
To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab - app4soft
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2020/08/15/to-the-future-occupants-of-my-office-at-the-mit-media-lab/
======
Animats
It's very MIT.

It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things"
concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't
_do_ much.

Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home
item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to
have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all
coordinated to maximize comfort at minimum cost, automatically. Will NeXT sell
you that? No. It takes too much installation.

You might see that at a well run convention hotel. They have to keep customers
happy, yet many of their big rooms are empty much of the time. So they'll have
CO, CO2, temperature, humidity, and motion sensors tied to a control system
that senses what the room needs for the current people load.

There's real IoT, but it's under commercial building automation.

~~~
squarefoot
Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for
rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the
trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will
send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10
(mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course)
in their building. They would leave the bag there and it would drop to a
container in the basement that the litter van would retrieve later. Of course
it was long before recycling legislation so with new laws it had to be ditched
and people would have again to bring their trash bags to the bins, which
weren't that close. So why the system can't be repurposed, and introduced
where necessary, to be recycle friendly? That's what I would call modern home
automation, not stuff like reading a sensor and opening a window, which could
have been done 10 years ago with an Arduino, 20 years ago with any uC and X10
already did in the '70s.

~~~
axaxs
For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a
mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom.

One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the
washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius,
but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

~~~
anonymfus
In typical Russian apartment washing machine is installed in bathroom.

~~~
rsynnott
I think this is common in Europe, too. Except in the UK and Ireland, where
electrical regulations don’t allow it, banishing the washing machine to the
kitchen.

~~~
eitland
> where electrical regulations don’t allow it, banishing the washing machine
> to the kitchen.

That explains! I've wondered why people in movies/series would keep washing
machines in the kitchen.

Around here in medium size houses like mine the washing machine is typically
placed in the same room as one of the toilets and the room is referred to as
the washing room (vaskerom).

~~~
OJFord
That would actually be allowed AFAIK - it's the bath/shower that makes it a
bathroom (both in British English usage and electrical regs!) and banishes the
white goods. But WCs tend to be v. small (as if given a little extra space
architects say What shall we do, Fred, cupboard or loo?) so can't house them
either.

Usually (flats/small houses aside) they'll be in the scullery (adjoining the
kitchen) though, not actually in the 'cooking area'.

~~~
rsynnott
I’d say in the vast majority of house they’re in the kitchen; most don’t have
a scullery/utility room.

------
Mizza
I've been thinking about some of these guys a lot lately.

When are we going to collectively unpack the fact the Media Lab/Berkman Center
project has been a complete failure?

I worked at these places and mingled on the outskirts, and for a long time
really believed all the bullshit they were spouting at the time - that the
internet was a positive force, if we just connected enough people, surely
their "stories" and "empathy" would "revolutionize" the world, etc., etc..

They were all wrong.

Digital, networked technology seemed exciting for a brief and beautiful
moment, but has turned into nothing more than a global system of surveillance,
advertising, propaganda and skinnerboxing, far worse than any television ever
was - forget about your "global library" dreams.

And yet - they persist, despite their ever increasing irrelevance. Spineless
hucksters like a Zittrain still get wheeled out occasionally for their take on
some hot new trend in Wired magaize, they still get private and government
grant money, and, of course, they still keep taking on hapless graduate
students.

Just when will we call a spade a spade?

EDIT: This little tirade made me go back and re-read some of the Cluetrain
Manifesto - I feel almost ashamed of myself to reread something like "markets
are conversations" and remember thinking it was ever good, important, or even
valid argument. I now see this as evil thought.

~~~
an_opabinia
> into nothing more than a global system of surveillance, advertising,
> propaganda and skinnerboxing, far worse than any television ever was -
> forget about your "global library" dreams.

I don’t know, if you’re basically saying your stylized, hyperbolic,
generalizing, imprecise, inaccurate discourse is better than theirs just
because it’s negative and theirs is positive... I would rather have the
positive?

~~~
Mizza
I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying very specifically:

The material conditions of people alive in the west today are significantly
worse than they were in 1999, largely as the result of the ascendance of the
digital platforms and economic arrangements that organizations like MIT and
Berkman were taking money to promote.

Ordinary people today are more lonely, overwhelmed, polarized and
impoverished. The "new" economics they were promoting - gig economies,
crowdfunding, "conversational" marketing - have only resulted in a new form of
serfdom, upward movement of capital from the poor to the rich, and a
completely collapse of dignity in public life.

In fact, I'll even go a step further and suggest that what we needed was
_more_ negativity. Techno-positivity and lack of critical thought is exactly
how we got in this mess.

~~~
an_opabinia
The Media Lab’s arguably most widely adopted product, the Scratch programming
language... is that leading to the “collapse of dignity?”

What about Guitar Hero? Are those guys, Media Lab grad students who spent a
decade after graduation until they found hard earned success... did they
create a “new serfdom?”

The Berkman Center houses the historic DoJ tech antitrust lawyers. Do you
think antitrust won’t play a role in reversing “the movement of capital from
the poor to the rich?”

