The Media Lab's certainly always been good at self-promotion. The much-hyped Media Lab Europe springs to mind, where they basically got given the old Guinness hopstore in Dublin, much to the chagrin of the rest of Ireland's CS departments who could have no doubt made good use of the money themselves. After a few years of presumably being a great big money-sink and not producing much of any use it was closed down this year after MIT and the Irish government "failed to agree on a new funding framework" (i.e. "It's a great big money-sink and we're not going to pay for it any more"). They were the "Everything they do is cool!" darlings of the media in the middle of the dot-com boom, a role which has since been taken over by Google.
However, videoconferencing for parrots sounds like something straight out of Python. (Monty, not the language).
However, videoconferencing for parrots sounds like something straight out of Python. (Monty, not the language).
It's genuine, trust me. It was one of the pet projects of Irene Pepperberg (http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/) - there are some brief details here (http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/petprojects/interpet/interpet.pdf) (PDF).
I agree that the Media Darling crown has effectively been taken from the Media Lab by Google, but I think that's partly because Google's work is more directly applicable to the majority of users, rather than being the product of a postgraduate students fever dream.
Hmmm. MIT Media Lab : computer science research institutions :: Kevin Warwick : computer science researchers. Discuss.
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Date: 2005-09-15 06:29 pm (UTC)However, videoconferencing for parrots sounds like something straight out of Python. (Monty, not the language).
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Date: 2005-09-16 10:29 am (UTC)It's genuine, trust me. It was one of the pet projects of Irene Pepperberg (http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/) - there are some brief details here (http://web.media.mit.edu/~impepper/petprojects/interpet/interpet.pdf) (PDF).
I agree that the Media Darling crown has effectively been taken from the Media Lab by Google, but I think that's partly because Google's work is more directly applicable to the majority of users, rather than being the product of a postgraduate students fever dream.
Hmmm. MIT Media Lab : computer science research institutions :: Kevin Warwick : computer science researchers. Discuss.