MIT Professor Michael Hawley 179
cyranoVR writes "Today's CBS This Morning ran an interesting profile on MIT Professor Michael Hawley. Aside from recently publishing a super-jumbo-sized book about the Kingdom of Bhutan, he has invented (among other things) an interactive kitchen counter, designed a heart monitor embedded in jewelry, contributed to the MIT Toys of Tomorrow project and has written several classical compositions for piano. What really struck me was Hawley's observation that 'today's computers aren't musical enough.' For him, there is 'no difference between an ivory keyboard and a QWERTY keyboard.' I think it's a good thing that the mainstream media is starting to show how 'computer nerds' (as the correspondent identified Hawley) can be rich individuals with much more to their lives than hardware upgrades, programming languages and pocket protectors."
nerds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lies!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why care? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty girls get their ideas about computer nerds from the mass media.
Re:Why care? (Score:2, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:Why care? (Score:2, Insightful)
The prettiest part of a girl should be her brain.
Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:5, Funny)
Boobs.
Re:Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:2)
Wow! A response in one line of code. Declarative programmers must get all the girls.
Then again, they'd have time to... Excuse me, I need to go reexamine my language preference.
Re:Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:3, Insightful)
And media-driven stereotypes influence all of us. "Nerd" is generally considered an unattractive attribute. You'll have to balance it with a lot of positive stuff in order to ev
Re:Outlook versus "Inside" (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty girls are often objectified by men. The appearance of computer hardware as a status symbol is akin to jocks and their ridiculous attention to cars. As a result, they can be cautious.
Why should you care? You really want to be misunderstood? This isn't willful ignorance on the part of women. They don't wan
Re:Why care? (Score:1)
Those don't care.
(I want one!!)
Re:Why care? (Score:1)
As it turns out, some computer nerds are also pretty girls. You can keep the bubbleheaded ditzes that read Tiger Beat and Cosmo, thank you very much.
Once upon a time my boss, after meeting my wife for the first time, called me up front, presented me to the UPS man delivering to our shop, and said "Look at this guy, you see how ugly he is? You should see his wife, she looks like she just stepped out of a Penthouse.
Re:Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, media portrayal has a direct influence on your standing in society. Your standing in society has a direct influence on your life (ever notice the difference in the way people treat you depending on the way you dress?). More important than the way people treat you, look at mathematics in Europe. There the funding of departments is often very linked to the number of students they have (in one way or another). Mathematics being uncool certainly means fewer students, which in turn gives problems with the funding. I think for computer science there are currently no such issues (there is enough coolness, and there are other factors at work), but on the long run influence of the picture society has of a group of people is certainly important.
What I am saying is that it is reasonable to care about the image in society, certainly not that one should take a current picture personally.
Best,
Bart
Re:Why care? (Score:2)
Because a sizeable chunk of humanity gets their information from the mass media. And I'd like the geek ideals to be disseminated into mainstream society because I think it will improve humanity. Imagine a world where almost everyone is scientifically literate, open-minded, and artistic. Don't you want to help everyone else get there?
Re:Why care? (Score:2)
Sure. But the way to do that isn't to change the way mass media portrays certain groups, but to get people to pay the mass media less mind. It's better for us that the mass media continue to portray the scientifically able as one-dimensional geeks, so that we can become living examples of why the mass media is not to be trusted.
Because, you see, the mass media d
Re:Why care? (Score:2, Interesting)
Media portrayal is extremely important for the development of new talent. I think a lot of young people, especially young women, are turned off from the sciences and other technical fields because of misconstrued ideas of what the respective work enviornment is like.
Personally, if I didn't fall into the sciences by chance, and had to choose a discipline by wading through the different offerings, I might have been discouraged from physics. Who wants to spend their days around reclusive wierdos who are so
Re:Why care? (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to agree with you on that. I am definitely NOT wrapped up in what the media thinks I am, or what society is told by the media I OUGHT to be.
I'm a 31 year old 'computer nerd'. When not at a PC working or gaming, I'm playing the banjo (yeah, a real hip instrument) or knee-boarding (yeah, that old 80s summer time sport) on the lake with my wife (pretty, smart wonderful girls CAN love a geek) and my kids, or in the off lake season, playing soccer.
I'm not making hundreds of dot.com dollars a ye
Re:Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that value of your smarts to society as a whole is entirely fungible [reference.com] (your word-of-the-day) and largely determined by that image, for better or for worse. You may have your own internal compass of self-worth; bravo! it's a wonderful thing and I don't begrudge you it. But it won't buy you a cup of coffee.
