Media Lab Rats

Tiny tiles from MIT. The future or nutty idea? You decide.
















Research labs at universites are a fascinating slice of the new media frontier, where new interactive creatures crawl out all the time.

Among the new-media lab rats I've been watching lately are Siftables, a prototype developed by MIT's New Media Lab. These tiny tiles are designed to offer a new way of physically manipulating digital information.

Siftables resemble Dominoes, only they're computerized and therefore more dynamic. Each contains a mini-computer, radio and display screen, so they can sense other "smart" tiles around them and respond as people move the tiles around.

Watch this video from the TED conference to learn more.

Uses cited by creator David Merrill include art, interactive storytelling and music sequencing. In one demo, for example, he tilts one Siftable against another to "pour color" into the second tile, as if the color were liquid.

A more elaborate music application his team developed turns the tiles into music sequencing and performance tools. Each tile represents a sound, sequence or other musical element. Basically, you inject sounds into a sequence by bumping a "sound" Siftable against a "sequence" Siftable.

Like many technologists, Merrill gets carried away with idealism, imagining a whole new era of more human-friendly computing right around the corner.

"We are on the cusp of this new generation of tools for interacting with digital media that are going to bring information into our world on our terms," he proclaims.

How many times have we heard that? Unfortunately, computers are still frustrating as ever to we mortals.

Virtual Inaugural Lovefest

My favorite media mashup recently was CNN's blend of Facebook with its live video feed from the inauguration of Barack Obama. That's an image of my laptop screen on Inauguration Day above. It was called "CNN.com Live with Facebook."


I liked the way it allowed me to watch events unfold live on the left side of my computer screen, while simultaneously showing what my friends were saying about it on the right side, in a sidebar.

Also nice was the toggle button that let me switch back and forth between watching my friends comment through their status boxes and everybody else on Facebook commenting. Commentary from my friends seemed livelier and smarter, but I picked them as friends, so I must be biased, right?

CNN reported that roughly 19 million people used this Facebook-CNN video mashup on Inauguration Day. The original Facebook page is still live but of course the live video stream is long gone.

Convergence Culture

Today we discussed media convergence, participatory culture and collective knowledge.

The topic that resonated most with this group clearly was music, likely because it's a universal experienced that has touched us all.

New media forms are affecting both the creative process of music and the distribution system, as well as the listening experience.