author : Neil A. Gershenfeld

Contents

• Tim D. Sauer.

Time series prediction using delay coordinate embedding. 1993

I like living in the future -- that's one of the reasons I read science fiction. Now I realise that bits of that future are rather closer than I had thought. Gershenfeld is a director of MIT's Media Lab, and this is the story of some of the technology that he and his colleagues have been working on over the last few years -- technology that should help make computers usable (science fiction indeed!), smarter, ubiquitous, pervasive, and invisible.

Whether he's telling us of designing smart paper, building an electronic cello for Yo-Yo Ma, putting computers in shoes, using pens that remember what they've written, turning a high-tech magic trick into a child car seat sensor, or using 3D printers, Gershenfeld opens up a world of pragmatic possibilities, for most of the technology he describes already exists as some form of prototype in the Media lab. It "only" has to be productised. And he tells it all with a wonderfully wry style.

My office has ten things that include a clock, and each one reports a different time with equal confidence.

Towards the end of the book, he moves from describing new technologies, to explaining the educational and research medium that made them possible. The Media Lab is a different kind of learning environment. Students have a very broadly based practical, hands-on education. This helps them to stay grounded in reality, and to appreciate the context of any theory they learn. This theory is delivered in a "Just in Time" format, when and where they need it. His two supporting technical texts, The Nature of Mathematical Modeling and The Physics of Information Technology, provide the basis of that theoretical backgrounding. In addition, he describes how the Media Lab's partnership with industry works so well.

The Media Lab certain sounds a fun place to learn and work.