. Seuss. This tradition, began 18 years ago, became a staple of IAP. Jenkins says he is reminded "how much it characterizes to me that creativity and imagination, which is so vital at MIT, and that we turn our back on at our own peril."

Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum (From the MIT World collection)

MIT Communications Forum: Civics in Difficult Places

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:00:00 GMT

In a live demonstration of globe-straddling communication technologies like Skype, this forum connects to citizen journalists and activists around the world, some of whom frequently test the limits of governmental authority.

Death of the News?

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:11:53 GMT

A Starr Forum event presented on March 2, 2010
A discussion with Maria Balinska, Jason Pontin, and Susan Glasser
Firle Davies, the Center's Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow, introduced the event
About the event and speakers:
Journalism is in a crisis. Newspapers are going out of business; editors and reporters are losing their jobs. "Death of the News?" brings together a panel of experts to discuss the rise of online media and its impact on global society. Speakers Maria Balinska (Nieman Fellow, Harvard), Susan Glasser (Foreign Policy), & Jason Pontin (Technology Review) will discuss about how to save the news in a vanishing era of newspapers.

For more information visit the event page.

Death of the News?

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:00:00 GMT

03/02/2010 5:30 PM Wong AuditoriumMaria Balinska, Nieman Fellow, Harvard University (on leave from BBC); Susan Glasser, Executive Editor, Foreign Policy; Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief and Publisher, Technology ReviewDescription: While not dead, the U.S. news industry is severely depleted and likely to diminish further, these panelists agree. But they also believe that something vibrant and enduring might emerge from this period of digital disruption. Moderator Jason Pontin sets the stage with his "dolorous and long toll" of newspapers and magazines that have gone bankrupt, or cling to life as their subscriptions and ad revenues fall. He nevertheless invites panelists to make the case for journalism's survival. Susan Glasser declares herself "a total convert to the idea that this transformation heralds potentially an enormous golden age for people who care about informationtransparency, knowledge, about going to places in the world you couldn't get to in the past except with enormous difficulty" While this shift has just gotten started, with producers adapting print and TV information rather than originating content for digital media, changes are coming rapidly. Glasser's own Foreign Policy website grew 500% in a single year ("without spending a single dollar in marketing"), attracting enormous numbers of users "interested at a sophisticated level." Social media help drive users to the site, and suggest to Glasser an audience of millions for comparable specialized and nuanced content. But she does not believe that her audience, interactive as it may be, will displace seasoned journalists who labor in difficult circumstances to collect, analyze and report the news. U.K."based radio journalist Maria Balinska concurs that reporters are irreplaceable: "Maybe journalism is not rocket science, but to tell a story well, with context, facts, is quite difficult. Good novelists don't walk the streets everywhere, and a good story is something that will engage our audience." The key to survival in the digital age will involve using new tools to capture "the many different publics," especially those who might have been alienated by a partisan or corrupt"appearing media. Balinska is "convinced there is a hunger for understanding the world around us." She wants to engage different audiences through a "partnership model," where users inform the journalistic process. She believes journalism should rediscover what is valuable, and look back to small"town newspapers, which helped create community. She also notes that elsewhere in the world, old and new forms of journalism are thriving: in Britain, daily national newspapers achieve circulations in the millions, and in Colombia, the population consumes its news via mobile phones. Pontin concludes that "fretfulness about the death of news may be a uniquely American perspective." While the current business model is failing in the U.S. -- "news has declining value relative to time" -- Pontin believes there is a "form of journalism people will pay for." The criteria for success include offering a unique mission that's uniquely smart ("don't fib to yourself); helping users with a decision "that is core to self"identity;" and being beautifully designed. "If you say those four things, you can charge for it." About the Speaker(s): Jason Pontin also serves as the publisher of Technology Review, overseeing all aspects of the company's business. In previous posts, he was editor of Red Herring, editor in chief of The Acumen Journal, and wrote a regular column for the Sunday New York Times, "Slipstream," about new ideas in technology. He has also written for The Economist, The Financial Times, Wired, and The Believer, among others, and is a frequent guest on television and radio, including ABC News, CNN, and NPR.Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Center for International Studies

The Future of Civic Engagement in a Broadband"Enabled World

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 GMT

03/01/2010 4:00 PM Wong AuditoriumEugene J. Huang, Government Operations Director, National Broadband Task Force, Federal Communications CommissionDescription: The digital revolution that brought us Facebook, Twitter and YouTube could help revive participatory democracy in the U.S., says Eugene J. Huang. He unveils the FCC's plan for providing broadband access to every American, and describes how its recommendations could spur more open government and greater civic engagement. Huang is leading an FCC taskforce developing a plan to provide every American with high quality broadband internet capability. Mandated by the Recovery Act, $7.6 billion will soon flow to deploy infrastructure throughout the U.S., by cable, wireless, or satellite; to ensure affordable access for all; and to address a group of national priorities. Huang describes the process of fact"gathering, analysis and recommendation development as the "most open and transparent" in the FCC's history, involving public workshops, and the use of social media and blogs to encourage citizen input. This process in many ways has come to shape the larger goals of the broadband plan. As Huang says, at the end of months of data collection and public discussion, "we came to an obvious conclusionthat civic engagement is the lifeblood of our democracy," and that the broadband plan should play a major role in creating a more informed and engaged citizenry. Vast numbers of Americans are already online, talking, debating and viewing -- an astonishing 120 million people watch more than 10 billion videos monthly. So Huang, his taskforce, and citizen participants began envisioning ways that universal, high"speed digital communication and interactivity could work for the public sector. They ended up with five recommendations: building a more open and transparent government, by making all government and judicial records freely available online, and streaming government meetings and hearings; helping public media such as PBS and NPR expand beyond their broadcast models in providing news content, and removing copyright obstacles to sharing historic materials, ultimately leading to a national digital archive; deploying social media in all government agencies; recruiting technological innovators into government, engaging citizen experts from the private sector and starting an innovation corps; and bringing the election process into the digital age, eliminating mistakes in voter registration, standardizing the process across states, and enabling military personnel overseas to cast ballots electronically. While these measures will require a commitment across all levels of government, Huang feels sure they will lead to a transformation that can "renew democracy in a broadband enabled 21st century." About the Speaker(s): Eugene J. Huang is helping to craft the "national purposes" section of the National Broadband Plan, with a specific focus on the topics of government operations and civic engagement. From 2006 to 2009, Huang served at the US Department of the Treasury. He covered a wide range of international economic and finance issues with a special responsibility for U.S. bilateral relations with China. Previously, Huang was a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. From 2002 to 2006, he served the Commonwealth of Virginia as the Secretary of Technology and previously as the Deputy Secretary of Technology. Huang was responsible for managing the state's award winning information technology reform initiative, fostered the development of advanced broadband communications, and facilitated the growth of emerging technology industries throughout Virginia. Huang graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and a M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering. He received a Thouron Award from the University of Pennsylvania and studied at St. John's College, Oxford University, where he received a M.Phil., with distinction, in Economic History. Huang is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Center for Future Civic Media

The Future of Government"Citizen Engagement

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:00:00 GMT

03/01/2010 4:45 PM Wong AuditoriumJerry Mechling, Lecturer in Public Policy, Kennedy School; Nick Grossman, Director of Civic Works, The Open Planning Project; Laurel Ruma, Editor, O'Reilly Media; John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Fndtn; Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Director, Center for Future Civic Media; Research ScientistDescription: As the U.S. moves toward universal broadband access, look for increased government openness, new opportunities for civic engagement, and some dangers along the way, say these panelists. While Chris Csikszentmihalyi acknowledges the civic potential of broadband, he does not believe it will be a simple matter for geographic communities to aggregate information and make collective decisions. The amount of data is growing, he says, but "even sophisticated people's understanding is not growing." He cites online crime mapping, which posts reports from police departments, but avoids white collar crime. "Are you offering information or facile statistics that look like red lining...?" He applauds online citizen journalism, but worries that legal protections applied to traditional media are not being extended to digital journalists. "We could have national broadband and things could go south quickly in terms of what kind of speech we can have." "Government needs to play catch up," says Laurel Ruma, when it comes to utilizing digital technology. It's time to move away from the "social web," where we "vote on silly things on Facebook," to a civic web. This means that "digital natives who work until 7 p.m. and don't have time to get to public meetings... go online" to watch and comment on streamed videos of government meetings. This kind of technology can make citizen actions more effective, and government programs more cost"efficient. She believes open government applications should be available not just on computers and smart phones, which many people cannot afford, but in less expensive, freely available forms, such as information displays at city bus stops. "A rush of new information" flows from open government directives, says John Wonderlich, which "has a broad systemic effect through society." New public data empowers all of "us to be better researchers, lobbyists, and journalists." Information that used to come with a price tag is now free. But since we are at an early stage in open and participatory government "where best practices are unclear," Wonderlich foresees a balancing act between laws dictating government's responsibilities, and guidelines to encourage certain behaviors. He also believes that public perceptions about government transparency may be based on false or outdated assumptions; data posted online may be inaccurate, so we "need to grow better cultural expectations." Nick Grossman finds it exciting that "government services are potentially a gatewayto civic engagement." It's not "just about politics and government, but about the city and how we use it," he says. He likes being able to deploy his smart phone for real"time information on public transportation, and to provide feedback to operators, so he's "now having a conversation with those people." One risk of a rapid expansion of open government via broadband, believes Grossman, is that government will "try to do too much," building tools and providing services itself that might better come from the private sector. The flip side, he adds, is moving "too incrementally" and running the risk of spending too much money "in something that doesn't work well enough." About the Speaker(s): Jerry Mechling focuses on the impacts of information and digital technologies on individual, organizational, and societal issues. He consults on these and other topics with public and private organizations locally and internationally. Most recently he was author of Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked World and is presently finishing Leadership for a Cross"Boundary World. A Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and four"time winner of the Federal 100 Award, he was formerly a Fellow of the Institute of Politics, served as an aide to the Mayor and Assistant Administrator of the New York City Environmental Protection Administration, and served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the City of Boston. He received his B.A. in physical sciences from Harvard College and his M.P.A. and Ph.D. in economics and public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Center for Future Civic Media

