The Matrix: MEME 1.07

MEME 1.07

The week of October 9th, 1995, the MIT Media Lab celebrated its tenth
anniversary. I spent that week interviewing professors, students and alumni
at the Lab for an article on the "digital revolution," as seen from the
perspective of the one institution most commonly associated with it. The
story ran in the November 13th issue of New York magazine. I'm waiting to
get a plain-text version which will eventually be archived at
http://www.reach.com/matrix/medialab.html.

Intent on interviewing the Lab's founder and director, Nicholas Negroponte,
I managed to secure a face-to-face interview. Negroponte rarely gives out in
person interviews, preferring to conduct them by email. We met for
approximately 45 minutes on Thursday, October 11th, in a disused corner
office at the Media Lab which seems to serve as Negroponte's whenever he is
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What follows is a transcript of our
conversation.

This is a new tack for MEME to take -- providing transcripts of important
conversations. These often run a lot longer than the prose issues of MEME,
so I won't do them that often. I would, however, appreciate your feedback on
whether this kind of thing interests you. The next interview I'm thinking of
sharing with you is a conversation I had with James Gosling. Gosling
invented Hot Java, and, in a rare interview, shared his thoughts with me on
the invention of Hot Java and the impact he thinks it will have on the Net
and the world.

The week I met with Negroponte, the Media Lab announced a new research
consortium called Things That Think. TTT hopes to embed "intelligence"
into everyday objects, like clothes, appliances, etc. to make them more useful
and helpful to people. It is part of Negroponte's lifelong work on what he
called the "man-machine symbiosis" in 1968. So, without further delay, here
is Negroponte.

David Bennahum: Thank you for making the time to speak with me. I want
to talk about the digital revolution, and the idea that somehow the work
done here is going to lead to a better world.

Nicholas Negroponte: I think so. But then you have to discount my
optimism because I am generally optimistic.

DB: Well, what I would like to explore with you is this new direction the
Media Lab is taking, towards what you call "things that think." There does
seem to be an important shift here, which is the linking of digital machines
with organic or non-organic atoms.

NN: It is the bits and atoms story. As a lab you could argue that we have
been in the business of turning bits into atoms and atoms back into bits in
order to give sound and light and color and sensory richness to data. But we
have never thought of the atoms as having personality as such. Before when
we created a sound it was for a very specific purpose: to make the bits human
readable. People talk about making things computer readable, but what we
did is make human expression human readable. But the shift is really now to
give those atoms sort of personality as computing becomes pervasive, as it
goes underground. I love to quote Joel Birnbaum of Hewlett Packard who
describes it as the stage where you notice it only when it is missing. Which is
a very nice way of saying it. Thing that think is going to try to do that. That's
why we're doing things like wearable computing and the bodynet.

DB: What does it mean for a "thing to think." Is it somehow conscious?

NN: 25 years ago a lot of people had debates about artificial intelligence: could
machines be intelligent or not or intelligent? There's a lot of gratuitous
argument there, because the answer is 'of course machines can be intelligent',
that's not the issue. When you get into the questions of consciousness and
volition, I guess these are almost religious issues. I don't happen to think
door knobs will become conscious or have their own volition in the sense
that my pet bull-dog does. But on the other hand, it's certainly -- the sum of
intelligent behavior is definitely going to produce much more intelligent
environments. There's no question about that. People have looked at
ubiquitous computing, like at Xerox, but it has tended to mean distributed
computing in a particular environment. I don't think anybody has really
tried to worry about the personality of the atoms. I hate to keep using the
example of doorknobs, but it is so understandable that a doorknob can be a
better doorknob if it could see and listen and recognize who's at the door. If it
could, its 'doorknobness would be better'. But also on occasions, doorknobs
would have to do other things because the doorknob happens to be in the
right place at the right time. There's no way in the next 25 years that this will
be done autonomously, the doorknob can't just think, it has to link. You're
going to see things where you are going to get memory down to atomic levels;
500 terabytes will be on something the size of a credit-card. We are going to
get so many things that are going to hit us so fast that as discrete these items
don't really make much sense.

DB: Is what you're describing really going to fundamentally alter our lives, or
is it just a minor improvement?

NN: No, no, no. This is a big deal. By extension, if you do change the quality
of life, and you do give to everybody the kind of delegation that only a very
exclusive group have right now, because they can delegate tasks to different
people, that's got to change in a very profound way the way you feel about
yourself and the way you're motivated to do things. There's just no question
that that would be a profound change. You don't have to go as far as things
that think, just look at what the internet is doing today. That's a pretty
profound change. In fact, I think it is such a profound change that nobody
really understands the degree.