The mass media is simply a reflection of a greater collective value assertion on your community and indirectly on you personally. You (like every other human being) have limits to your brilliance, power and control. One of those limits is on how you are valued in terms of economic and social resource allocation. Your allocation of those resources (aka Jobs, Mates, Favors, Respect, etc.) are solely dependent on your value to others as that value is perceived by others. Your only means of control is to be aware of and exert influence on that perception (sometimes called "marketing yourself" - yes, I know, despicable).
Is it unfair that people may judge your value as a person based on a stereotype of "the nerd"? Yes and no. They have a right to decide how to allocate the resources they possess; with that includes the right to decide the means for testing and assessing the value of what will be exchanged (you, your personality and your skills) for those resources. A lot of people might think justifications for case-modding and overclocking are unfair and foolish ways of valuing resources. But it's your money, your case and your CPU, and thus your right to decide how you chose to make your value decisions.
People use stereotypes and perceptions to avoid thinking too much. This is anathema to nerds since we do a lot thinking, enjoy thinking and respect thinking. Nonetheless, thinking takes time and energy. An entirely rational strategy followed by most humans is to "play the numbers" and use heuristic substitutes for detailed analytic thinking. If the heuristic is right 80% of the time but you spent only 20% of the effort that thinking would require, aren't you ahead of the game? Absolutely. But we nerds do it also.
Ask yourself this: do I rationally analyze every purchase I make or do I mostly just buy a brand I know? I mean, absolutely every purchase; like every time I buy toothpaste do I send it out for analysis to assure quality control? Of course not. You buy <insert your familiar brand> rather than intensely investigate what you're buying each time you make a purchase. This is what "branding" is: sidestepping the cost of rational economic analysis by relying on a symbolic representation and promise of a product that meets a need. You choose (explicitly or implicitly) to hold a belief that the product does what you expect, for example, due to the presumption that manufacturing is performed according to familiar, rational practices and processes so that the next time you buy a Coca Cola or an Athlon, it will probably be just as good as the last one. This is reasonable, but not a strictly rational belief or axiom. You are playing the odds on it, using your own stereotype (aka a brand perception) to convince yourself that you don't need to think about it. Go to some developing nation some time and you'll see product quality variance that may force you to question that assumption.
So why do I (you) need to worry about what the mass media thinks about me? Well, I won't say "worry" is the right word. Specifically, your value to society is on the line with how you and your profession is perceived. Economic, social and romantic decisions are being made right this minute based on it! You should be aware of the implications of what a negative image means in terms of your career and personal satisfaction. How important those are to you is your privilege to decide how important you decide they are
Re:Why care? (Belated Response) (Score:2)
A couple reasons come to mind:
1) I am a small man with a weak ego that needs validation from others. You seem to be a strong individual that doesn't need outside validation - good for you!
2) The media often portrays Computer nerds as social misfits with narrow interests. At worst, they are criminal virus writers out to destroy your computer. Unfortunately, most people in this cou
Coding as an artform (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I can't really see "Spreadsheet in D minor" becoming too popular... entering incrementing data by performing a crescendo on the keyboard will take a while to catch on
So whereas there are similarities, I think there are differences too, and I think the two input mechanisms reflect that. There is the other point that not all of us are maestro's with a musical instrument... the user-interface of the ivories might be slightly less user-friendly than the traditional QWERTY (or AZERTY, or whatever is your poison
Simon
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagreed with the article quote that "For [Hawley], there is 'no difference between an ivory keyboard and a QWERTY keyboard'."I think the key will be to recognize that electronic music and the more classical type both have their own qualities and complement, rather than replace, each other. Sort of like how electric, acoustic, and classical guitars are all similar instruments but each have their own sound -- none is meant to replicate any other one.
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:3, Interesting)
So a computer keyboard is more like an organ or a harpsichord. ISTR that one of the BBC Micro's Welcome programs was called 'organ', and straightforwardly turned the top two rows of keys into white and black notes. And I wrote similar things myself at various points, recording input music and playing it back or trying to generate a similar-sounding tune using simple probabilities of which notes follow each o
The dp sound quality can be better than acpiano! (Score:2)
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
The QWERTY keyboard is actually far less a friendly user interface, with it's bizarre folded layout, compared to the geometric regularity of the piano keybord, with its mere twelve notes repeated over and over linearly.
