DissertationResearch
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Networking on the Network
The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2013) CHI 2013 is about changing perspectives : we draw from the constantly changing perspectives of the diverse CHI community and beyond, but we also change perspectives, offering new visions of people interacting with technology. CHI 2013 is located in vibrant Paris, France, the most visited city in the world from April 27-May 2, 2013. Learn More | Contact Us
Social Media Can Change The World Through Common Ground
There’s been a rising interest in the concept of “social media for social good.” In large part, that discussion has been focused on cause-related social good. I have a different take, related more to the greater good of humanity as a whole. To my view, the Internet, specifically social media, has the potential – and responsibility – to make the world more thoughtful and tolerant by showing people their shared common ground. The Web’s World Changing Potential At 15 years old, I entered an essay contest where the first prize was a trip to Moscow.The Pew Internet and American Life Project is part of a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that explores trends around the Internet, publishing reports about their findings on a regular basis. From Pew's research we've learned that men waste more time on YouTube than women, and that earlier in the year 11% of online adults publish status updates . In a remarkable new report, Pew is reporting that the 11% number has skyrocketed to 19% in less than a year, which means that now almost 1/5 of the entire online population publish or read status updates on sites like Twitter. This data is especially poignant given Bing's announcement around integrating real-time tweets and Facebook status updates within search results. Clearly, a growing number of users are publishing content in real-time, which creates an even greater demand for the ability to search those same status updates, and right now Bing has the edge.
19% of Internet Users Now Use Status Updates
Mobile Web Is Taking Over the World (and Other Internet Trends)
Mobile Internet usage is on the rise. Apple's share of the mobile smartphone market is only going to increase. AT&T's mobile data traffic has increased by 4,932% over the last three years. There will be over 1 billion "heavy mobile data users" by 2013. These are just some of the stats that were shared with the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco.You can play a major role in November In Manchester . Over four weeks in November, six fictional characters will be blogging, tweeting and filming their lives in Manchester. We want you to get involved. These characters need a back-story and a personality.
Take part in November In Manchester
Video of Anne Frank Surfaces on YouTube
The only existing film footage of Anne Frank has been uploaded to YouTube by the Anne Frank House . The Amsterdam museum is hoping to bring attention to Anne's story and diaries and reach a new generation who may be unfamiliar with her story. At the 9 second mark in the clip, you can see Anne Frank leaning out of a second-story window as she watches a bride and groom exit a neighboring address. The Guardian reports that the scene dates back to July 22, 1941 and was provided to the museum by the couple in the 1990s. The story also goes that in the 1950s, once Anne's diary became public, the couple recognized Anne in their wedding video.
Could you find your way home across 3000 miles armed with only Qik, Twitter, Skype and $50? That's the experiment CBS News weather anchor David Price has just embarked on . CBS apparently put Dave up to the challenge, dropping him off yesterday on the Santa Monica Pier with the goal of returning to New York City within seven days. He is armed only with $50, his ID, and a handful of gadgets including Qik-enabled cell phones and a laptop. He'll be doing broadcasts along the route, with the first embedded below in which he shows off some of the technology he'll use to try and meet the challenge. And of course the best place to follow him on the journey is through social media: his Twitter account , his Qik videos , and his No Way Home blog on CBS.
Can Social Media Take a CBS Anchor 3000 Miles?
Hiroshi Ishii, Sean Follmer, Daniel Leithinger, Alex Olwal and Nadia Cheng Malleable user interfaces have the potential to enable radically new forms of interactions and expressiveness through flexible, free-form and computationally controlled shapes and displays. This work, specifically focuses on particle jamming as a simple, effective method for flexible, shape-changing user interfaces where programmatic control of material stiffness enables haptic feedback, deformation, tunable affordances and control gain.
Tangible Media
Responsive Environments
Joe Paradiso, Michael Thomas Lapinski, Dr. Eric Berkson and MGH Sports Medicine This project is a system of compact, wearable, wireless sensor nodes, equipped with full six-degree-of-freedom inertial measurement units and node-to-node capacitive proximity sensing. A high-bandwidth, channel-shared RF protocol has been developed to acquire data from many (e.g., 25) of these sensors at 100 Hz full-state update rates, and software is being developed to fuse this data into a compact set of descriptive parameters in real time. A base station and central computer clock the network and process received data.
Object-Based Media
V. Michael Bove Jr., David Cranor and Edwina Portocarrero Following upon work begun in the Graspables project, we are exploring what happens when a wide range of everyday consumer products can sense, interpret into human terms (using pattern recognition methods), and retain memories, such that users can construct a narrative with the aid of the recollections of the "diaries" of their sporting equipment, luggage, furniture, toys, and other items with which they interact. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>Arlene Ducao and Henry Holtzman MindRider is a helmet that translates electroencephalogram (EEG) feedback into an embedded LED display. For the wearer, green lights indicate a focused, active mental state, while red lights indicate drowsiness, anxiety, and other states not conducive to operating a bike or vehicle.
Information Ecology
Human Dynamics
How social networks can influence our lives in business, health, and governance, as well as technology adoption and diffusion. Today people leave digital breadcrumbs wherever they go, through smart phones, RFIDs, and more. The Human Dynamics group uses Reality Mining to ask how we can use this data to better organize companies, public health, and governance, by better understanding how social networks influence people when they make decisions, transmit information, adopt new technologies, or change behaviors. Our projects have already demonstrated the potential to dramatically improve the competitiveness of companies, and hint at the ability to revolutionize social environments.How to engage diverse audiences in creating their own technology by situating computation in new contexts and building tools to democratize engineering. The High-Low Tech group integrates high and low technological materials, processes, and cultures. Our primary aim is to engage diverse audiences in designing and building their own technologies by situating computation in new cultural and material contexts, and by developing tools that democratize engineering. We believe that the future of technology will be largely determined by end-users who will design, build, and hack their own devices, and our goal is to inspire, shape, support, and study these communities. To this end, we explore the intersection of computation, physical materials, manufacturing processes, traditional crafts, and design.
High-Low Tech
Pattie Maes, Marcelo Coelho, Neri Oxman, Sajid Sadi, Amit Zoran and Amir Mikhak Transitive Materials is an umbrella project encompassing novel materials, fabrication technologies, and traditional craft techniques that can operate in unison to create objects and spaces that realize truly omnipresent interactivity. We are developing interactive textiles, ubiquitous displays, and responsive spaces that seamlessly couple input, output, processing, communication, and power distribution, while preserving the uniqueness and emotional value of physical materials and traditional craft. Life in a Comic, Physical Heart in a Virtual Body, Augmented Pillows, Flexible Urban Display, Shutters, Sprout I/O, and Pulp-Based Computing are current instantiations of these technologies. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
Fluid Interfaces
Each Media Lab faculty member and senior research scientist leads a research group that includes a number of graduate student researchers and often involves undergraduate researchers. How new technologies can help people better communicate, understand, and respond to affective information. How technology can be used to enhance human physical capability.