DB: There is a distinction though between the Web and Internet, which is
that they are primarily used for communicay you feel about
yourself and the way you're motivated to do things. There's just no question
that that would be a profound change. You don't have to go as far as things
that think, just look at what the internet is doing today. That's a pretty
profound change. In fact, I think it is such a profound change that nobody
really understands the degree.

DB: There is a distinction though between the Web and Internet, which is
that they are primarily used for communicly troubling. For instance, people
might find the idea of an environment always sensing what they are doing
and responding to it Orwellian.

NN: Until the Orwellian people listen in. Security and privacy is a big big
issue. In fact, you'd be doing us all a big favor if you say loud and clear that
the American government has an absolutely absurd position on security and
privacy with the export laws right now. It is just unbelievably stupid. In fact
they guarantee that the only people to have good security are the criminals.
But that aside, I think that. How can I put it? The Orwellian side of it is
who's listening in, but it is not the responsiveness. I mean, imagine having
more than one pet, that's a very responsive environment, but you're not
worried about big brother tapping into your canary or something.

DB: But during all the speeches this week for the Lab's tenth anniversary, I
didn't hear much talk about privacy and the fear that somehow Things That
Think could erode our right to privacy.

NN: The reason you did not hear a privacy discussion is two fold. One is that
we just don't happen to have too many people who are deeply into
encryption at the moment. The second reason is that, quite frankly, the
Media Lab is not a social science organization. We don't study. We're
inventors. And then we try things. One of the wonderful things about
having 140 corporate sponsors is that they can try out new things. They can
actually test them. That's a great way to do it.
I personally find it gratuitous when people start giving their opinions
about whether it is going to be socially good or socially bad without
understanding the first thing about whether it is possible or not. Let me give
you a classic one. "The Internet is going to make people anti-social." Well,
the exact opposite is true, the Internet has made people more social. It is not
just because they are socializing on the Net, but they are able to first of all
acquire a kind of worldliness -- it is not the same kind of worldliness as going
to Europe or visiting Czechoslovakia -- but that they really come away from it
with a bigger sense of the world. You just find, again, the kind of confidence
it gives people makes their social relations get better, not worse.
I've seen so may social science, absolutely rubbish articles, about how it
is going to make us cocoon, become narrow people, and so on. Like [Clifford]
Stohl's stupid book on the whole subject. It is exactly the opposite, and there
is all the evidence in the world. So let's try it.

DB: But there is a big difference between the way the Internet was created,
which was that it started out as a consortium between academia and the
government which led to a technology that was hijacked by everyday people.
The Net was never built for the purpose we've turned it to. So I'm
wondering to what degree what you're developing here will be allowed to be
taken over by every-day people?

NN: I like your word "hijacked" -- it is good when someone "steals" it.
You've been here now for a couple of days, and you've seen this is a pretty
heterogeneous group with pretty heterogeneous behaviors. So something
could be created that's very specific, like Lego taking a technology and shrink
wraps it, and another case it could be appropriate by a few great scientists who
implement an idea and push it out that way. The whole gamut. We are in a
business where when people "steal ideas" -- that's a sign of success, that's why
I like the word hijacking. The more they can steal and take the better.

DB: Yes, but one issue is that the sponsors are the "test-bed" for whether
these ideas are good. So is there some sense of frustration that they are too
narrow to really figure out the range of uses these new technologies could be
put to?

NN: The sponsors have their markets. We have such a special mix of
sponsors; we have satellite vendors, toy companies, telephone companies --
now we've got new ones like Nike and Steelcase, so yes the common
denominator is that they're businesses, but they're 50% American, 25% Far
East, 25% European, so that gives you the global touch. They come from so
many different sectors -- kids with Lego. We probably don't have enough for
the AARP [American Association of Retired Persons] for the moment, but
that's not frustrating. If we had only telcos, such a homogeneous
constituency, I think you might get frustrated.

DB: There's two ways to measure the success of the Lab. Things that lead to
patents and breakthroughs is one. The other is the satisfaction of your
sponsors. Which is the most important?

NN: There is a third measure of success, and that is the satisfaction about the
people in the building.

DB: Let's talk about the first two.

NN: Okay.

DB: From the point of view of sponsors, there seems to be enormous
satisfaction.

NN: Yes. I think so. I'm not worried about that.

DB: On the flip side though, you have people who say the Media Lab hasn't
done anything. TCP/IP, time-sharing, all the great technologies of our day
weren't invented here.