Of course not all of us are "maestros with a musical instrument." Not all of us have practiced with a
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2, Interesting)
Specifically, I don't type in tempo, but I have to play in tempo, and I find this extremely hard -- I always want to play ahead on the easy passages, and slow down on the harder ones. Plus, I'd kill for a backspace on the piano.
Ultimately, my playing's only ever much use in short bursts, and I basic
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:1)
Yeah, that would be sweet, wouldn't it?
As for keeping tempo I hate to say it, but the much maligned metronome is the cure for that. I know professional musicians who have been playing for 50 years who still spend an hour or two a week with a metronome. Don't let it rule your playing in the mechanical sense, but it is a valuable tool to learn the bounds of musical expression.
I happen to agree with you about the violin. I find all instruments where the player
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
Reminds me of something my 7th-grade music teacher told us. He said "perfect pitch" is not as rare as we've been led to believe. There are thousands of people walking around with perfect or near-perfect pitch, but it's not really relevant if you don't know the names of the notes. More important than being able to ID notes be ear is the ability
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually thinking about it, it would be a rather good method of debugging - if one could find a way to transform code into something melodic, and making the giant assumption that 'bad code', would produce a dischord or something similar...
And elegance is an excellent way to think about
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:1, Troll)
I think this is related to the feedback/feedforward nature of most parsers as they encounter syntax errors, try to re-align, fail to do so (in relation to the bugginess of the code), and then cascade into a flurry on actually nonexistent "errors". As you correct the errors, parser realignment begins to happen correctly more often and more regularity appears.
In a sense th
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
But for high-level debugging I don't think you could get anything useful. Very very few people code close enough to the metal that listening to where the CPU is branching
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:4, Insightful)
What you are talking about is "Craft" -- and yes, art involves craft too, that's why we study the technical aspects of piano, how the overtone series works, etc. And coding can be done "artfully" -- but the final product is not "Art".
A side note, I really don't want to get into a flame war over this, I'm just respectfully disagreeing, because I know we can argue about this for the next century
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:3, Insightful)
Well said. I've often found well-written code (my own or that written by others) to be beautiful, but it cannot be called art. I've appreciated a spare user interface that leads the user to natural patterns of work, aiding the user through thoughtful metaphor and tasteful selection of color. But this was not art. As you say, it was the craft of someone artistic.
I've often thought that craftsmanship was an expression of loving care toward those who will use the thing being built; whether conscious or no
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2, Interesting)
So, even though in the end you ARE bound by a structure of some sort I think that creative thought processes lead to better representations of said orderly structure (code). It most definitely is NOT a t
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess a big part of this for me is that people who have the innovative instincts required to write the elegant code we're talking about sometimes confuse that with creativity in its most narrow definition -- fostering the creation of something new. Solving problems on the computer can lead to creative ends through innovation.
The code that I write on my signal processing software is ultimately used as a tool
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
Isn't the process of creation, rightly named, a performance? I wonder if that doesn't make pair programming performance art. Granted, at some point, common sense intrudes (not a troll) and the answer comes out "no," even when beauty is experienced in the process.
So what about an actor or actress portraying programming? Never mind...
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:3, Insightful)
I think craft is probably a better term though, because of the functional aspect and the fact that the end product has to 'work'. Art doesn't have to work or _d
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
It is quite obvious that you have never taken part in GUI design and the ensuing hilariousness as people interpret the computer program as not just a bit off, but completely differently from what was intended, in the usability studies.
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:2)
I don't agree with this. Software is open to interpretation. N
Re:Coding as an artform (Score:4, Interesting)
ijihijhijihijhi
popipoipopipoip
uyutuytuyutuy
All these are the same passwd transposed,
thats 3 in less than a second (not checked them for accuracy) You can get VERY quick at it and use secure passwords with great accuracy. The security comes from the sequence length not the diversity, I use 3 fingers, a better pianist/typist would use more.
They have another interesting property.
I can 'not know' the password and be able to enter it, if you ask me what it is I cant tell you. I have to sit at the keyboard and retreive the motor sequence to type it, then I can read it back and tell you.
The book... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know if I want to read his book.
I imagine something like...
akldsfjasjgl;aghjaklgfajgsafjklaa;fsadh
Using a QWERTY kbd as a music kbd (Score:3, Interesting)
Interfacing the PC keyboard is really tricky. It was necessary to use all the Warnier-Orr diagramming techniques learned in school to map out what was happening in order to get totally lost in the coding. But it does work. Press several keys down and get a chord on the synthesizer; release the keys and the no
Media attention (Score:5, Interesting)
From my experience, he was constantly chasing whatever research line was most likely to get him in the media while neglecting projects that seemed to have more research merit but less potential for media attention.
