<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'><b>"To the first machine that can appreciate the gesture:" Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Architecture Machine Group</b>
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<b><a href="http://www.girlwonder.com/">Molly Steenson</a></b>, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison PhD
<br>Wednesday, November 7, 2012, 4:30pm<br>Computer Science Small Auditorium (Room 105)<br>
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Nicholas Negroponte today is best known for founding the MIT Media Lab
in 1985. But before the Media Lab, he founded the Architecture Machine
Group at MIT in 1968 (Arch Mach for short). As an architect captivated
by computers, Negroponte created the lab as a test bed for interactive
computers, sensors and programs that sought to change the manner in
which computers and humans interacted with each other. He envisioned a
world in which everybody would live in immersive, intelligent
environments, even dedicating his first book The Architecture Machine
“To the first machine that can appreciate the gesture." But what is the
nature of that gesture? Arch Mach's structure and funding benefited from
the same relationships as MIT’s major engineering and computing labs,
collaborating especially closely with the Artificial Intelligence Lab,
and its projects echoed the dynamics of Department of Defense funding
that occurred in AI. In this talk, I will introduce Arch Mach's
projects, projections—and gestures.<br><br>Molly Wright Steenson is a Ph.D. candidate in Princeton University’s
School of Architecture where she researches the history of architecture
and information. In January 2013, she will join the faculty of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in the School of Journalism & Mass
Communication, where she will focus on digital media studies. Steenson
was also a professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy.
As a design researcher, she examines the effect of personal technology
on its users, with recent projects in India and China for Microsoft
Research and Intel Research and ReD Asscoiates. Prior to her scholarly
career, Molly started working with the Web in 1994, producing sites and
leading design strategy for Reuters, Netscape, and Razorfish. She holds a
Master’s in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture
and a B.A. in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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