NN: Multimedia was born here, and the predecessor group created the entire
field. We could claim the entire field if we wanted to. It depends who is
lobbing the shots. We had a devastating article about us in Business Week
four years ago; and the guy really said how many patents, how many spin-off
companies, all of these measures -- I tried, and I really blew it, I tried to
explain to him that I did not think the number of patents and spin offs was
the right measure. Boy. That didn't work. He said one spin off with no
patents. We have the largest number of patents per capita on campus; we
have more spin-offs. If you use these measures we actually come out pretty
good. We could point to specific breakthroughs, like LEGO's shrink-wrap.
But that's not so interesting. I'm interested in convergence. We'll never get
credit for things that think. But I sleep better at night knowing that's how
things work out. But if you want an inventory, each person will tell you
about the home runs and the fumbles.

DB: Is part of the problem that the expectations for this lab are so high?

NN: Part of the problem is that we are too big for our britches, we get too
much media attention and we get -- when people say the Media Lab they
think we are a massively rich, huge organization. In fact, we are struggling
like everyone else. We do not go to sleep at the wheel. It is a very
competitive world. It is hard work.

DB: I think what's happened is that you, and this lab, are associated with
predicting the future, and of being right about it.

NN: Well that's because we've been right about it a lot of times. There's
nothing wrong with that. But it puts a great deal of pressure on us and me.
You're biggest competition becomes yourself.

DB: One issue that is going to come up with Things That Think is whether
you are creating something which could get out of control. You start messing
around with atoms and giving them consciousness and voliunctionality and no understanding of the apparatus. So people are
frustrated as hell, and really should be. Look, I've been using computing for
ever, and I'm at a keyboard three or four hours a day, but I happen to think it
is ridiculous. The Net itself is far too complicated, America Online is far too
complicated -- all these things that get better and better than they have been,
people have always been more frustrated. The goddam alarm clock is going
off, the dishwasher is bubbling over, half the things are broken. I don't want
that part of the mechanical world. One of the reasons why is that these things
don't think. They're dumb devices, and maybe if they could behave in a
much more intelligent fashion and diagnose themselves and understand
their functionality things would be better.

DB: I get the sense that the problems you're trying to fix here are those of
people like yourself: relatively well-off. If this new world we are creating is
somehow better, what about all the other folks who don't have access to all
these things. Is this relevant?

NN: It is relevant. I happen to think that the most important work we can
do over the next decade is very much to do with the Third World, very much
to do with the fact that we really are going to wind up with information rich
and information poor. But you could argue that art could only survive as a
luxury in a society that is well established, and if you were starving or
bankrupt or in the dead of war, you did not have a Mozart or a Beethoven or
a Picasso or an art world. Yet historically we look at history as not the little
business success and the blips, you find out what really tells us about
civilization are the statements made in the seemingly luxurious world of the
arts. That tells us something. There is a message there. We do have to in
fact, maybe the only real role of a place like the Media Lab is to do things today
that are just unafordable because they will be affordable tomorrow. Without
that mandate we may not have much of a charter anymore, because our
competition, well we don't have competition. But I would have told you ten
years ago that our competition was Stanford, CMU, and from MIT LCS and
the AI Lab. Our competition today are the kids out there on the Net. So what
do we bring to the table? We bring the critical mass to do the kinds of
experiments that are just not affordable. So yes, we will do things that look
privileged and exclusive and sort of "toys for the rich." But in truth these are
very much the tools to think with for the world at large, and I hope that these
kinds of things get extended to the developing world.

DB: How are you going to measure whether you'll be successful doing that?

NN: History is a much better measure than me. I measure our success
differently than most people; I measure it by the -- we don't have a measure
for passion -- I measure it by passion. When I notice passion winding down, I
worry. One of the things -- we get four corporate visits a day -- and companies
come, and they look at things from totally different perspectives, and it might
take three companies to see the exact same set of demonstrations, and one
company will say the first one was terrific and the second one is boring, and
the second company will say well this one is not very good, but the sdon't have a measure
for passion -- I measure it by passion. When I notice passion winding down, I
worry. One of the things -- we get four corporate visits a day -- and companies
come, and they look at things from totally different perspectives, and it might
take three companies to see the exact same set of demonstrations, and one
company will say the first one was terrific and the second one is boring, and
the second company will say well this one is not very good, but the shen we've got to reinvent ourselves. It is not the citations in the press or the
number of patents. It is the sheer passion, and it's hard, very hard.

