Past Talks and Colloquia

This second civic media forum will center on several of the Center for Future Civic Media’s most promising new projects. Advanced researchers from the Center will describe their work and offer live demonstrations of their computing wizardry. The forum will be moderated by Chris Csikszentmihályi, director of the Center. Free and open to the public.

Ever wanted to learn how social technology can thwart drug cartels? The U.S. State Department is partnering on Oct. 14-16 for a technology delegation—the 2009 Alliance of Youth Movements Summit featuring everyone from Google to MTV—to discuss methods for using technology to enhance grassroots efforts at social change. "Online technology has unprecedented potential to help us work together to address some of the world's most urgent problems," said Megan J. Smith, vice president of new business development and general manager of Google.org.  more ›

The election of an African-American president in November 2008 has been hailed as a transforming event. But has Obama's ascension transformed anything? Many people’s answer to that question changed this summer when a famous Harvard professor was arrested at his home in Cambridge. Are the harsh realities of race and class in the U.S. clearer now or murkier, following the media tsunami of Gatesgate? And has this polarizing event given greater visibility to racial minorities in the media's coverage of politics?  more ›

Despite the rapid progress and the recent renaissance that we have been  more ›

On September 15-16, 2009, the MIT Media Laboratory will host a first-of-its-kind workshop to explore how the latest digital technologies can be applied to better understand and preserve our natural environment, locally, regionally, and on a global scale.  more ›

Announcing the first annual research open house of the Camera Culture group at the Media Lab. We focus on creating tools to better capture and share visual information. The goal is to create an entirely new class of imaging platforms that have an understanding of the world that far exceeds human ability and produce meaningful abstractions that are well within human comprehensibility.  more ›

In the last decade sensors have become cheaper, faster, and more ubiquitous, enabling automatic collection of data at the millisecond-level time scale in a technique called Reality Mining. The Reality Mining workshop will focus on discussing what new management paradigms can be enabled with this technique, as well as how researchers can immediately use sensing tools to augment their research.  more ›

You are invited to see how MIT students, together with their partner organizations across the developing world are launching mobile technology ventures to address some of the most pressing problems of international development.

People knit scarves, build furniture, sew clothing, and solder radios together in their homes and garages. Diverse groups of people--girls and boys, grandparents and college students--lovingly engage in these hands-on low-tech hobbies.  more ›

Agastya is a movement led by entrepreneurs, educators, scientists, teachers and children to revitalize and transform education for disadvantaged children and teachers in India. Through a scalable and interactive education model, Agastya and its partners--government, corporate and social investors--aim to catalyze social development, innovation and leadership.  more ›

Many important elements of our relationships with machines either go unnoticed or get very little attention compared to our prescribed and conscious interactions with them. These less considered elements--such as sound, infrasound, heat, and motion--are greatly significant and active on multiple levels.  more ›

With the ongoing success of brand-dominated but factory-free companies like Nike in the consumer goods industry, architects are increasingly involved in the process of "branding." Since the 1980s, many of the brand name companies are co-operating with the same suppliers, and the supposedly unique products with different brand names are frequently manufactured in the same factories in Asia or Latin  more ›

Portraits depict something essential about a person, usually by delineating the subject’s physical appearance. With the Data Portraits series, in the new exhibition Connections (through Sept. 13, 2009) the Sociable Media Group explores a different approach, portraying people by expressively rendering their online interactions and data about them.  more ›

Over the past two decades, Prof. Gupta (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) has built a large social network, the Honey Bee Network, to recognize, respect, and reward grassroots innovators. The Honey Bee network has demonstrated that by building upon a resource in which poor people are rich—their knowledge— new paradigm of development can be unleashed.  more ›

In this talk, Paul Mijksenaar will demonstrate his ideas on the strong role of architecture for wayfinding (spatial) criteria and, accordingly, the task of the signage's (verbal) criteria. In addition, he will discuss the challenges and opportunities of dynamic signage with active interfaces.

The capacity to transform is a trait of all living organisms. In his talk, Chuck Hoberman will demonstrate how designed objects can behave like organisms, transforming their size and shape in a complete, continuous manner. Hoberman will speak about his theory of transformability, and describe his work in deployable shelters, consumer products and medical instruments.  more ›

The nature of construction has remained intensely manual throughout recorded history. Unlike in manufacturing, the growth of automation in construction has been slow. A promising new automation approach is Contour Crafting (CC).  more ›

This lecture will examine the ways games are influencing the future of business, and especially the future of banking. Among other topics, Mollick will cover the use of games for financial literacy and education, user experience design, increasing motivation and performance, and collective innovation and problem solving.

Tod Machover's opera Skellig opened to full houses, standing ovations, and rave reviews in its premiere performances from November 24–29, 2008 at the Sage Gateshead (Newcastle, UK). The Times (London) says Machover “captures the tale's eerie essence... while remaining accessible and fun”, the Telegraph (London) calls it “alluring and intriguing,” while the Herald (Glasgow) calls it “nothing less than a dramatic expression of the spiritual sustenance of music.”

Based on ten years' experience developing interactive camera/projector systems for art, science, and culture museums, Scott Snibbe will discuss a distinct form of augmented reality focused on social interaction: social immersive media. His work builds on the language of cinema, casting users as actors within simulated narrative models.  more ›

The graphical user interface has become the de facto metaphor for most of our diverse activities using computers, yet the desktop environment provides a one-size-fits all interaction.  more ›

Over 300 participants from all over the world sharing ideas on the Scratch programming tool for kids.

Over the past twenty-five years, people have weathered dramatic changes in their experience of time, space, matter, and identity. Individuals cope daily with a multitude of changes in scale and pace—working across several time zones, traveling with relative ease between satellite maps and nanoscale images, and being inundated with information.  more ›

A symposium hosted by the MIT Media Lab and the Consumer Electronics Association, hosted by Walt Mossberg.

A showcase of work by eighty American designers, the second installment of the National Design Triennial included both conceptual and realized objects from current and emerging leaders in a variety of design fields. The only exhibition of its kind in the country, the Triennial series celebrates the technological innovations, artistic evolution, and cultural impact of design.  more ›

Recognizing the long-standing support of Japanese business leaders, the Media Laboratory introduced the rebirth of its research agenda in a one-day seminar in Tokyo.

11 members of the MIT Media Laboratory faculty presented their most recent research initiatives to the leaders of over 88 Japanese corporations, universities and members of the international press.

A symposium and exhibit focused on technology's effect on the nature of identity in the 21st century.

The Lab’s Tangible Media group will hold its first large-scale exhibition at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo, Japan, June 23–July 9, 2000.  more ›

MindFests are celebrations of the creativity unleashed by new technologies such as computerized construction kits.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Experimental Music Studio.

Working with the Yale Medical School, a Media Lab team performed physiological monitoring of the members of the 1998 American Everest Expedition, monitoring climbers both at base camp and while they were climbing, and keeping track of weather conditions; this information was sent from Everest to the United States in near real time.

The Brain Opera is an interactive, musical journey into your mind, presented simultaneously in physical and cyberspace. After its European premiere in Vienna, it has travelled around the world, engaging adults and children in the creation of contemporary orchestral music.

A Day in the Life of Cyberspace was designed as an online festival: a virtual event that people from all over the world could attend and participate in. The goal was to encourage people to think about the development of cyberspace and its impact on their own lives, and to send in writings and pictures about their experience with this new world. With these contributions we would create a "Portrait of Cyberspace"—a global snapshot of the on-line world, circa autumn of 1995.