Leading through Adversity

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT

02/18/2010 12:00 PM Wong AuditoriumPaul Sagan, President & CEO, Akamai TechnologiesDescription: Few companies have endured such hardship, or risen to such heights in a brief span of time as Akamai Technologies. Paul Sagantells how he became the CEO of this young firm, and helped it survive and then flourish despite "unimaginable adversity." Brought up in a Chicago newspaper family, Sagan trained for a life in journalism. He cut his teeth as a broadcast news producer and executive in the 1980s, and in the 1990s. He helped launch New York 1, a cable news network pioneering digital video technology, and later, an interactive TV project in Orlando that featured video on demand and customized newscasts. Over the years, says Sagan, he picked up critical lessons on running a business: Don't count on the permanence of any customer, job, or venture. He also "glimpsed the digital future," realizing that if "you married the interactivity and openness of the web with the bandwidth available from cableyou could change the way the internet worked." In 1997, Sagan met a group of MIT computer scientists, including Tom Leighton and Danny Lewin, who had the "crazy, big idea" of applying mathematics to improve internet performance. Businesses frustrated with breakdowns of fragile central servers could rely instead on a network of servers coordinated by sophisticated software. It was "air traffic control" for internet packets and routing. Venture capital money poured in, and Akamai Technologies was born in 1998, with Sagan as chief operating officer. But all was not well: While "everyone wanted a piece" of Akamai, the company was hemorrhaging funds. Then in early 2001, the internet economy burst, and Akamai's customers vanished. "We were feeling sorry for ourselves," says Sagan, who recalls laying off 2/3rds of the employees. "Then the unthinkable happened:" Danny Lewin died in the crash of Flight 11 on 9/11. "Few believed a business, especially ours, could survive a blow like that." Sagan was determined to shepherd the company through the twin disasters of economic collapse, and the loss of the "driving force" of Akamai's culture. He slowly rebuilt the customer base, focusing on selling services to larger corporations that promised greater stability. Some clients "turned out to be real businesses," such as Yahoo and Amazon. 2003 saw Akamai's first positive cash flow, and the first profits came a year later. As he closes the books on 2009, Sagan proudly cites revenues approaching $900 million. He's unshaken in his conviction that the "internet is the biggest business idea of our generation." Akamai, says Sagan, "will hopefully face a little bit less adversity" in its second decade. About the Speaker(s): Paul Sagan joined Akamai in October 1998. He was elected to the Akamai Board of Directors in January 2005, and became CEO in April 2005. Previously Sagan served as a senior advisor to the World Economics Forum, consulting on information technology in the corporate world. In 1995, Sagan was named President and Editor of New Media at Time Inc. He was a managing editor of Time Warner's News on Demand project, and a founder of Road Runner, the first broadband cable modem service. In 1991, Sagan developed NY 1 News, a cable network known for its use of digital video technology. Sagan is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, and he began his career in broadcast news at WCBS"TV in 1981. He is a three"time Emmy Award winner, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Global Leader for Tomorrow with the World Economic Forum. He is also a director of Massachusetts"based EMC Corporation. Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management

Back-Button to the Future

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Mira Dontcheva, a researcher at Adobe Systems, explains how Zoetrope can be used to browse back through a Web page's history. She demonstrates a few advanced techniques for looking at historic data and shows how to compare several Web pages over time.

Liberty by Design

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Alan Davidson returns to the questions of the impact of public policy on the way technology is evolving in the Internet space.

MIT Communications Forum: What's New at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Based on this roster of speakers, the MIT Center for Future Civic Media exists in a constant state of productive ferment, if not adrenaline rush.

Race, Politics and American Media

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 GMT

10/08/2009
5:00 PM

Juan Williams, News analyst, NPR; J. Phillip Thompson, Associate Professor of Urban Politics, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT; David Thorburn, MIT Professor of Literature, MacVicar Faculty Fellow

Description: The collapse of print and other traditional news and the rise of celebrity culture have contributed to the sharp decline of in"depth stories involving race and society, say these two speakers, in a discussion that's replete with personal anecdote.

Juan Williams sets out detailing his childhood dreams to break into the newspaper business. He read all the New York papers for baseball coverage, "and noticed no people of color telling their stories The absence struck me." From prep school through college, Williams found internships at progressively larger papers, which had at most a handful of black reporters, and often denied those the right to bylines. But the turmoil of the '60s, recalls Williams, led to a wave of more militant black journalists who demanded respect and greater attention to their own communities.

In spite of some gains, Williams does not see signs of great progress over the years. President Obama's election may have led to more African"American commentators, but Williams is the only regular person of color on Washington's Sunday morning talk shows, which he describes as "conversations among elite white males." Nor are there African"American anchors: "It always comes down to, 'Is the audience going to relate to a black male as lead dog?'"

Williams deplores the "pandering" that big media institutions engage in with people of color. An executive at a black cable network, rejecting the idea of a news show, told Williams that the black men "who would identify with you like to watch sports and pornography" Magazines like Ebony,Jet, and Essence focus on the "fabulously rich singer or superstar," and avoid discussing the nation's social and economic crises. There's "no investment of money, or placing journalists in a position to tell you critical stories to find the political power players who have their fingers on the levers causing distress in lower income communities. It doesn't exist."

J. Phillip Thompson believes that the waning of local newspapers like New York's Amsterdam News marks the end of one of the last resources communities of color have to learn about issues affecting them. As a former public housing manager in New York, he knows the importance of reporters scrutinizing the words and actions of politicians. Now "I'll read about a shooting in a mainstream newspaper. But the voice of community and debates I heard all the time I don't read about."

He traces a class divide in black America today that's different from previous incarnations. For instance, black officials representing majority black districts "don't want issues, don't want people excited." Elected leadership, he says, is not focused on addressing "fundamental problems like jobs, the fact that people can't pay mortgages, raise families. Instead of dealing with that, officials move onto other issues like Skip Gates being arrested off of his porch. That's unfortunate, but it's just not a vital issue in black America."

About the Speaker(s): Juan Williams appears regularly on the newsmagazines Morning Edition and Day to Day. He is also a contributing political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday. He has also appeared on numerous television programs, including Nightline, Washington Week in Review, Oprah, CNN's Crossfire, and Capitol Gang Sunday. From 2000"2001, Williams hosted NPR's national call"in show Talk of the Nation.

Williams is the author of the biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, and the nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954"1965, the companion volume to the television series. This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience appeared in February 2003. This book was the basis for a six"part public broadcasting TV documentary that aired in June 2003. Phillip Thompson is an urban planner and political scientist. Before entering academic life, Phil worked as Deputy General Manager of the New York Housing Authority and as Director of the Mayor's Office of Housing Coordination. Thompson's latest book is Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Struggle for a Deep Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he has a recent article in The New Labor Forum entitled "What Are Labor's True Colors?" David Thorburn has published widely on literary and cultural subjects and is currently completing a cultural history of American television, called Story Machine. He received his A.B. degree from Princeton, his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford and taught at Yale for 10 years before joining MIT in 1976. He has edited collections of essays on romanticism, and on John Updike, as well as a widely used anthology of fiction, Initiation. He is a former Director of the Film and Media Studies Program and of the Cultural Studies Project.

Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Energy Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Today's Challenges, Tomorrow's Opportunities

Thu, 07 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

05/07/2009 4:30 PM Sheraton BostonWilliam Aulet, SM '94, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management; Jacques Beaudry"Losique, SM '92, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Energy; U.S. Department of Energy; ; Christina Lampe"Onnerud, Founder and CEO, Boston"Power; ; Robert Metcalfe, '68, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Founder, 3Com Corporation; Matthew Nordan, President and Co"Founder; Lux Research Inc.; Description: There are ample opportunities for new energy entrepreneurs, these panelists agree, but motivation and certain kinds of know"how play key roles in bringing new ventures to fruition. Idealism led Christina Lampe"Onnerud to "go into the energy space" at 23, but "inertia" surrounding the energy business may intimidate today's entrepreneurs. Her Boston"Power company, which makes "green" lithium"ion batteries, has forged good relations with policymakers, and now hopes that these politicians will be "brave enough" to "put frameworks out 20 years." In addition to long"term policy changes, Lampe"Onnerud is counting on a continuous influx of good scientists and engineers to drive her company forward. She encourages everyone with new ideas or the capacity to provide leadership to respond "to the biggest opportunity and threat we have." Jacques Beaudry"Losique warns would"be energy entrepreneurs they're up against a highly regulated environment. An offshore wind turbine might require 39 different permits, and it can take as long as 14 years to get approval for a transmission line. Beaudry"Losique promises that government is now working "to better align interests so we can move faster bringing these solutions to the table." Energy entrepreneurs should arm themselves with experienced staff who can navigate regulatory channels. They should also build consortia and partnerships with foundations, government and university labs, other manufacturers and buyers. The administration "is making a huge commitment to energy efficiency and smart buildings" and views wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, as "all hot." Compared to entrepreneurial ventures in IT and life sciences, clean energy startups demand "more money, more time and more late stage risk," says Matthew Nordan. Biomass or coal gasification technologies might require a billion dollars for a pilot plant, which "is a level of risk so high that investors won't sign that check." Many technologies intended to solve one problem end up creating another, or encounter bottlenecks as they scale up, such as the limited supply of precious metals required for the magnets of wind turbines. Some entrepreneurs find success in unique niches, though, such as those seeking to recover waste metal byproducts of tar sand operations. But Nordan warns of a big shake up, as the recent discovery of a massive pocket of natural gas in the U.S. will make competition even steeper for new energy contenders like solar and wind. Robert Metcalfe finds a lack of "human capital" in current energy ventures. The talented CEOs "who have started five companies" are in short supply in energy, which also haven't widely adopted partnering as a useful model. To Metcalfe, the energy problem "looks more and more like a networking problem," which demands a smart grid with lots of storage. This should present entrepreneurs with novel areas to explore. Large utilities may prove obstructive: "We must find ways to get around them, either recruit them or destroy them." He's optimistic there will be breakthroughs in such technologies as fuel cells, and that "when we solve energy, it will be cheap and abundant, and we will use much more of it." About the Speaker(s): William Auletis also Entrepreneur in Residence at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. He has 25 years of experience in technology business operations and financing. He started his career at IBM and then ran two private companies, Cambridge Decision Dynamics and SensAble Technologies. Aulet now works with students and start"up companies to build strategies and operating plans that will create sustainable value. He currently has a specific interest in energy where he conceived, developed and teaches a new graduate class at MIT called "Energy Ventures," writes on the topic for Xconomy.com, and consults for large and small companies in the field. Aulet also conceived, created and serves as the Chairman of the MIT Clean Energy Prize. He has given workshops to many corporate and government entities on innovation, entrepreneurship and corporate venture capital including the US Department of Energy where he has served on their Review Board for Entrepreneurship Grants. In Janaury 2008, Aulet was a featured speaker at the seminal first World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. He has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a graduate degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was a Sloan Fellow.Host(s): Alumni Association, MIT Enterprise Forum

Media in Transition 6: Archives and History

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Scholars of "dead tree technologies" feel increasingly uneasy in a culture overwhelmingly consumed with innovation

An Evening with Video Artist Bill Viola

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:00:00 GMT

03/10/2009 6:30 PM 10"250Bill ViolaDescription: Bill Violadims the lights in MIT's Room 10"250, and begins to talk of life, death and all that lies between, leaving the realm of classroom and entering a place of potential enlightenment. Weaving together his video art, personal anecdotes, poetry and other writings from religious traditions spanning the globe and the ages, Viola illuminates his own spiritual journey and search for meaning. With a light touch, he manages to tap into reservoirs of deep feeling. Viola imparts the vital interplay between his life experience, and the evolution of his vision. After his mother's death, for instance, he 'recovered' her after finding a bowl she'd given him years earlier. Objects outlive us, Viola realized, and contain their own "spark of life." This is true of technologically enabled things including Viola's own video art. He admits that this medium makes him nervous. One of the world's most dangerous weapons is the camera, whose "narrow focus, which is its strength, allows me to see inside a soul." It can also "intentionally obscure an entire class or race." Technology may be used to enrich or to harm, but its goal must be knowledge. Viola recalls Buddha, who told his followers to treat his teachings like a raft, which should just be used "to get to the other side. From that point on, only an idiot would carry a boat around." This is a good time for Buddhist ideas, suggests Viola. The world "seems like it's deconstructing before our eyes." Yet Viola says he's "excited about this age. People who've been making money, doing stuff, must suddenly start living like artists." He tells students they should be "very happy graduating into this emptiness," because collapse brings opportunities for regeneration. Viola recounts various other experiences and insights: a visit to an exhibit of Bodhisattva sculptures, which he regarded merely as ancient art, until an old lady adorned them with scarves, revering them as sacred objects; a Flemish painting of Mary that left him weeping, and made him realize that he "was using art, mourning his mother who was leaving this world." Only after years of training, says Viola, "could I see how my personal and professional life was not at odds, that it holds the whole edifice of the self up." One profound expression of that interdependence is played in this talk: his 1992 Nantes Triptych, whose three 'panels' consist of videos of the live birth of a baby, the last moments of Viola's mother's life, and a clothed man drifting in an underwater pool "in currents between the poles of life." About the Speaker(s): Bill Viola received his B.F.A. in Experimental Studios from Syracuse University in 1973 and currently lives and works in Long Beach, California with Kira Perov, his wife and long"time collaborator. Viola has exhibited works and established relationships with some of the world's most prestigious museums and institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, which in 1997 organized an exhibition entitled Bill Viola: A 25"Year Survey; the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and Guggenheim Museum, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the National Gallery, London; the Fondacin "La Caixa," Madrid; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Op_ra National de Paris, Bastille; the Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; and the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York. Viola is the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards and honors, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989 and the first Medienkunstpreis in 1993. He holds honorary doctorates from Syracuse University (1995), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997), California Institute of the Arts (2000), Royal College of Art, London (2004) among others, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. Host(s): Office of the Provost, Council for the Arts

Murali Govindaswamy, Legatum Fellow

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:30:23 GMT

Murali worked as an engineer at Ericsson until he enrolled as an MBA candidate in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program at the Sloan Shcool of Management. Now he wants to use the WiMAX technology to bring internet connectivity to India.

Technologies and Emerging Democracies: Building a Better Gatekeeper

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

10/08/2008 6:00 PM MuseumEthan Zuckerman, Fellow, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University Law SchoolDescription: Don't forsake The New York Times for online media, instructs Ethan Zuckerman, because newspapers provide opportunities for learning about the world largely unavailable in the digital kingdom. Zuckerman points in particular to the "serendipity box" -- that intensely local or exotic piece that often grabs attention at the bottom of the front page. This "juicy bait on a hook," as he calls it, often leads to an in"depth, fascinating report about a culture or perspective far removed from most Americans'. At a time when the world has become connected by infrastructure of all kinds, it behooves Americans to take a closer look at our neighbors, especially those in developing nations. But capturing people's attention on these matters, says Zuckerman, turns out to be a "surprisingly difficult problem." In the age of the web, traditional gatekeepers such as broadcast anchors and newspaper editors wield less clout. The internet, increasingly the primary source of information for millions, doesn't maintain gatekeepers as much as self"publishing bloggers or user groups that clump together around specific interests. Useful search technology, such as the collaborative filtering employed by Netflix, helps you find the kinds of things you're interested in, based on previously expressed preferences. But these kinds of prediction systems won't surprise you, and, says Zuckerman, "are more likely to trap (you) in a circle of recommendations." Current web searches encourage homophily, says Zuckerman, the tendency to flock together. While this clustering by like"minded people is part of human nature, it becomes problematic when it guides our exposure to media and information. "In a global world, we've gotten much better at moving stuff around than ideas and perspectives. Moving stuff around can be incredibly dangerous," says Zuckerman. "We isolate ourselves in political cocoons, and nationalist cocoons" at our peril. To break out of these "echo chambers," Zuckerman has developed a method called "bridging," which he employs in his Global Voices web project. He finds people from around the world to act as filters for what's happening in their country, and as translators of both language and context. These bridge bloggers are "people with feet in two worlds." One blogger Zuckerman mentions works to explain Bahrain to the rest of the world, "trying to dispel the image Muslims and Arabs suffer from." While this is a start, Zuckerman wonders how he can better "engineer serendipity" to help us "resist homophily," lest we get stuck in the digital age wearing blinders. About the Speaker(s): Ethan Zuckerman became a fellow of the Berkman Center in January 2003. In 2000, he founded Geekcorps, a non"profit technology volunteer corps that pairs skilled volunteers from US and European high tech companies with businesses in emerging nations for one to four month volunteer tours. Geekcorps became a division of the International Executive Service Corps in 2001, where Zuckerman served as a vice president from 2001"04. Earlier, Zuckerman helped found Tripod, an early pioneer in the web community space. He served as Tripod's first graphic designer and technologist, and later as VP of Business Development and VP of Research and Development. After Tripod's acquisition by Lycos in 1998, Zuckerman served as General Manager of the Angelfire.com division and as a member of the Lycos mergers and acquisitions team. In 1993, Zuckerman graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Philosophy. In 1993"4, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of9 Legon, Ghana and the National Theatre of Ghana, studying ethnomusicology and percussion. Zuckerman received the 2002 Technology in Service of Humanity Award by MIT's Technology Review Magazine and named to the TR100, TR's list of innovators under the age of 35. Recently, Zuckerman was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. Host(s): Office of the Provost, MIT Museum

