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 kind of "slashing" at play in slashdot.

Anyway, a few thoughts from afar.

1. Big Bhutan Book.

http://www.friendlyplanet.org/bhutan

This is an unusual coming together of notions. Technically we sought to advance, a little bit, the tools for field photography. I think we helped do this. We did assemble in passing what appears to be the world's largest archive of imagery from Bhutan (both film scans at grain resolution and digital), the bulk of it stamped with GPS information, etc. But we also wanted to help the students and schools there. That's why we engaged young Bhutanese students to take photos with us on several expeditions. And it's why we needed a publishing model that would generate some revenue (traditional ones don't). If unbound and hung in a gallery, the big book would need 500 horizontal feet of wall space, and cost a good $2500 to frame every 5x7 foot spread. As it stands, the book works out to less than $100 per page, and when a donor makes a $10k gift to the nonprofit charity established for this purpose (Friendly Planet), nearly $8k can be realized in profits (ie, deduction for the donor, and proceeds to benefit the schools). This is partly due to the outstanding help we've had from Amazon, HP, FedEx, and many others, and the incredible book binding work done by Acme (the world's oldest bindery). And because the prints are so large, we had to get really good at scrubbing grain noise from the film imagery and CCD noise from the high-ISO digital pictures. These and a number of other little technical twists helped add up to a nice result. Later in the spring we will introduce a more reasonably sized book, fine art prints, and begin work on Cambodia (our next subject). One step at a time.

2. Music and Audio Technology.

I worked for a long time at Bell Labs, IRCAM and Lucasfilm, so have been pushing on music and advancing the field of digital audio systems for quite awhile. Most of my early published journal articles were in this vein and can be found, e.g., in Usenix proceedings and journals from the late 80's. My MIT graduate work was also on audio analysis (e.g., how can a computer be architected in order to listen to something as rich and complex as a film soundtrack and pull out interesting information from the auditory scene?) The dissertation (Structure out of Sound, 1993) is available from the MIT Library. Project work ranged from scanning of crumbling Duo-Art player piano rolls, interfacing to a solenoid-driven Bosendorfer concert grand, high quality synthesis of a lifetime of human speech, to suites of MIDI and other audio tools. Much of this is now late bronze-age work, but some of the ideas and methods live on. I remain interested in the field, but am not actively plowing it.

3. Teaching, Learning, Research and Tenure.

A number of writers seem confused (or naive) about this. (Needless to say, nobody troubled to ask me.)

The main reason I have been somewhat distant from MIT of late (I turned down an endowed chair, became Director of Special Projects, and now maintain a more relaxed affiliation with the Media Laboratory) is that my interests were moving more towards nonprofit work with schools in developing countries. And I was also enjoying some nice personal success in music, which requires a tremendous amount of "solo" time. One just cannot spend that amount of time out of the lab, or practicing, and maintain a normal rank staff post in Cambridge. And I have indeed spent a great deal of time on the ground in Cambodia, Bhutan, Jordan, Bali, and elsewhere. It is simply not typical cutting-edge Cambridge time.

Incidentally, my musical interests lean increasingly toward live performance and away from more technologically-mediated experiences. This is the opposite end-state from that reached by Glenn Gould, whose playing has always intrigued me but rarely really moved me. Gould hated live concerts and preferred to cocoon himself with media technology. While I find plenty of illumination in exploring music through different technical lenses, I've come to feel that the simpler joys -- the kinds of rare, magic moments that are so fleeting, so profound, and produce memories that shine brightly for the rest of your life -- those are moments that are most powerfully conveyed when you're sitting in the same room, breathing the same air, and sharing the live experience. Anything else is quite secondary. Music, too, has kept me busy studying, learning, sharing (and I have concerto performances this summer and solo recitals in various cities this fall).

I feel much the same way about liberal education. My primary interest has been in spending great time with great students -- as my teachers did with me. I care less about being remembered for a singular research breakthrough (or for having papered the world with articles). I still write more code than English. Indeed, my web page lists every student who has been a major influence on me, and whose work linked with me yielded a thesis. (I "soft pedal" my own work, and have never co-published with a student, though I encourage students to publish provided their work has reached a point of significance).

Being a professor in a hurly-burly place like the Media Lab of the 90's is an odd job indeed. One's energy is divided among 8 genius graduate students, a dozen undergraduates, a seminar, a large class, 50-60 corporate sponsors, and attending to a blizzard of other administrative obligations. More often than one might like, perhaps, it is necessary to articulate a vision or insight in a more public channel. All of this keeps one hopping.

I had, at one point, suggested that all the faculty at the Media Lab give MIT their tenure back in an effort to loosen things up, and to minimize the deleterious effects of tenure-seeking patterns on the creative community. Some people liked the idea. Some didn't. The point was to work harder on creating the best possible environment for creative work, work that really could break across disciplinary boundaries and get out into the world. The Media Lab has, by and large, been a terrific place for doing this and remains perhaps the only academic enterprise not badly boxed in by its own fences. And the world still desperately needs this sort of freshness. This has little to do with tenure per se, and for that matter, tenure itself has little to do with "bulk weighing" journal articles and counting PhD's in order to assess one's impact on a field. Especially when the field is as turbulent as computer science has been lately. No; tenure choices, like all career choices, are as personal and idiosyncratic as the individuals and institutions involved. Moreover, my own interests span a large number of fields. I never hesitated to explore them quite liberally (from the perspective of a computer scientist). But tenure "tracks" tend to imply just that -- rather narrow bands in one's line of inquiry. When I reflect on my own time in the last decade, energy was spent on helping to color every eclectic facet of the Lab's research where I felt I could plausibly contribute good energy. More of a lightbulb than a laser, if you will.

Finally, unlike many MIT "types" I've not elected to roll out startup companies and cash in on bubbles. (Instead I rolled out a nonprofit to spend more time with younger kids in needier places). Being a flinty New England cheapskate, I kept a $500/month apartment for 12 years (most of the time paying less rent than my graduate students). I never consulted. I saved every penny, invested well, do not own a car (use bikes and feet), and eventually spent what I had on a gorgeous piano and a home to put it in. The rest, which isn't much, I give to charity when I can. But mostly I simply give time.

Everyone I know at MIT works really hard on terrific problems with a real determination to shed some light and conquer the next one. This is the kind of energy and enthusiasm we all want to radiate into the world. People who are naively hung up on whether or not the Media Lab is full of publicity-hounds or egomaniacs, critics who shout "all sizzle and no steak" are grotesquely missing the point. As for my own contributions, intellectual or otherwise, history can judge. I've been terribly lucky to find great problems to work on and fantastic students to work with. I'm really proud of many of the projects I've worked on with people ranging from Steve Jobs to little Choki Lhamo from Bhutan.

Mostly I'm busy working.

Cheers.

Mike