Re:Media attention (Score:5, Funny)
After all, why bother with research merit when you can have your interactive kitchen counter
featured on Slashdot.
Re:Media attention (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Media attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrast that to the MIT AI and CS Lab, which does and has done outstanding work, in hard AI, theory, robotics, vision, and so on.
Still, the Media Lab just seems like the most fun place to work.
Re:Media attention (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it's worth, the Wired article, however, is way off, including some parts that are just completely made up and has all sorts of wild speculation from the article's author, much to the amusement of many of the people here. The author came in and was looking for dirt so that Wired could sell magazines (this was extremely successful, as that issue did really well on the newstand). This is not to say there's plenty of critique you could make about the lab, there was a Technology Review article, google cached here [216.239.37.104], written by a talented writer that made many more valid points by simply hanging a few professors with their own words. It's no longer particularly relevant anymore, but the author could teach the Wired guy a thing or two or seven.
Re:Media attention (Score:2)
Re:Media attention (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to say the detractors are right or wrong, but the problem, IMHO, really comes from a basic process:
Re:Media attention (Score:2)
Research merit is a social concept and is not decided on the basis of your own beliefs. Otherwise any crackpot working on perpetuum mobile would have plenty of research merit. However it is sad to observe, when scientists get their credibility from Slashdot and Wired. On the other hand, one might argue that getting it from Science is only slightly better. Your call.
Re:Media attention (Score:5, Informative)
This is different from popular researchers such as Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking, who routinely give/gave simplified glimpses of their research to the public, but certainly haven't driven their research based on how much media exposure it's likely to generate.
Re:Media attention (Score:2)
Re:Media attention (Score:3, Interesting)
In the early 80s, Yale seemed to have a few good avenues of non-flashy research and engineering going:
1) T - a solid, interesting Scheme-like language.
2) Hardware - essentially the prototype ELI machines.
3) OSes - Lisp environments vs DecSystem20 vs Unix.
4) Graphics/Realtime stuff - mostly due to Apollos.
5) Networked computers - the proto-internet was exciting.
6
Re:MIT Media Lab (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many books you can't put down (Score:5, Funny)
It's just a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
A nerd invests hugely in a technical subject and should, with time, be able to leverage that into a high value career. So it's quite normal that many men who were totally nerdy in their teens and twenties become relaxed, charming, social, and wealthy as they get older and more succesful.
Re:It's just a matter of time... (Score:2)
Define mature! Physically mature, ethically mature, socially mature, financially mature, etc? Sure, there is a general definition we have for mature, which even then varies on who you ask. I'm sorry, but this statement means nothing to me. Simply put, there are people out there that are more interested in tinkering with things than others. These people are commonly less social, but that only makes sense since they spend less time
Re:It's just a matter of time... (Score:1)
Maybe it's just me, but I haven't met a jock that has "matured early", in fact I know a few that are 30 and haven't matured.
I guess the issue here is defining maturity. I consider maturity to be directly proportional to creativity, The ability to create somthing novel. Human minds are more matured than our ape predescessors because we have the ability to create, have novel thoughts, etc. I think that people use the term "maturity" t
Defining "mature"... (Score:2)
If jocks and nerds are competing, it is for access to sex, through one strategy or another. Jocks mature early because they adopt a strategy that works young: bigger, faster, more successful at physical sports. Nerds compete with a strategy that works older: collect technical skills and build into business accumen over time.
The statement that jocks are still "immature at 30" is easily cou
Keyboards can be musical (Score:3, Informative)
keyboards (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be a cool addition to MMORPG games where you can have real bards that actually play music via keyboard.
Re:keyboards (Score:2)
Re:keyboards (Score:4, Informative)
I really have nothing against the idea, but if your only exposure to an instrument is a keyboard and various samples, the end result might not be terribly interesting. But neither is microwaved food.
No Keyboard. (Score:1)
Re:keyboards (Score:1)
Bhutan (Score:2, Interesting)
WRONG (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot is a social activity.
Please think about this: Name 1 comunity of non-geek persons that are more than 10 and that get together every day to discuss their ideas. There are NONE.
Now, look at Slashdot, are we unsocial terminal geeks?.
I Think the hole think is upside down. We are social people, actually more sociable than other social groups because we still belevie in some things like netiquete, we can maintain social contract. Actual society CAN'T. Slashdot is not a website, it's a social contract. EVERYONE can post here, and he will be listened, we have our methods to protect ourselves from those that don't know how to live in society, but we won't censor them or ask them to go away.