MIT Communications Forum: Our World Digitized — The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT

In conversation with Henry Jenkins, these speakers don't so much square off as share their hopes and fears for the emergence of online democracy.

A Roadmap for the Edge of the Internet

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT

04/08/2008 8"404Dr. Alan Benner, Senior Engineer, IBM Server DivisionDescription: In the curious way of technological evolution, we first had computers that occupied entire rooms, watched them shrink to desktop, laptop and palm"sized devices, and now find ourselves coming full circle, and then some, Alan Benner reports. He tells this MIT class about warehouse"sized data centers, linking processors, and ensembles of processors, in dizzyingly complex hierarchies. These gigantic operations, some with their own power and air conditioning plants, are central to the enterprise of Internet behemoths Google, Amazon and YouTube, but have not yet percolated out to more traditional companies like insurance firms -- a situation Benner and his IBM colleagues would like to remedy. Benner describes in broad strokes how these data operations are organized into levels of "virtualization and consolidation," where the hardware is hidden, yet the data is both fully accessible and secure, no matter where the user and the computers are located. These new enterprise data centers aim to maximize efficiency, both in utilization and power consumption. It's better to have fewer, bigger and well"integrated machines, says Benner, working as much as possible. Since even idle servers use a lot of power, users should share processing time in a manner that keeps the processors occupied. Benner describes computer architecture and software that aims at "statistically multiplexing jobs," matching peaks in one group's workload to nonpeaks in another group's. Ideally, users remain blissfully unaware of this traffic management, and need never worry whether their information is getting crunched next door, or on the other side of the planet. Benner hopes that companies will see advantages in migrating their data and services to a bigger, shared infrastructure, especially now with the near"ubiquity of high bandwidth networks. Given the rapid rise of energy costs, and the burdens of supporting a growing IT administration, it may save money "to move work to where it can be done most efficiently," he says. About the Speaker(s): Alan Benner focuses on the architecture, design, and development of optical and electronic networks for high"performance servers and parallel systems. Benner earned a B.S. at Harvey Mudd College (Physics, 1986), and M.S. and Ph.D (1992) from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center, researching nonlinear interactions between wavelength"multiplexed optical fiber solitons. He has also done research work at AT&T Bell Laboratories on photonic networks and components. He has written 2 editions of a book on Fibre Channel, and co"authored several of the specifications for the InfiniBand architecture. He has over 20 technical publications and 25 issued patents in the U.S. and other countries. Benner is currently working on I/O and networking infrastructure for Cell"based blade servers.Host(s): School of Engineering, Materials Processing Center

The Enernet

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:00:00 GMT

03/04/2008 4:00 PM 34"101Robert Metcalfe, '68, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Founder, 3Com CorporationDescription: One of telecom's living legends, Robert Metcalfe, has signed on to MIT's Energy Initiative, and gone about mining the history of the Internet for lessons on how to solve the energy crisis. He promises to disappoint those expecting "consensus science," and indeed shares his strong opinions on MIT's campus"wide work on energy solutions. Metcalfe reminds his audience of the importance of reviewing the past, both to avoid mistakes and to consolidate knowledge that might prove useful in the future. Metcalfe notes how industry's early push to make bigger computers led to a dead end, and the triumph of Silicon Valley over Route 128. Metcalfe sees analogies in the current enthusiasm for energy solutions that don't seem promising to him. Some enterprises pursue "clean" technology, says Metcalfe, but they omit "cheap," and "you can't get away with that." So"called green technology comes with "a lot of baggage" -- the feel of "Luddism, anti"globalism, anti"corporate everything," says Metcalfe. Metcalfe believes genuine efforts at innovation run up against the status quo, as he experienced when demonstrating packet switching to mocking AT&T executives in the 1970s. He warns bold energy innovators that there are "pretty nasty people out there who won't welcome your technological developments." Metcalfe candidly shares his disagreements with MIT's Energy Initiative for its focus on tackling climate change and CO2 emissions, its emphasis on conservation, discouragement of nuclear power and enthusiasm for building public awareness and big policy changes. Metcalfe states boldly, "The climate change problem is going to get solved really quickly." But once we're done, we are still left with an energy problem. He scoffs at policy people who rush to Washington, and points at corn ethanol as a typical massive policy failure. Metcalfe faults MIT for pushing only scale technologies, noting that this approach risks setting too high a hurdle or even aborting small"scale innovations that might prove themselves. And he remarks that the evolution of the Internet features many surprises, even astonishing developments, including optic fibers and his own Ethernet. Those in search of clean, cheap energy should expect and welcome the unexpected. "I told the Energy Initiative, spend less time telling us there are no silver bullets, and more time finding the damn silver bullets." About the Speaker(s): Robert Metcalfe developed Ethernet as a standard for connecting computers for high"speed data transfer. He joined Polaris Venture Partners in January 2001. Before that, Metcalfe was Publisher/CEO for IDG/InfoWorld. His weekly Internet columns for this publication have been collected in his latest book, Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry. Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation in 1979 and stayed with the billion"dollar company through 1990. Metcalfe received bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and management from MIT (1969), and an M.S. in applied mathematics and Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University.Host(s): School of Engineering, Microsystems Technology Laboratories

NBC's Heroes: Appointment TV to Engagement TV

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:00:00 GMT

Two progenitors of broadcast TV's rapid expansion into the digital world provide narrative and back story for the development of NBC's crossover series, Heroes.

The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

10/22/2007 4:00 PM BartosCharles B. Perrow, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Yale UniversityDescription: It's time to trade in the Department of Homeland Security for a Department of Homeland Vulnerabilities, says Charles Perrow. At its peril, our nation "privileges terrorism over natural and industrial disasters." From Perrow's perspective, the U.S. landscape is riddled with "weapons of mass destruction:" chemical plants; vital infrastructure such as bridges and levees; aging nuclear power plants; large, centralized providers of energy, water and food, all of which are obvious targets for natural disasters, accidents or attack. "There are 123 locations in our nation where a vapor cloud released by an accident or terror attack could endanger over 1 million people," says Perrow. Freight trains loaded with poisons lumber through our cities every day. With global warming, storms, floods and fires are on the increase. And the internet is "held hostage to Microsoft's command of 90% of the operating systems that we use." This means hackers with malicious intent could subvert sensitive facilities like our power grid and infiltrate the U.S. military. We can't prevent and mitigate our way out of this fix, no matter what administration is in office, says Perrow, although he bemoans the enormous erosion of regulatory oversight during the Bush era. He proposes instead such steps as removing hazardous materials from major population centers; dispersing vulnerable populations; breaking up or decentralizing large organizations; and codifying these measures through stringent laws. This approach won't likely win him friends in places like New Orleans, a city he hopes will not spring back to its pre"Katrina size. Cities in risky areas should be downsized, and provided with multiple evacuation routes and redundant means of protection and emergency services. "If we rely only on a few, we will be in peril." He takes aim at defenders of big organizations, who say we need economies of scale to function in a global economy. "Bigger is not safer," says Perrow. The larger the manufacturing plant, or internet service network, the more concentrated the power, the more likely an accident of consequence is to take place. We need many smaller, interconnected facilities, which can provide adequate economic efficiency. Perrow cites some "baby steps" in the right direction -- laws mandating public disclosure and inventories of hazardous materials and processes, and the switch by manufacturers to less poisonous substances. But real results "all depend on politics." About the Speaker(s): Charles Perrow is an organizational theorist and the author of such books as The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters(2007);The Radical Attack on Business (1972); Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies(1984; revised, 1999); The AIDS Disaster: The Failure of Organizations in New York and the Nation (1990) with Mauro Guillen; and Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of American Capitalism (2002). Perrow is past Vice President of the Eastern Sociological Society; a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavorial Sciences (1981"2, 1999); Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science; Resident Scholar, Russell Sage Foundation, 1990"91; Fellow, Shelly Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, 1995"96; Visitor, Institute for Advanced Studies, 1995"96, Princeton University; former member of the Committee on Human Factors, National Academy of Sciences, of the Sociology Panel of the National Science Foundation, and of the editorial boards of several journals. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Program in Science, Technology and Society