Anyway, there are a lot of people who rail on the academy or whatever. I
suppose your opinion, however stylized, is as good as anyone else’s.

~~~
morelisp
GuitarFreaks did not come out of the Media Lab. No disrespect to Egozy and
Rigopulos, but HMX's success (even before GH) seems to have come specifically
after they dumped Media Lab-inspired plans and started drawing inspiration
from the Japanese arcade scene.

------
SQueeeeeL
There's something so beautiful about a place so dysfunctional that you can't
even replace standard office equipment; I know it was alluded to in the
article, but in case anyone forgot, the MIT Media Lab played a part in Jeffery
Epstein and he often leveraged it for good PR
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-
je...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-jeffrey-
epstein-joichi-ito.html)

~~~
mrgordon
People do a lot of creative experiments around that building so it’s not
surprising you would want to ask before disassembling someone’s thesis
project. To call the place “dysfunctional” because some brilliant grad
students constantly try new things is to miss the point (and the spirit of the
place) entirely.

~~~
theptip
I think they were referring to the bit where facilities was unable to fix it
after the author had removed the original work.

------
nangz
Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann
mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing
as a fake Native American academic who died of covid?
[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-
emba...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-embattled-
metoostem-founder-suspended)

Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a
civil disobedience award?

Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey Epstein?

Sorry but MIT media Lab is absolute trash and an embarrassment to the MIT
name.

~~~
mrgordon
You realize the author of the linked article resigned over Epstein and
frequently fought to improve things? Why try to link him to some trash that he
vehemently opposed?

And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR not the Media Lab FYI

~~~
wombatpm
And MIT threw Adam to the wolves.

~~~
mrgordon
Correct but not the Media Lab specifically and that’s a big difference

------
hardwaregeek
Whenever I read stuff about this I get a sense of immense jealousy. MIT
certainly has its issues but man, I'd love to be at a place where people
exhibit so much joy and interest in creation. I've met my share of cool people
but it truly does feel like MIT has this unique environment of technical skill
and creativity.

~~~
gowld
That the old MIT. For the past 15 years MIT leadership has been dedicated to
destroying the creative hacker spirit.

~~~
mrgordon
Melodrama much? It’s still one of the most creative and amazing places to meet
hackers (or become one) in the world

~~~
p_l
A lot of MIT "myth" for me, daj when I was trying to get in, was that they
would do a lot of things internally and dogfood - for example, project athena,
using that as basis for many other things, etc.

Recently I heard from some fresh MIT grads that a lot of that is now pushed to
outsourcing and same cookie-cutter approach.

------
jeffrallen
Paradoxically, publishing this blog post will no doubt result in the window
knob being fixed and a new "no unauthorized modifications to HVAC" policy
being out in place.

~~~
roamingryan
I'd be surprised if that is the outcome. MIT facilities tends to be quite
tolerant of stuff like this.

------
teddyh
> _When sleeping in this office, I found it helpful to cover the blue light on
> the box with a post-it note._

Some people point to Richard Stallman having a mattress in his office at MIT
as some sort of sinister sign. This, I should think, proves otherwise.

------
caiobegotti
Kind of tangential because it also involves the MIT and lots of crazy funny
sentimental stories like this one about working and studying there:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightwork:_A_History_of_Hacks_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightwork:_A_History_of_Hacks_and_Pranks_at_MIT)

------
digitalsushi
This is the same reason I'm never going to be able to move into a
nicer/bigger/cuter/better view house. I have my house and the barn behind it
all laid out exactly as I see fit, and I know that if I ever sold this place,
no amount of impassioned pleas to understand the nuisance and rationale will
ever be heard. It's always going to distill into "great, but strip it all out,
all of it, paint it white and make it able to store a boat". So much of my ego
is programmed into the layout of the building that it would be a denial of
self to let someone else have it.

------
ueli
Coincidentally I was just watching a talk from one of those two students that
ran the breast pump hackathon:
[https://vimeo.com/354276137](https://vimeo.com/354276137)

------
leetrout
> ... needs to be plugged into wifi and power

That first one is going to be a challenge.

------
Forge36
>If it start beeping, either it’s malfunctioning and needs to be rebooted, or
there’s a significant radiation leak on campus.

With no details on how it beeps I'm now anxious for beeping of a device many
miles away

------
saeranv
Awesome post. Who was the cranky researcher who developed the climate-
controlled window system with the Linux box and python scripts? I want to do
the same thing.

~~~
Scoundreller
Same, but it seems overkill. I'm in an old office where the only openable
window is consumed by a window A/C unit.

I want to put a 120mm fan in a small opening next to it that'll turn on when
it's more than 3C cooler outside, and more than 24C inside.

Seems like an Arduino would do it.

~~~
saeranv
I believe I found the researcher and thesis that informed the window project
here: [https://resenv.media.mit.edu/#Projects#personalized-
building...](https://resenv.media.mit.edu/#Projects#personalized-building-
comfort-control)

I don't think it's overkill within the context of his full work. Based on my
brief skimming, he's coupling the window with a personal device to modulate
his environment through reinforcement learning.

~~~
wott
This "Responsible Environment" website pegs my CPU...

------
NegativeLatency
Wayback URL:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200815220615/http://www.ethanz...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200815220615/http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2020/08/15/to-
the-future-occupants-of-my-office-at-the-mit-media-lab/)

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m0zg
Peltier element is just about the worst solution for anything. The angel wings
girl wasn't experiencing much "cooling" for sure. Form over function, I
suppose - consumer market seems to prefer that, but as an EE I immediately
know shit's not going to work, which robs me of appreciation of the "form".

And I'd prefer a mechanized window, myself.

~~~
vikramkr
It's art

~~~
m0zg
Then why bother with Peltier?

~~~
vikramkr
It's part of the art. Thats like asking why kinetic sculptures move. The whole
generating energy from your own inner heat part is kind if part of it. It's
not supposed to make enough current to charge your phone, it's art. You're way
overthinking it.

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thecureforzits
Actually, there's no such thing as "Vermont Maple". It's Sugar Maple or if you
prefer the latin, Acer Saccharum.