We are unsocial with many people because they comunicate in a different language, which is by definition aggresive and antisocial.
Re:WRONG (Score:2)
Bullshit. There are a ton of message boards full of non technical people. Check out Fark.com for example. Heck I can think of a lot more but I doubt they could cope with a slashdotting
Re:WRONG (Score:1)
a) There is no many people in there
b) They don't last more than a year.
c) They only has ocational readers.
d) And the more important thing: those forums are a big disaster, many people slashdotters complain lately about slash, let me tell you that in those forums you name, noone hear what the others has to say, everyone flames everyone, and they are full of spam.
It's easy to maintain a good comunity of 30 readers, it's NOT to maintain a good
Re:WRONG (Score:2, Funny)
I can't be a nerd! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can't be a nerd! (Score:2)
This story is similar to the talbet PC robot. (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, why did the guy who mentioned big book/small country get modded troll?
OK, OK, so the giant book is an exercise in making some kind of maximum display technology like a middle ages style plasma TV. The big story here is enlarging the images to an appropriate resolution.
Did they retire Weizenmbaum or what ? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Have youy looked at that gentleman's publication list on his web site ?
- travels to Bhutan ???
- photo mosaics ??
- essays in "technology review" ??
Apparently the good professor never had scientific research published of which he is proud enough to mention it on his home page.
Oh well. MIT.
He's at the Media Lab.. (Score:2)
Huh? Nerds are more than what?? (Score:5, Funny)
Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is twenty+plus years old. Imagine if you were trying to do your networking using Banyan
Yet MIDI is what someone who WRITES music must use to export notes over into a program that will PLAY the music they write (i.e. a sequencer) with any degree of real sound. By itself, MIDI just does not support the nuances and articulations of music desk-top publishing, the environments known as notation programs. And also, notation programs can't adequately play back the notes (the sound is cheesey at best).
So people, myself included, resort to composing in one or the other, or perhaps in both a sequencer and a notation program simultaneously, each program running on a separate machine! Is that stone-age or what!!! Imagine if that was what was required to do word processing!
With the current state of MIDI, the computer isn't even able to write what you play into it from a keyboard (without hours and hours of tweaking and guesstimation). We haven't even come that far, people!
Oh, did I mention that the special cables and splitters required to network MIDI devices together are about 2000% more expensive than any other cable connections you are likely to buy! $600.00 all told to hook up three PCs with a MIDI keyboard!!! This is true of Macs as well as PCs.
No, computers AREN'T music friendly and it is a needless shame. Something must be done about it.
Re:Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:1)
Re:Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:1)
On my desk, I have 3 devices, from competing mfr's, which are perfectly able to communicate with each other effectively and efficiently, in order to build a track (QY700, Indigo2, Machinedrum, in case you're wondering)... in my 19" rack, I have 4 other devices (A5000, F
oh, and incidentally ... (Score:1)
Re:Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree. MIDI is a totally obsolete technology. I have an MPU-401 card that I can no longer use because it is just won't work on any PC made in the past five years. I try nowdays only to buy tone modules with toHost cable interfaces (standard RS-232 serial ports).
There needs to be a way to connect keyboards and sequencer programs using standard ethernet. Plus a new way to record all the subtl
Re:Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:2)
Try doing Chinese, Indian or African music in MIDI.
It just isn't going to work; the qualities of sound, the rhythms and scale systems just arn't part of the MIDI standard.
If you want to do pop, rock or classical music, MIDI is great. And after all, even death metal is essentially a development of western classical music.
Re:Computers AREN'T music friendly .... TRUE!!!!! (Score:2)
I agree that anything so new has got to be crap. That's why my network is based on 30 year old Ethernet.
On a serious note (no pun indended), I do think MIDI has to go, at least as the main interfacing standard (there's just too many cool, older synthesizers around for it to be gotten rid of completely, and of course some people
OK, so he published a boot that's 7' tall. (Score:4, Funny)
So this guy comes out with a book that is seven feet tall, weighs 133 pounds, and costs $10,000. This is an achievement of sorts, but as Molly Ivins once pointed out, once you've seen a one-ton cheese, a two-ton cheese isn't that impressive.