Collaboration and Collective Intelligence

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT

04/27/2007 5:45 PM Bartos theaterThomas Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT Sloan; Mimi Ito, Research Scientist, Annenberg Center for Communication; Cory Ondrejka, Chief Technology Officer, Linden Lab; Trebor Scholz, professor and researcher in the Department of Media Study SUNY BuffaloDescription: Now that it's possible to work, politick or party with partners round the world, round the clock, what have we got to show for it? These speakers offer some intriguing examples of the potential of internet-driven collectives, as well as some cautionary notes. Moderator Thomas Malone describes a NASA -clickworker" project enabling amateurs to help identify craters on the surface of Mars; and Garry Kasparov's 1999 chess match against 'the world' _a team that voted via the internet on its moves against the champion. Kasparov said it was the hardest game he'd ever played. Current estimates show anywhere from 50-170 million people participating in MySpace, and 80 million in Facebook, notes Trebor Scholz. There is of course a cost to this online social life. Scholz notes it is an -incredibly expensive, arduous process to support," with server farms and corporate sponsors. But as much as big business may be required to back social networking, users provide valuable content for which they are not remunerated. All the content individuals upload, from personal data, to videos, photos, blogs and links, gets put to work. Scholz perceives -a commercialization of social life itself" in this virtual world, as well as the danger that people get locked into communities, -giving away their music, books, pictures, jobs, education, birth dates, sexual orientation," and then become a -captive audience" within an increasingly commercial web space. Why not nonprofit alternatives to media giants, he suggests, and public control over content. When the Starwood group wanted to design a new hotel, they did it in Second Life, recounts Cory Ondrejka. Quite a few of this virtual world's six million users jumped right in, creating a community of designers who let the chain's CEO know, among other things, that they didn't like the look and feel of the lobby. And when Second Life users rankled at a new company policy on taxation, they figured out an ingenious way to get their web host's attention: a group of virtual protesters met potential new users, -lighting themselves on fire while waving protest signs." It was impressive to watch, says Ondrejka, and -was a pretty good way to get us to pay attention." With its focus on portable play with trading cards and handhelds, Pokemon was a breakthrough, boosting children's media to unprecedented levels, says Mimi Ito. Pokemon not only demonstrated to the industry that children could master -a pantheon of hundreds of characters with unique characteristics" but that -social exchange was a central reason for why the content was widely popular." Ito describes -the intense exchange of information when children are engaging in it," extremely critical from a learning perspective. Perhaps more important, she says, is that -kids have the realization that they are participating in a collective imagination that is greater than what they could master on their own." About the Speaker(s): Thomas W. Malone was one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century". His research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology. The past two decades of Malone's research are summarized in his book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Malone is the co-editor of three other books, as well. Malone has been a cofounder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. Before joining the MIT faculty in 1983, Malone was a research scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where his research involved designing educational software and office information systems. He earned a Ph.D. and two master's degrees from Stanford University, a B.A. from Rice University, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering-economic systems, and psychology.Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Folk Cultures and Digital Cultures

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT

04/27/2007 12:30 PM e-25-111David Thorburn, MIT Professor of LiteratureMacVicar Faculty Fellow; Lewis Hyde, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing, Kenyon College; Thomas Pettitt, Associate Professor of English, University of Southern Denmark; S. Craig Watkins, Associate Professor, Department of Radio, Television and Film, University of Texas, AustinDescription: This panel demonstrates provocatively how literary criticism and cultural history have come to accommodate and embrace contemporary media. Says David Thorburn, the session's moderator, -The founding texts of Western civilization belong to a textual category or engage in textual behavior that make it resemble something much closer to an ongoing, unfinished TV series..." Indeed, says Thorburn, -In his own day, Shakespeare was the equivalent of what TV is in our society, or what the movies had been in the studio era." A new idea of the text is emerging, one that undergoes constant revision, in diverse media, and which never achieves a finished state. Consequently, notions of authorship, and ownership, are under siege. Thomas Pettitt offers the Gutenberg parenthesis, brackets around historical periods of artistic achievement. Before the parenthesis lie such glories as Elizabethan theatre and traveling players, where -the distinction between author and performer is problematic." The text is neither fixed, nor authoritative, says Pettitt. Within the center of his parenthesis sit -original compositions, to passive reproductions." As the digital age proceeds, Pettit observes culture -paradoxically advancing into the past," our own a mirror age of Elizabethan times, with rock, rap, reggae and other vernacular traditions that emphasize performance coming to the fore. In Lewis Hyde's telling, Benjamin Franklin operated as -the first intellectual property pirate in this country," perhaps a hero to the open access movement. Franklin was instrumental in spiriting out of England printing technology that was in the 18th century subject to laws forbidding the export of skilled labor and machinery. -Franklin is essentially supporting free movement of labor and ideas," says Hyde, opposing tyrannical law and -underwriting the liberty of ideas and citizens." Behind his actions lay the belief that the -true and good were best discovered collectively," and that sacrifice of individual interest was essential in a republic concerned with the progress of knowledge and -public virtue in politics." A dialogue with the past and communal ownership of art (the latter vilified by corporate interests), serve as the foundations of African American cultural practice, says Craig Watkins. He traces the origins of rap music to slave songs and narratives, and black preachers and protest politics. This -oral culture created a space in which people could engage in dialog with each other that allowed them to survive horrific conditions." The idea of sampling in music is consistent with African-America oral tradition and participatory culture, says Watkins. It's central to art creation, building new kinds of musical experiences and -paying homage to the past -- an act of respect, inserting the past into present." About the Speaker(s): David Thorburn has published widely on literary and cultural subjects and is currently completing a cultural history of American television, called Story Machine. He received his A.B. degree from Princeton, his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford and taught at Yale for 10 years before joining MIT in 1976. He has edited collections of essays on romanticism, and on John Updike, as well as a widely used anthology of fiction, Initiation. He is a former Director of the Film and Media Studies Program and of the Cultural Studies Project.Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Relearning Learning--Applying the Long Tail to Learning

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 GMT

12/01/2006 8:30 AM Tang Center/WongJohn Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar, USCDescription: In a digitally connected, rapidly evolving world, we must transcend the traditional Cartesian models of learning that prescribe -pouring knowledge into somebody's head," says John Seely Brown. We learn in and through our interactions with others and the world, he says, and there's no more perfect medium for enabling this than an increasingly open and organized World Wide Web. While the wired world may be flat, it now also features -spikes," interactive communities organized around a wealth of subjects. For kids growing up in a digital world, these unique web resources are becoming central to popular culture, notes Brown. Now, educators must begin to incorporate the features of mash-ups and remixes in learning, to stimulate -creative tinkering and the play of imagination." With the avid participation of online users, the distinction between producers and consumers blurs. In the same way, says Brown, knowledge 'production' must flow more from 'amateurs' _ the students, life-long learners, and professionals learning new skills. Brown describes amateur astronomers who observe the sky 24/7, supplementing the work of professionals in critical ways. A website devoted to Boccaccio's Decameron welcomes both scholars and students, opening up the world of professional humanities research to all. The challenge of 21st century education will be leveraging the abundant resources of the web _ this very long tail of interests _ into a -circle of knowledge-building and sharing." Perhaps, Brown proposes, the formal curriculum of schools will encompass both a minimal core -that gets at the essence of critical thinking," paired with -passion-based learning," where kids connect to niche communities on the web, deeply exploring certain subjects. Brown envisions education becoming -an act of re-creation and productive inquiry," that will form the basis for a new culture of learning. About the Speaker(s): John Seely Brown left as Director of Xerox-PARC in June 2000, and stepped down as Xerox Corporation Chief Scientist in April 2002. He has published more than 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review's 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, "Research that Reinvents the Corporation" and again in 2002 for his article (with John Hagel) -Your Next IT Strategy." His latest book, The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization, written with John Hagel, was published in the spring of 2005 by Harvard Business School Press. Brown is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS, and a Trustee of Brown University, the MacArthur Foundation and In-Q-Tel. He received an A.B. from Brown University in 1962 in Mathematics and Physics and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1970 in Computer and Communication Sciences. Host(s): Office of the Provost, iCampus