DB: Things That Think is creating more passion at the Lab?

NN: It is a boost. It brings a lot of newness. We're attracting new companies.
It's a thrill to have Nike, Steelcase, Federal Express. These are worlds we do
not know. We brought in two physicists. If you had asked me three years
ago, would there be physicists at the Media Lab, I would have said I doubt it.
It just brings in a new perspective.

DB: Do you think your relationship with Wired has also been important to
the Media Lab in some ways?

NN: My relationship with Wired is mixed. My relationship with Wired has
shot my profile up. I used to joke with [Wired Publishers] Louis [Rossetto]
and Jane [Metcalfe] when they started that maybe some day I'll be introduced
as the senior columnist of Wired. Now I'm introduced as the senior
columnist for Wired who happens, it might get some mention, to be director
of the Media Lab. So it both helped and hurt. It allows me into any door. I
can probably call any Senator and have him answer any phone because he
won't know if I'm calling from Wired or the media lab. It also hurt in the
sense that it adds to this being too big for our britches. It certainly hurts us if
somebody is antagonistic towards the Media Lab for irrelevant reasons, like
jealousy or something like that, it aggravates.

DB: Did you know you were going to be on the cover of the November issue
of Wired?

NN: I was told I would be on the cover of Wired, I knew it. I agonized over
it, I traded email with Louis and we talked about it. I did not see the story or
the cover before it came out. I was not completely comfortable with it; I said
"look you can't do a hatchet job and you can't do a puff-piece; so you're sort of
caught." But I thought the piece was very good.

DB: Do you have any regrets about your career and what you've
accomplished?

NN: I don't have too many regrets. I have local ones, we didn't do enough
here, we should have done more there. But you know, a kind of a global
regret? Well, people say look why didn't you guys invent the Web? Why did
someone else invent the Web? It is sort of an odd remark because I think that
the invention of the Web was fantastic, and I'm not sure if they were
conscious of what they were doing at the time, like many of us. I don't think
we've understood a lot of what we were doing working with multimedia. I
don't think we would have predicted that the channel would be the network
as opposed to a much more local loop between you and the machine. But I
don't regret not having invested the World Wide Web at all, and I would not
try to appropriate it now. I think each period has its own inventions. Things
that Seymour Papert did ten years ago are finally migrating and becoming
common practice in school. Stuff that Shrang did 8 years ago are now in the
marketplace. Things that [Andy] Lippman was yelling about in the late 80s
are now taken as a given. I don't want to say I am blind to the regrets, but I
don't have too many at the moment.

DB: If you were to describe the future we are entering into, is it just Things
That Think, or is that part of a bigger picture? that Seymour Papert did ten years ago are finally migrating and becoming
common practice in school. Stuff that Shrang did 8 years ago are now in the
marketplace. Things that [Andy] Lippman was yelling about in the late 80s
are now taken as a given. I don't want to say I am blind to the regrets, but I
don't have too many at the moment.

DB: If you were to describe the future we are entering into, is it just Things
That Think, or is that part of a bigger picture? which is understanding the bits. Machines understanding the bits.

DB: And out of that machine understanding comes?

NN: The appropriate behavior on the part of machines and communications
systems. You know, not understanding the bits, you never really think of it,
but cameras are blind. It is an odd concept that cameras are blind. If a camera
could see, would you take better pictures?

DB: Or would you be taking creativity out of the hands of people?

NN: We'd be adding to it. These are things in your control.

DB: Yeah, but you don't really know that until the smart thing is here.

NN: We don't know until you try it. It is not as if you try it and suddenly
you've created a plague. Take yourself a little less seriously, be a little more
playful about it.

DB: But I think people take it extremely seriously, on a moral or
philosophical level.

NN: Taking it seriously in that sense is okay, but I think you have to have a
little bit of sense of humor and humility to try things. Success is your worst
enemy, and you can start becoming so bogged down in the so-called social
consequences, in the anxiety. Damn it relax for a second. Let's see the new
ideas, let's try and play with them, bounce them off other people, maybe get
kids to play with them. In other words, lighten up. We're not playing with
fire. We're not altering genes. I think the agenda is a little bit lighter than
that. I think it is important, I'm not saying it is trivial, but one has to...

DB: Yeah, but [artificial intelligence professor] Marvin Minsky gave a
presentation and talked about wiring computer chips directly into the cerebral
cortex.

