A group of academics, business executives and journalists recently gathered at the MIT Media Lab to discuss the concept of Data-Driven Societies. Alex Pentland, a computational social scientist at the Media Lab and a leading mind in the area of Big Data, hosted the meeting and discussed how increasing amounts of important information are becoming readily available on vast scales and are often all about consumer behavior. Continue reading Meeting of the Minds: Discussion on Data-Driven Societies

Take a look inside the MIT Media Lab for an indication of what technology (and life, in general) will look like in the coming 10 years, suggests Business Insider. The article summarizes a tour taken of the Lab, where students are working on projects involving robotics to programs allowing virtual interaction with the real world — all projects guaranteed to get you thinking about the future. Continue reading Ongoing Projects at MIT Media Lab Offer Look at the Future

Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland is one of the world’s most-cited computer scientists and was also named one of the world’s seven most powerful data scientists by Forbes. As a pioneer in Big Data, he discusses his distinctive view of the field, revealing his belief in the power of Big Data to inform about people’s behavior rather than just about their beliefs. Pentland is also interested in how that concept relates to business. Continue reading Big Data Pioneer Excited About Reinventing Human Society

The symbiotic ideas of controlling your online personal data and the value of big data analytics to companies were major themes during the March 19-20 New Digital Economics conference produced by STL Partners. Thought leaders addressed personal privacy concerns that could lead to a social movement and industry self-regulation as well as changes to how companies manage strong relationships with their customers. Continue reading New Digital Economics Conference: Big Data Versus Privacy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad student Jinha Lee demonstrated a 3D computer interface that allows users to interact with Web pages and documents inside their computer. SpaceTop is a 3D desktop environment that combines a transparent LED display and two motion tracking cameras (one for the user’s hands and the other for his/her eyes) so that users experience the illusion that their hands are actually inside the computer. Continue reading MIT Grad Student Demonstrates the Future of 3D Computing

MIT has launched the new “Initiative for the Digital Economy” to address the impact of existing and emerging digital technologies. The initiative’s three primary objectives are to analyze the potential of digital technologies to change businesses, the economy, and society; to engage students and faculty in programs related to the digital revolution; and to make practical recommendations to industry leaders and policymakers regarding the digital economy. Continue reading MIT Initiative Explores Impact of Emerging Digital Economy

It seems 3D technology knows no bounds. “At Paris Fashion Week, technology and fashion collided when a model walked down the runway in a striking 3D printed dress,” writes VentureBeat. While the dress itself was a rather simple design, critics were fascinated by the way in which it was made. Will 3D printers soon be creating our clothes? Continue reading 3D Printing Takes a Turn on the Runway at Paris Fashion Week

The following are some notable comments from a panel at last week’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT.

Panel: “The Futures of Serialized Storytelling”

• Science fiction is perfect for serialized storytelling because of a large story world that can generate.
• Today’s distractions are forcing TV to focus on its best skill, large live events.
• Serialized drama is really moving to time-shifted. About 50-60 percent of a drama (in theUK) is moving to time-shifted viewing.
• The large challenge for storytellers is how to deal with asynchronous drama. Do writers and show runners still use mechanisms such as cliffhangers, when a large amount of viewing happens 6-12 months after the show?
• Three types of audiences: skimmers, dippers and divers. Skimmers watch the show but offer no other engagement. Dippers will engage beyond the TV, and watch clips and other content online. And divers are the hardcore fans that engage with each other and all the content you put out.
• You spend the most time and energy to produce content for divers. Even though divers are a small slice of the audience, they are the most active. They are the core of your “word of mouth campaign.”
• TV producers are out of touch, they have been too focused on ratings. They have to get back into the crowd. They have to rebuild their skills of “listen and response.”
• For the past five years dramas have been produced in a bubble, driven by executives and ratings. Or copying formulas that may have worked in the past. Very little has happened to create new stories.
• It’s important to pace your engagement with the audience. It’s not always about putting out loads of content up front. You must fold in content for the hardcore fans but not alienate the regular fans.
• The more we move into a digital world, the more important the physical tangible experience becomes. It can be a great tool to engage with audiences. For example, “Game of Thrones” food trucks. But on the flip-side, distribution is very difficult.
• Twitter (social media) serves to amplify the liveliness of TV.
• Dramas are not built for Twitter during the show; we see much more Twitter activity after the show.
• “The X-Factor” seems to be designed for half of your attention. It allows for audiences to tweet during the show.
• In social media, we know that the audience members aren’t directing their comments to the show, they are talking to their friends.
• We’re going back 150-200 years ago, during the age of Shakespeare, when a story was told in front of an audience that reacted and talked and commented openly.
• The TV or the movie screen should be the primary source of storytelling. The reason being, those sources will build the most attention from audiences.
• The primary source has to be the best place that can cut into the audience’s attention. With time, that may shift away from the TV screen.