Why Newspapers Matter

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 04:00:00 GMT

10/05/2006 5:00 PM BartosJerome Armstrong, Founder, Netroots.com; Pablo Boczkowski, Professor of Communications Studies at Northwestern University ; Dante Chinni, Senior Research Associate, Project for Excellence in Journalism; David Thorburn, MIT Professor of LiteratureMacVicar Faculty FellowDescription: In this third and final panel, moderator David Thorburn makes an impassioned bid to refocus attention on the unique role newspapers play in society, and to cast a more skeptical eye on the merits of cyberjournalism. Newspapers organize the world on a daily basis, -create a universe that is in some sense more fundamentally unified and coherent than the atomistic universe" of the Web, and serve as -independent political observers that can stand up against and defy the demands of government." To Thorburn, the loss of this institution would deal a serious blow to society. Can emerging digital forms of news-gathering and communications hope to offer -the kind of political and moral independence" of traditional newspapers? Jerome Armstrong takes issue with Thorburn. As an early grassroots internet organizer, he -saw a lack of progressive voices in the mainstream media outlets." Newspapers did not cover the world he was interested in, so he -turned to the blogosphere." This is a new mechanism for the mass media: individuals pass on information or a message via the internet to much larger groups. Speaking directly to the continued relevancy of newspapers, Armstrong notes that blogs offer readers a chance to connect with like-minded folks, and wonders whether the communities available online are -offering something newspapers haven't offered." Pablo Boczkowski has hard data from his studies of Argentine print and digital journalism to suggest that -newspapers matter less because they have increasingly turned hard news into a commodity. They are losing their power to set the agenda." Since 2001, and the advent of the internet as a news source, Boczkowski has detailed the increased homogeneity of stories in Argentina's top newspapers. As editors monitor the competition online, especially breaking news, the same stories about politics, economics and foreign affairs show up in the pages of the following day's newspapers. And as websites that feed a steady stream of entertainment, disaster and sports news demonstrate their popularity by click traffic, newspapers increasingly follow their lead. There's now a -dense web of shared content" among online and print media, which may ultimately -decrease newspapers' ability to contribute to a diverse public sphere." The best-case scenario for newspaper readership is grim indeed, says Dante Chinni, a slow and steady 1% decline year after year. And with more people reading news online, the income from classified ads must grow enormously-- an unlikely prospect. But while Chinni can't identify a viable economic model to ensure the existence of newspapers, he makes a strong case for newspapers' continued survival: at the local and national level, -they're the place with the most bodies, the most reporters on the street. They've got expertise and know what they're talking about." Blogs can't break large stories, but feed off news that's already out there. Journalists have unique access, and -in spite of bias grumblings, lovable mainstream journalists try to get the story straight." And because the news environment has become so complicated, we need -somebody to make sense of it," more than ever. About the Speaker(s): Dante Chinni helps research, write and edit PEJ's Reports, articles and essays. As a freelance journalist, he writes a regular media column for the Christian Science Monitor and contributes to publications ranging from the Washington Post Magazine to Columbia Journalism Review. From 1994 - 1997 he was a reporter/researcher for the National Affairs desk at Newsweek Magazine. Jerome Armstrong, a pioneer of the political blogosphere, founded one of the first political blogs, MyDD.com, in 2001. An architect of the netroots strategy that used blogs and meetups for Howard Dean's campaign, Armstrong works as an internet strategist for advocacy organizations and political campaigns with his company, Netroots.com. Pablo J. Boczkowski is also External Faculty Affiliate at Columbia University's Center on Organizational Innovation and Visiting Faculty at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella's Business School in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Before coming to Northwestern, he was Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Boczkowski's research examines the transformation of print culture in the digital age. Heis the author of numerous articles in such publications as Journal of Communication, New Media & Society,and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. His work has received awards from the International Communication Association, and the American Sociological Association, among others. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Global Entrepreneurship: Inefficiency as Opportunity in the Developing World

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 04:00:00 GMT

09/21/2006 7:00 PM KresgeAlex (Sandy) Pentland, PhD '82, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Director of Human Dynamics Research, MIT Media Lab; Damien Balsan, SM '02, VP Business Development, WAY Systems ; Rick Burnes, Co-founder, Charles River Ventures; Iqbal Quadir, Co-founder and Director of the MIT Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship; Randy Zadra, Managing Director, Institute for Connectivity in the AmericasDescription: Where aid programs and government policies fail, small-scale business people armed with the latest technology can succeed. Damien Balsan perceived that in developing nations, ordinary -bottom of the pyramid" merchants -- taxi drivers, plumbers, electricians -- could grow their businesses if they could accept secure credit card payments. So Balsan equipped mobile phones with a card reading stripe and pulled together a credit network. After first testing his notion in the U.S., he headed overseas. Balsan found the formula works just as well in China, where -merchants are happy to take your cards when visiting the Great Wall." In Mexico, mariachi bands now accept plastic, and even salaries can be managed through cell phones in South Africa, via -guys on oxcarts." Balsan's next target is the Avon ladyãpart of a vast army of direct sales vendors: 13 million in the U.S. alone and rising rapidly elsewhere in the world. Randy Zadra brought the internet to customers in developing nations back in the mid 90s, when it was a -battle to get resources dedicated to emerging markets." Zadra realized that these economies were often based on inefficient communication, transportation or financial networks. He turned these deficits into opportunities. One of his programs provides improved ways for foreign workers to send money back to their home countries. Throughout Latin America, these remittances amount to $36 billion per year. Zadra enables bank users to send videos and voice mail back and forth as well. Another program provides electricity in small rural villages, using low cost LEDs, recharged by the people themselves. -It's putting the base of the pyramid to work," says Zadra. Venture capitalist Rick Burnes believes -that backing pure technology is a sure way to lose money," but that companies will succeed if they -clearly identify a market need and customer demand." With the developing world, -deep knowledge of local markets and cultures is critical to success." The only way to stimulate more entrepreneurial activity in these regions is by -working from the demand backwards." Burnes suggests employing -returnees," the people who come to the U.S. for work or school, and then go back to their countries of origin. -These people understand both worlds and can be particularly effective in getting new organizations started." -Poor countries are poor," says Iqbal Quadir, -because a vast number of things are wasted _ including people and time." Quadir, who marked well the success of the Grameen Bank (provider of microcredit loans to poor people in Bangladesh) -realized the telephone could be a weapon against poverty." He developed a -phone for the masses," whereby a poor villager takes out a loan to buy a phone, sells phone calls to neighbors, then pays off the loan and earns additional income. In Bangladesh, this venture has provided phone access to close to 100 million people, and improved the lives of micro-merchants. Grameen Phone's total impact on his nation's GDP, Quadir believes, is probably three times larger than the foreign aid it receives, which often lands in the pockets of corrupt officials. About the Speaker(s): Alex (Sandy) Pentland is a pioneer in wearable computers, health systems, smart environments, and technology for developing countries. He is a co-founder of the Wearable Computing research community, the Autonomous Mental Development research community, the Center for Future Health, and was the founding director of the Media Lab Asia. He was formerly the Academic Head of the MIT Media Laboratory. Pentland was chosen by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the next century. Host(s): Alumni Association, MIT Enterprise Forum