NN: Marvin's been saying that for years, but also Marvin is one of the most
brilliant people in the building. What Marvin does is radiate ideas. Look
whenever we do a symposium in Kresge auditorium, or an inauguration,
Marvin's been a speaker, and one way or another somehow in the middle of
his speech he is cutting people's heads in half and putting connection
machines in their brains. I was sitting with his wife and she said, "oh God,
there he goes again, cutting heads in half." But it's clear that we're going to
have certain connections with machines. Maybe deaf people could hear.
Maybe blind people could see. There's obviously a body of work there that is
not to be dismissed. But whether people can do it, I don't know.

DB: Then you see students like Thad Starner and Steve Mann all wired up.
No one asked them to do it, but they are doing something which people have
been talking about doing for a long time -- which is intimately connecting
your body all day long to a computer and network to expand your physical
capabilities.

NN: One of the senior executives from Motorola said "Steve I am not so sure
it is great to be radiating so many watts from the top of your skull." And God
knows I am not completely comfortable. On the other hand, I think Steve
and Thad are wonderful examples of why the Media Lab is different from a
lot of other computer science labs. I cherish that difference.

DB: Everyone has a personal barrier between themselves and machines, a
point where they won't go. What is your personal barrier? Can machines
penetrate your body, or should they stay out on the surface? What is
acceptable for you personally?

NN: It is funny because I think I would have answered that question
differently five years ago, and said "yes penetrating the body bothers me," but
now I can say if it helps you do something good, yeah why not penetrate the
body, eat it or swallow it. I don't think I have any limits any more. Again I
think you are asking the question in terms of literally, versus making love to
machines or something wild like that. I don't want to be wired up; I certainly
want to be wireless, whatever it is. that's why I am so enthusiastic about the
shipping of 100,000 bits per second through the body. It gives a whole new
definition to back plane. When you think about it, the handshake is cute, but
it also means I can pick up the handset of a telephone and download into it
before I've even gotten it to my ear.

DB: The metaphor is one of being attached to a whole ecology of machines.
That we are somehow now part of a larger organism. Is that right?

NN: I hope so. If it isn't we shouldn't be doing it. It is part of a larger
computational organism where the transfer of data is much more natural. I
think that it is terrific. The sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

DB: And within this whole communal organism we're better off?

NN: It is so arrogant to stamp your foot up and down and say the world is
going to be a better place because of the work we are doing here -- just the
sheer arrogance of it makes you hesitate, but the truth is if I didn't feel that
way I wouldn't be doing it.

DB: So will all traditional social structures we have change in this new
environment?

NN: The social structure of a nation might come under question, because it is
not clear that the nation state has much meaning. I suspect that the social
structure of a family or a much smaller unit, like a neighborhood, would get
much stronger. I think you will see the weakness and strength of different
scales. All things digital seem to get smaller and bigger simultaneously.

DB: I read an amazing statistic recently, which is that there are 488
billionaires in the world, and that together they have as much wealth as
2,500,000,000 people. If there is a basic equation of power, there's your proof.
Is that ratio going to change in this new world? Or is this just a transfer of
power from one set of elites to another?

NN: I'm not sure.

[At this point Negroponte's secretary came in to announce that his taxi had
been waiting downstairs for fifteen minutes.]

NN: I think that ratio changes. You count the billionaires, okay? I'm not on
that list. Although I think of myself as rich as Bill Gates. The measure of
wealth, whatever that may be, from satisfaction, health, opportunity to do
things, you don't need to be a billionaire. In fact, I'm not sure that's a great
measure. It's probably a bigger curse. I spent a wonderful hour with Bill
Gates last week, and there was no agenda, and I actually think have a much
richer life than Bill Gates. It has nothing to do wealth...it has do with a
family, upbringing, whether we have kids, where we live, speaking different
languages, living in different places. So, there might be a measure of wealth
that isn't just money. There are people, like the guy driving the taxi
downstairs, living a very satisfying life, a very rich life. So maybe the radius
of that person's life is smaller than Bill Gates', but if you had a real measure
of wealth, you wouldn't have the 455 billionaires. That may be naive of me.
In this new world there will be more contentment. It has to do with
how you feel about yourself, your home, increased levels of confidence, being
at ease, I think there is an opportunity for that to be much more widespread.
My world is a microcosm of that. I look at the people around here, it is a
terrific environment, it is a very rich environment. So, odd answer but a
good question.

DB: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me.

Meme 1.07 and its contents copyright 1995 by David S. Bennahum. First spawned by Into The Matrix at http://www.reach.com/matrix/welcome.html. Pass me along all you want, just include this signature file at the end.

Direct comments, bugs and so on to me at davidsol@panix.com.