Moderator:
Laurie Baird (Georgia Tech)

Panelists:
Matt Locke (Storythings, UK)
Steve Coulson (Campfire)
Lynn Liccardo (Soap opera critic)
Denise Mann (University of California-Los Angeles)

The following are some notable comments from a panel at last week’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT.

Panel: “At What Cost? The Privacy Issues that Must Be Considered in a Digital World”

• If individuals release personal information to the world, they have to distinguish when they are really losing their privacy and when they are legitimately sharing information.
• Just because we are sharing information in different patterns today, that doesn’t mean that we have to think of privacy as a whole any differently.
• Everyone needs to know and be aware of what each service provider’s positions are regarding privacy.
• There should be a push to track and openly comment on user privacy policies by companies.
• There is no question that personalization requires giving one’s information. But this is only because we have not been creative enough in developing a solution that doesn’t require information sharing. Not enough thought has gone into having personalization and privacy live side by side without compromise.
• Here are a few examples from outside the entertainment space that have been able to personalize a user experience without compromising their privacy: Using GPS information for vehicles on the road, traffic patterns can be generated. Companies extract information from each vehicle, and anonymise the information. By using the information in aggregate each driver can receive a personalized traffic report.
• Adnostic is a system that provides targeted ads without tracking. It does the ad recommendations by pushing all the tracking to the client side, so that the centralized 3^rd party service never knows what you are doing.

Speakers:
Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard University)
Helen Nissenbaum (New York University)

The following are some notable comments from a panel at this week’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT.

Panel: “Creating with the Crowd: Crowdsourcing for Funding, Producing and Circulating Media Content”

• In the pre-production phase, to start a crowd going, you should have fans help you create simple and small ideas. The simple interactions will slowly draw people into the idea. Once they start participating more, then you can move to give them harder tasks — the hardest task/request being funding.
• Having a community financially invested in a film not only produces funds, but can leverage the community’s time and energy after the film has been released to promote.
• One of the keys to successful crowdsourced projects is making sure that if you fail, you need to be able to fail fast.
• When it comes to crowdsourcing, you must find the balance between what you’re asking your crowd to do and what you’re giving them.
• The success of crowdsourcing demands transparency. There should be a mechanism to let the crowd know how their input has been used. The sense of participation feeds the crowd to continue to participate.
• Must provide a simple platform for crowds to engage and use.
• In crowdsourcing there needs to be a person that ultimately decides what goes in to the content. Crowdsourcing isn’t necessarily a democracy, there needs to be a benevolent dictator/editor.
• Crowdsourcing may become a fad if there are too many projects that are too broad. The more Kickstarter projects there are, for example, the harder it is to support them all. People will ultimately select projects that they are intensely interested in.
• Who’s the crowd? When the term “crowd” is used, it’s really just an excuse because you don’t know the audience/group’s identity.
• Right now a vast majority of projects that use the crowd, use it to build funds, or gather ideas. There are very few examples of crowds changing media from the creative aspect.

Speakers:
Mirko Schäfer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Bruno Natal (Queremos, Brazil)
Timo Vuorensola (Wreckamovie, Finland)
Caitlin Boyle (Film Sprout)