News, Information and the Wealth of Networks

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 04:00:00 GMT

09/21/2006 5:00 PM 3-270Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard; Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California; ; William Uricchio, Professor of Comparative Media Studies; Description: Each speaker examines the widespread change unleashed by digital technology from his respective field. At the same time, these authors find quite a bit of common ground. Yochai Benkler describes how the spread of computers and connectivity -- to perhaps 600 million people worldwide _ has shifted the economics of production. It has, says Benkler, -created a new condition where the most important inputs into the core economic activities of the most advanced economies are widely distributed in the population: computation and communication resources, human creativity, intuition, experience and motivation." Individuals on their own or with collaborators can act without requiring formal authority or central management. What Benkler describes as commons-based peer production creates both competition and new market opportunities. The BBC is now taking advantage of individuals who offer unique content, such as the cell phone images from inside the London Underground following the terrorist bombings. This new freedom for individuals to post material for the rest of the world to view has major ramifications for democracy. Benkler describes the Internet-based attack on flawed Diebold voting machines, which led to legal judgment -- albeit a year too late to affect election returns. The production and distribution of knowledge and culture also has implications for human welfare and development, with open source publishing of bioinformatics and medical and agricultural innovations. -We are beginning to practice new ways of being free and equal human beings," says Benkler, though any gains will be -subject to a global and persistent political and regulatory battle." Henry Jenkins discerns convergence, and sometimes collision, between -top down" and -bottom up" media. We live in a world -where every story, image, sound, relationship, and brand is going to be conducted across the maximum number of media channels, legally or illegally, corporate or amateur," he says. This participatory culture engages in a give and take with traditional, centralized powers. The grassroots absorbs stories or consumes material provided by the mass media, then filters or comments on it _ e.g., MoveOn.org's -Bush in 30 Seconds" video contest. Mass media takes the grassroots content, and attempts to sell it back to users, or generates -astroturf"ãfake grassroots material. Says Jenkins, -Some say we live in a world where five companies control media in our lives. Others say we live in a world where there are no gatekeepers. I say, 'Yes, that's true' to both." In this -apprenticeship stage," we are acquiring skills in participatory culture and collective intelligence, first as fans, bloggers and gamers. But this will -translate to new forms of activism in a rapid way." Jenkins cites how amateur photos, songs, and cartoons during Hurricane Katrina helped shape public opinion about the disaster response. The final season of -West Wing" engendered political engagement in the blogosphere that straddled party lines, -suggesting ways out of purely partisan elections," says Jenkins. But he warns of a participation gap: -If you live in a world with 10 minutes of connectivity with slow bandwidth, you have unequal access." About the Speaker(s): Henry Jenkins' forthcoming books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. His previous books include "What Made Pistachio Nuts": Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic; Classical Hollywood Comedy; and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Jenkins has published articles on a diverse range of topics relating to film, television and popular culture. His most recent essays include work on Star Trek, WWF Wrestling, Nintendo Games, and Dr. Seuss. Jenkins has a Ph.D. in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa. William Uricchio received his Ph.D. in cinema studies from New York University in 1982 and comes to MIT from the Institute for Media and Re/Presentation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he was department chair. He currently directs a five-year cultural identity project in the European Science Foundation Changing Media Changing Europe initiative. A Fulbright and Humboldt fellow, Uricchio has published widely on early television, early cinema and their emergence as cultural forms, including Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films(1993); Die Anf_nge des deutschen Fernsehens: Kritische Ann_herungen an die Entwicklung bis 1945(1993); The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media (1991); and "The Nickel Madness": The Struggle to Control New York City's Nickelodeons in 1907_1913. His most recent books include Media Cultures (2006 Heidelberg), on responses to media in post 9/11 Germany and the US, and We Europeans? Media, New Collectivities and Europe(forthcoming). Yochai Benkler's expertise is in information law and policy in the digital environment, communications law, and intellectual property. Before starting to teach, he clerked for the Honorable Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press 2006). Selected articles include Coase's Penguins, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm, and Freedom in the Commons, Towards a Political Economy of Information, 52 Duke L.J. 1245 (2003). Benkler has an LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University and a J.D. from Harvard University. From 2001-03, he was a Professor of Law, New York University School of Law and served as Director, Engelberg Center for Innovation Law and Policy and Director, Information Law Institute. In 2002-03, he served as Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and from 2001-02, he was a Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Internet Regulation and Design: A View from the Front Lines

Fri, 12 May 2006 04:00:00 GMT

05/12/2006 3:30 PM 34-101Alan Davidson, '89, SM '93, Director of Government Relations and Public Policy, GoogleDescription: Google Google's Alan Davidson and you won't locate him readily in his current post as the search giant's recently installed point man in Washington. Davidson keeps a low profile, at least online, but he is a presence in those circles shaping internet policy. With a background in computer science, Davidson is an unabashed enthusiast of Google's core mission: search. -A complex algorithm is our secret sauce," says Davidson, for producing answers in 1/5th of a second. -As an engineer who's fallen from grace, I marvel at it," he says. He's protective of the world's largest information index --tens of billions of web pages -- and in particular, the -long tail" of a search index: the many individual, quirky sites that draw interest from relatively few users. -20% of searches that we see in a given month are those we've never seen before," he says. -I find this heartwarming. People are weird and want to see strange stuff." Embracing the long tail figures large in Google's -policy space." Helping people access information and innovate requires vigilance, believes Davidson. Politicians around the world are pushing for internet regulations to control content. Davidson approves removal of certain kinds of -vile, evil" content from search indexes, like child pornography sites. But pressure on internet services like Google to act as policemen must be resisted. He describes the -hard case" of China," which demands Google provide a filter for queries the government deems threatening. -We angst about it, but executives feel being there is better for openness than not being there." Other pressing issues for Davidson include net neutrality, the attempt to retain uniform fees for data transmission in the face of demands by broadband and DSL line owners to be paid more for higher speed lines. Davidson sees this demand leading to a two-tier internet, one that discriminates economically against the next MySpace or YouTube. Admits Davidson, -As a lobbyist, we're getting our butts kicked in Washington." There's also the thorny problem of intellectual property raised by Google's book search: a -modest project.to digitize all books in all languages and create a virtual card catalog." Davidson is convinced that Google is not violating copyright law, and is actually helping authors and publishers sell more books. About the Speaker(s): Prior to joining Google, Alan Davidson was Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group promoting civil liberties and human rights online. He has written and spoken widely on privacy, free speech, encryption, and copyright online. Davidson is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's program in Communications, Culture, and Technology, teaching a graduate seminar on Internet architecture and public policy. In 2004 he was a Visiting Scholar in MIT's Program on Science, Technology, and Society. Davidson is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was Symposium Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He received an S.B. in Mathematics and Computer Science and an S.M. in Technology and Policy from MIT. Host(s): School of Engineering, Technology and Policy Program

TV News in Transition

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 04:00:00 GMT

04/06/2006 5:00 PM BartosStuart Brotman, Founder and President, Brotman Communications; Visiting Scholar, Comparative Media Studies, MIT; Neal Shapiro, Former President, NBC News ; ; Juju Chang, Correspondent, ABC News Description: One of broadcast journalism's power couples reminisce about their start in the industry, and discuss changes they've weathered, from global crises and anchor turnovers to the rise of cable and the much ballyhooed notion of technological convergence. Neal Shapiro and Juju Chang both started at the bottom at ABC: Chang as a "gopher" ripping Telex copy, and Shapiro as a "glorified intern." Shapiro recalls ABC's eagerness to come out of last place in the three-way broadcast news race, throwing 'incredible resources" at the chance of exclusives. Shapiro was at NBC when the climate changed for that network, and subsequently for the others, as "big corporations wanted news divisions to make money." Chang describes how newsrooms, which have "a kind of family dynamic," are acutely conscious of ratings. You'll see "jockeying for position" and "reporters fighting for scraps." There are minute-by-minute breakdowns of audience responses to shows, and while networks "don't want to program toward the ratings," reporters "are assigned the stories that rate well," says Chang. Shapiro, who oversaw the expansion of Dateline NBC from one to five nights a week, says news magazine shows serve a unique purpose: Networks produce and own all the material and can repurpose stories to fill different timeslots. When Shapiro took over NBC, just after 9/11 ("the biggest story of my lifetime"), he sought an approach to the crisis different from the other networks. He took his newsmagazine journalists and "unleashed them on the breaking news world." While cable news and reality TV pose a challenge to the three networks, Shapiro believes "There will always be a place for long-form storytelling" and that the audience for evening news is still enormous (26-30 million), and "won't go away for a while." The network anchor will continue to be the go-to figure "when the world falls apart." Programming for a variety of outlets, including cable and the internet and even cell phones, poses the danger of depleting the energies of the networks. "We need to play in all these platforms," says Shapiro, and the "content needs to differ from medium to medium." Chang says that producing pieces for the web to attract viewers both to the website and to the broadcast "taxes our time." During the Q&A period, the speakers answer questions about the popularity of the Jon Stewart show, the passivity of the news media in response to the Bush Administration, and the increasing lack of analysis and perspective on television news. Host(s): School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences, Communications Forum

