John Maeda is leaving his position at The MIT Media Lab for the Presidency of RISD. Good luck, John.
Update: Here's a video of Maeda introducing himself as president.
Quick update on MIT professor Seymour Papert, who was struck by a motorbike in Hanoi in Dec 2006. "Prof Papert's family said that he had been discharged from the hospital in Boston in the US. He is now still undergoing treatment at home. Luckily enough, he will not have any after-effects after the head trauma and now he can speak."
Update: Here's a more accurate update on Dr. Papert's progress, courtesy of his family: "Seymour continues to make steady progress. He is regaining strength, is becoming more physically active, and is regaining speech. On Friday, January 5, he was able to leave Massachusetts General Hospital for a rehabilitation center in Bangor, Maine, closer to his home. His doctors are expecting a long period of gradual improvement, which could take many months." (thx, artemis)
MIT professor emeritus Seymour Papert was seriously injured by a motorbike in Hanoi and is in a coma. Papert developed the Logo programming language, among other things.
The $100 Laptop being designed by the MIT Media Lab was recently unveiled. It's a bright green, has a hand-crank for recharging the battery, flash memory, USB ports, networking, etc. The target audience is children in third-world countries.
Nicholas Negroponte spoke this morning about the MIT Media Lab's $100 laptop initiative. "One does not think of community pencils--kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful." More info at BBC News and Technology Review.
"I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by 'picking up' and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside."
OPENSTUDIO was announced at the conference today by John Maeda. Keith sez about the project: "described as an experiment in creativity, collaboration, and capitalism, Open Studio is designed to simplify tools for the creative process and provide a pseudo-currency model for tool use and sharing." Gotta go check this one out in the Media Lab space here.
Results from the Digital Information Design Camp run by MIT Media Lab and the AIGA. They should have worked on their interface/information design a little more...you wouldn't know that there's a ton of student work to view by looking at the front page.
