GO ASK A.L.I.C.E: A Panel Discussion
2012-11-29 17:30 (America/New_York) | Harvard University Science Center, Room 469, 1 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University’s Department of the History of Science is hosting a semester-long exhibit, “GO ASK A.L.I.C.E: Turing Tests, Parlor Games, & Chatterbots”, highlighted in part by this special panel discussion on November 29.
GO ASK A.L.I.C.E explores the strange afterlife of the Turing Test as it has circulated in popular, scientific, and commercial cultures. It reexamines elements of Alan Turing‘s own interactions with humans and machines, later imaginations of thinking machines, as well as a famous attempt to translate Turing’s parlor game into a real test of artificial intelligence: the Loebner Prize.

New Forms, New Markets for Independent Film
2012-12-06 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Independent film-maker Andrew Silver will discuss emerging forms of hybrid media, some promising new pathways for distributing films and his career as a director and producer in this colloquium, which will include clips from his most recent film, Second Wind. Debra Wise of MIT’s Central Square Theater will join the discussion. Andrew and Debra played husband and wife in Radio Cape Cod, a Silver production shot in Woods Hole. Andrew Silver is a graduate of MIT and the Harvard Business School, co-author of a chapter in the HBS anthology Breakthrough Thinking, and a long-time member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. His films are distributed by Tesco, the second largest global retail chain:

Second Wind, 13 min
Overboard, 16 min
Downward Facing, 6 min

[For Credit] 21W.794: Graduate Technical Writing Workshop
2013-01-05 - 2013-01-17 | MIT Building 2, Room 147, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Pre-register on WebSIS and attend first class.
Listeners welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: Level: G 3 units Standard A – F Grading
Draft a thesis proposal, thesis chapter, journal article, progress report, or specification, and review basics of engineering writing. Sessions cover the processes of organizing and drafting professional papers, improving writing style, and revising documents. Students determine own projects; each project increment receives instructor’s editorial suggestions.
IAP version:This course focuses on improving your ability to communicate technical information. Through a combination of lecture, assignments, and in-class writing exercises, we will cover the basics of working with sources, including summarizing & paraphrasing, synthesizing source materials, citing, quoting, and avoiding plagiarism. We will also cover how to write an abstract and a literature review.
You must attend all three meetings. No rescheduling is possible. NO LISTENERS.
Contact: Nick Altenbernd, 14E-303, x3-7894, altenb@mit.edu
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Mechanical Engineering students or others who need this time.
Tue Jan 15, 22, Thu Jan 24, 10am-01:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Aero-Astro students, and Chemical Engineering students or others who need this time.
Tue Jan 15, 22, Thu Jan 24, 02-05:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Civil-Environ Engr students, Media Studies students, and Nuclear Engineering students or others who need this time.
Thu Jan 17, Wed Jan 23, Fri Jan 25, 10am-01:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Supply Chain Management students, and TPP-ESD students or others who need this time.
>Thu Jan 17, Wed Jan 23, Fri Jan 25, 02-05:00pm, 2-147

MIT Writers' Group
2013-01-07 - 2013-01-28 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/04
Attendance: Repeating event on the 7th, 14th, and 28th, participants welcome at any session
Prereq: none
Want to write something creative but need some motivation or support? Join other writers to get advice about your own writing, to help other writers, or to get inspiration to write something to share with the group–any type of creative writing, including fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction,memoirs, personal essays, plays. Open to MIT undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, staff and faculty.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, (617) 253-4459, smstrang@mit.edu

Individual Consultations at the Writing and Communication Center
2013-01-07 - 2013-01-31 | MIT Building 12, Room 132, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Repeating event, participants welcome at any session
Prereq: none
The Writing Center will continue to offer free consultation and advice on oral presentations and on any writing problem, including finding a topic, generating ideas, overcoming writer’s block, improving grammar, crafting effective sentences and paragraphs, organizing ideas, using of evidence, analyzing audiences, and writing strategically. We can help with technical writing; theses in all departments; job, graduate and med school application essays; research and teaching statements; resumes; conference talks; articles for publication; book proposals and chapters; and papers for any course. We also offer help on pronunciation.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, 12-132, 617-253-4459, smstrang@mit.edu

[For Credit] CMS.S98: Special Subject: Comparative Media Studies Qualitative Data Analysis
2013-01-09 - 2013-01-16 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Jan 9: 4-5pm
Jan 10, 14, 16: 2-5pm
Pre-register on WebSIS and attend first class.
Limited to 12 participants.
No listeners
Prereq: Permission of instructor limited to graduate students only
Level: G 3 units Standard A – F Grading Can be repeated for credit
Seminar or lecture on a topic that is not covered in the regular curriculum.
The goal of this class is to provide frameworks and hands on experience in analyzing data collected through interviews, observations and other qualitative methods. We will cover standards for analysis, strategies (such as thematic analysis, discourse analysis, critical analysis and narrative analysis), and analytic processes such as iterative coding, building matrices, and pulling out logics. The instructor will provide a data set of selections from interviews with musicians in which they discuss their understanding of the music business, but if people already have data sets they are eager to work with, they can do that too.