Innovation Everywhere Why the World Isn't Flat Enough

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 04:00:00 GMT

09/29/2005 4:00 PM KresgeAlex (Sandy) Pentland, PhD '82, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Director of Human Dynamics Research, MIT Media Lab; Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia and Founder and President, Wikipedia Foundation; Nancy J. Hafkin, Founder, African Information Society Initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa; Damien Balsan, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Way Systems; John Stelling, Investigator, Brigham & Women's Hospital Microbiology Laboratory Description: The rising tide of digital communication has not lifted all boats equally, and threatens to leave others stranded altogether, worry some of these panelists. Nancy Hafkin notes a continued gender gap in internet use around the world. In Italy, where there's high web penetration, "women user rates are the same as Krygizstan." What's worse, according to Hafkin, in virtually every country of the world women are underrepresented in information technology education and careers, with the worst cases found in both Africa and Europe. She warns that the percentage of women enrolling in the U.S. as computer science majors in college has dropped 80% since its peak in 1985. John Stelling perceives an "unequal dissemination of technologies that exist." While medical advances can eliminate many diseases, life expectancy is dropping in places like Russia due to alcoholism and HIV. Women's mortality in West Africa is about 35 times higher than in the U.S., and Stelling believes that deployment of information technology could "create new opportunities" to deliver health care more efficiently, accurately and conveniently to such developing regions. The issue involves broadening the reach of such technology so that more than wealthy pockets of these nations can benefit. Damien Balsan finds reason to hope for a massive transformation of developing societies through relatively simple means like his ultra low cost mobile phones, which perform as "credit card acceptance devices for merchants." In places like China, a vast number of retailers don't accept credit cards, holding back the economy, says Balsan. Electronic payments, says Balsan, generate hundreds of millions of dollars of additional consumer spending, which ultimately drives growth in a nation's GDP. A government-sponsored program in Mexico promotes such payments in remote areas, allowing women "to buy milk or things for their babies." Jimmy Wales has less faith in government action. He boldly claims, "Technology will give rise to prosperity in the world through highly distributed activity '. Realistically people figure out themselves what they need and how to achieve it." Government functions best by "protecting individual rights 'so people can use technology to better their own lives." Host(s): Office of the Provost, Technology Review

The Six Webs, 10 Years On

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 04:00:00 GMT

09/29/2005 10:30 AM KresgeBill Joy, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Former Chief Scientist, Sun MicrosystemsDescription: It's a good thing that a decade ago, some engineers at Sun Microsystems became dissatisfied with the limitations of the desktop PC and with kludgy TV remote controls. Their frustrations, according to Bill Joy, led to technology breakthroughs we count on today and will likely in years to come. Joy and his colleagues grasped early on the impact the Internet would have on both computing and entertainment. Back in the 90s, they decided to play out how technologies imbedded in daily life would evolve under the influence of the internet. They envisioned the "far" web, as defined by the typical TV viewer experience; the "near" web, or desktop computing; the "here" web, or mobile devices with personal information one carried all the time; the "weird" web, characterized by voice recognition systems; the "B2B" web of business computers dealing exclusively with each other; and the "D2D" web, of intelligent buildings and cities. (Sun's programming language Java was a deliberate attempt at a platform for all six webs.) Joy sees the six webs as a great organizing principle for understanding how the internet will continue to change. He believes the "here" web will figure most prominently in our lives, with its "nomadic idea that instead of being tethered to an office, we carry around things of most interest to us." He notes the increasing "cleavage between entertainment authored for the 'here' and 'far' webs." The latter is dominated by such corporate interests as game companies intent on copy protection and rights management, while the "more anarchic world" of the internet leads to more interesting content, such as personal publishing, housed best on the "here" web. Says Joy, "Doing things with people you know through a small screen makes enormous sense." About the Speaker(s): Bill Joy led Sun's technical strategy from the founding of the company in 1982 until September 2003. While at Sun, he was a key designer of Sun technologies including Solaris, SPARC, chip architectures and pipelines, and Java. In 1995 he installed the first city-wide WiFi network. Joy has more than 40 patents issued or in progress. Before co-founding Sun, Joy designed and wrote Berkeley UNIX - the first open source operating system with built-in TCP/IP, making it the backbone of the Internet. Fortune magazine dubbed him the "Edison of the Internet." Joy has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Engineering, honoris causa, from the University of Michigan. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a trustee of the Aspen Institute. Host(s): Office of the Provost, Technology Review

Strategy for High Tech Companies-What to Think About

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 04:00:00 GMT

06/05/2004 10:00 AM WongMichael Cusumano, Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor of ManagementDescription: If you are starting out in the software business, Michael Cusumano has some advice for you: think hard about whether to specialize in products or services, and take a serious look at trends in the industry. For the past 20 years, Cusumano has been consulting with and researching some of the top high technology companies worldwide. He has seen software companies enter the market with a "killer application," make some good profits, only to find their product "commoditized." In one case he describes, the price of a software license fell from $1.5 million in 2000 to $250k today. And, he cautions, "in bad economic times, product sales can fall off a cliff." So what works? "The only guaranteed revenues for software companies may be services and maintenance revenues," Cusumano says. In fact, his research shows one company after another (PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP, for instance) transitioning from products to services in order to survive. Cusumano has graphed so many of these corporate "criss crosses" that he considers them "life-cycle models." Only one company, he says, has managed to stay exclusively true to product sales: Microsoft. To succeed, "most software products companies become services or hybrid companies 'where you've got the basic product and build some custom features or a special interface, so the solution you're selling becomes much stickier."About the Speaker(s): Michael A. Cusumano specializes in strategy and technology management in the computer software industry, as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. Cusumano is the author of six books, including Microsoft Secrets (1995), and Platform Leadership: How Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco Drive Industry Innovation (2002). He has also served as editor-in-chief and chairman of the MIT Sloan Management Review and has written for The Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, and The Washington Post. He has consulted for major companies around the world, and is a director of Infinium Software (ERP applications) and Investhink, Ltd. (financial services content and integration software), and an advisor to various companies including NetNumina Solutions (e-business software), firstRain (wireless and web services software), and H-5 Technologies (digital search technology). His book, "The Business of Software" is published by the Free Press. He received a B.A. from Princeton in 1976 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1984. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Production and Operations Management at the Harvard Business School during 1984-86. He is fluent in Japanese and has lived and worked in Japan for seven years. He received two Fulbright Fellowships and a Japan Foundation Fellowship to study at Tokyo University. Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan School of ManagementTape #: T18786, 18787, 18788

The Future of Work

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 04:00:00 GMT

06/05/2004 11:00 AM WongThomas Malone, Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT SloanDescription: In Thomas Malone's optimistic view of the future, the human values of creativity and freedom ultimately triumph, and business leads the way. This explosion of possibilities in work, and everyday life, will flow from the increasing ease and decreasing expense of communicating. Malone sees parallels between the emergence of democracies in political and business worlds, and technological advances in communications. He notes that in the age of the Internet, businesses are growing decentralized, markedly departing from "command and control" organizational models to newer environments where "workers seek advice instead of approval." Empowered by new technologies, workers will exercise ever greater strength in important decisions -- even while corporations expand and sprawl across borders. Just as the printing press enabled large numbers of people to participate in the politics of their times, so will the Internet and evolving communications technologies enable workers to perform their jobs as more active decision-makers, across greater distances. For evidence of this massive shift, Malone explores the "e-lance" economy, as well as the success of eBay, a company with 130,000-plus off site "sellers" making up a global network of "small store owners."About the Speaker(s): Thomas W. Malone was one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century". His research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology. The past two decades of Malone's research are summarized in his book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Malone is the co-editor of three other books, as well. Malone has been a co-founder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. Before joining the MIT faculty in 1983, Malone was a research scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where his research involved designing educational software and office information systems. He earned a Ph.D. and two master's degrees from Stanford University, a B.A. from Rice University, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering-economic systems, and psychology. Host(s): Sloan School of Management, MIT Sloan School of ManagementTape #: T18786, 18787, 18788

The Akamai Story: From Theory to Practice

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 04:00:00 GMT

If you have ever wondered what it means for a website to become "Akamaized," this lecture about the company's origins explains much of the mystery.

Industry Perspectives on Engineering

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 05:00:00 GMT

03/29/2004 3:45 PM Wong AuditoriumKeith Glover, Head of the Department of Engineering; University of Cambridge; Fellow of Sidney Sussex College; Travis Engen, President and CEO, Alcan Inc.; John Grace, Vice President of Engineering and Technology, ArvinMeritor Inc. ; Robert Lucky, Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (retired) Description: The business leaders in this panel suggest that systems engineering may help reinvent entire industries. Travis Engen described Alcan's enormous, global aluminum enterprise, involving bauxite mines, smelters, casting plants, and product and packaging facilities employing 88 thousand people in 60 countries. Alcan's activities pack an enormous environmental punch -- particularly when it comes to water, which Alcan uses for power and aluminum processing -- so the company has turned to the notion of sustainability as an organizing principle. This is "elegant systems thinking," Engen says. "From bottom to top 'sustainability allows us to maximize value and helps us with external constituencies." At ArvinMeritor, engineers have traditionally viewed the vehicle components they create in a piecemeal way. Now, says John Grace, the company is trying to think differently and produce door and braking systems. This means looking simultaneously at how a component is used, its architecture, and the regulatory environment. "We've got to move to a different paradigm," says Grace. "We'll face a critical time where we have to change ..." When Robert Lucky looks at the Internet, he sees "a living thing of monstrous complexity." How do you analyze its behavior, much less guide where it is going? Forces threaten to pull the Internet apart, and countervailing forces keep the network together. While the center is holding for now, Lucky believes the Internet badly needs a vision of the future.Host(s): School of Engineering, Engineering Systems Division

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