MOD PARENT UP!! (Score:2)
Gives Bill Joy a run for Polymath of the Century! (Score:1)
Musical keyboards for programming... (Score:2)
Re:Musical keyboards for programming... (Score:2)
Mike Hawley is not a professor (Score:5, Informative)
Of former professors, CBS reporting, and tenure (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, you comment that he's "no longer a professor of any sort." While it's true that he's no longer part of the faculty, this press release [mit.edu] from December still refers to him as being "of the MIT Media lab" and his homepage is still on their s
Musical Computing (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the computer is theoretically a completely general tool, but the ones we use come packaged as an office tool. Using them for other purposes generally requires alot of work against this, even in our favorite operating systems. (though FAR less so)
The next problem is computer hardware. It's quite a daunting task in most cases to connect a keyboard or other controller to a computer. It has to be easy for non-geeks. (USB makes this much better than it has been.) In addition, the vast majority of low-end keyboards are awful. They usually have undersize keys, and almost never have velocity, which both become a problem once you move beyond 'mary had a little lamb'.
Creative makes a keyboard that is integrated into the qwerty keyboard. I think this is a fantastic idea. However, the same problems apply, undersize keys (they can be shorter, but they must be wide enough) proprietary, or at least nonstandard drivers, and very cheap construction. It is basically unusable, if they're wondering why it's not selling. Great idea though.
It is a travesty that all 'toy' musical instruments for children are really unplayable. What are we doing to our kids! Even the adult ones under $300 all lack velocity, and often have cheap keys that 'bounce.'
Using the qwerty keyboard as an instrument is not a bad idea. It is fundamentally different from typing. As an adult student of piano I thought my keyboard use as a geek would help. Maybe a little, but one key difference is that key hits when typing are INTERLEAVED, hence we get letters in order. Musical key hits are SYNCRONIZED, you often hit several keys at once. Learning the difference can be tough at first.
It does allow monoponic (one sound at a time) playing, and for that it's pretty neat. Many synth packages already do this, but the feature's not intended to be useful outside of testing. The PC keyboard sends key down and key up messages, so it may be possible to have polyphony (multiple sounds at once and chords) on keyboards whose internal multiplexing doesn't prevent it. Libraries intended for text keyboard use won't work for this.
Learning the piano I also realize that all those hours mastering Bruce Lee on the c64 when I was 13 were exactly the time when my brain could have been mastering music. The idea that you can't learn later is a myth. You learn differently. But the willingness, and the ability, to sit there for 6 to 8 hours a day trying to master something happens when you're young. (Luckily I did this with electronics and computers, so I'm now employed!)
Computers make GREAT musical instruments, and allow music to be made in most of the old ways and many completely new ways. Of course it's up to the musician to use them to make GOOD music.
The computer and toy industries have to start making products that are really useful to normally skilled people in normal situations, which are neither too technical or so stripped down as to be useless. Also, there need to be more musical games, which teach fundamentals, and are also fun. The only reason why the techological revolution isn't also a musical one is that we just haven't bothered. There's an instrument in every home and classroom now, and if we aren't cheap and lazy about it, they would be useful.
sounds like he writes boring music (Score:2)
Then I don't want to hear his music, because it must all be played at the same volume, straight through.
Why is this "new"? (Score:3, Insightful)
God himself [stanford.edu] is well known for playing the pipe organ. RMS has (unfortunately) been known to sing (I can't find a link to this gem, it used to be somewhere on Jamie Zawinski's website.) Eric Raymond advises hacker wannabes to master a musical instrument to enrich their personality.
It's old news...hackers like music. Why? Music is a cleverly woven chain of simple notes and chords, and if you do it right it sounds amazing and gives much of the same gratification as programming.
That said, this guy's pretty damn cool.
Re:Why is this "new"? (Score:2)
Horrors.
It is the world's largest book and costs $10k (Score:2)
According to Guinness World Records, at over five by seven feet (and 133 pounds), this staggeringly beautiful photographic book is the largest published book in the world--about one of the world's smallest countries.
[snip]
Charitable Donation and Shipping Estimate
A limited edition of 500 copies will be produced. The $10,000 "price" (less than $100 per page) is a donation to Friendly Planet (a publicly supported charitable organization exempt from federal income tax pursuant to IRC 501(c)(3)
Greetings. (Score:2, Informative)
I had never seen "slashdot" (and also haven't seen the CBS piece that spawned the rapidly devolving commentary.) Incidentally, I agreed somewhat sheepishly to allow the CBS piece as well as a profile in DISCOVER magazine because I was happy to share some of my views on teaching, and learning, and exploration to get out. These things are rather apart from many of the cracks made, which leads me to think that I'm not the only one who didn't see the CBS piece. Or maybe that's just the ordinary k
Re:Hawley's head under a rock? (Score:3, Informative)