Contact: Becky Shepardson, bshep@mit.edu

Reading Programming Code as a Cultural Object
2013-01-09 16:00 - 17:00 | MIT Building 14E, Room 311, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
Prereq: None
So much around us is driven by programs and written in code, in one or several computer languages. We use algorithms to visualize data, interpret behaviors, read trends, and drive decisions. Programs and algorithms are culturally determined objects, often observable as aesthetic works or philosophical gestures. It’s time to think more about the cultural aspects of code and what goes on “under the hood” of digital manifestations. How is code written and by whom? Under what conditions? How does code circulate? Where do the creative aspects of programming lie? What do porting code and natural language translation have in common? How do we understand the obsolescence of computer languages? Let’s talk about what it means to start reading code differently, as cultural objects and statements. Let’s raise the questions that need to be raised.
Sponsor(s): Libraries, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Patsy Baudoin, 14S-230, 617 253-4979, patsy@mit.edu

Alchemists and Mad Scientists: from Faust to Dr. Strangelove
2013-01-10 19:00 - 2013-01-31 22:00 | MIT Building 3, Room 133, 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Curiosity is perhaps the defining characteristic of scientists in the popular mind, but a popular belief asserts that “curiosity killed the cat.” In the popular imagination scientists challenge the boundaries of human knowledge, frequently paying a dire price for their audacity, and sometimes bringing that price down on the population around them. In this activity we will consider how science and scientists have been depicted in popular culture, starting with one manifestation of the widely celebrated Faust legend. We will trace the development in mass media of the evolution of alchemists into mad scientists, using the films “Faust,” “Metropolis,” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” and “Dr. Strangelove” as our texts. Our goal will be a deeper understanding of the history of representations of science and scientists in Western narrative media.
Advance sign-up isn’t required, but please email Stephen Brophy (stephbr@mit.edu) if you plan to attend so he can give you access to the activity’s Stellar site.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Stephen Brophy, stephbr@mit.edu
Faust
January 10
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
What do you do when you have it all and it isn’t enough? Faust was the most highly respected philosopher, theologian, and physician of his time, but because he wasn’t satisfied with all that he sold his soul to the Devil. And then what happened?
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Metropolis
January 17
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
Back in the good old days, when you built a city that had sunshine and sport for the 1%, but endless drudgery for the 99% who kept it going, you needed a mad scientist to run it all. And no scientist has ever been madder than Rotwang, the genius behind Metropolis!
Nicole Labruto – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS), Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
The Bride of Frankenstein
January 24
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
What happens when you build a creature with parts collected from graveyards and gallows, but neglect to provide him with a companion? He becomes monstrous in his loneliness. But maybe building a companion from the same materials isn’t the best solution?
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Marie Burks – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS)
Dr. Strangelove
January 31
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
Mad scientists don’t only haunt medieval castles – they also ply their wares in the most up to date War Rooms. What happens when a modern mad scientist builds a Doomsday Machine for the Pentagon? See this movie to learn how to stop worrying and love the Bomb!
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Benjamin Wilson – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS)

Create a Web Series!
2013-01-12 19:00 - 21:00
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Are you interesting in storytelling or filmmaking? Are you a fan of creative web series such as Dr. Horrible, The Guild, or The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? Would you like to work with other energetic story-lovers? Then you’re invited to get in on the ground floor of developing an MIT-themed web series for debut in 2014! Comedy or drama, sci-fi or mystery, wacky or serious—your creative vision will help shape the show. Together, we’ll acheive our nefarious master plan: to create something so interesting, so entertaining, and so well-made that it will ensnare every procrastinator on campus!
Register by email to get location information as it becomes available.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Sarah Coe, coesa@mit.edu

Building Story Worlds: Space, Time, Rules, and Narrative in Game Design
2013-01-14 10:00 - 2013-01-18 17:00 | MIT Building 56, Room 180, Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/09
Limited to 20 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Visiting Artist Guilherme Marcondes, in conjunction with researchers from the MIT Game Lab and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, will lead a workshop exploring the role of space in storytelling. The workshop will focus on exploring how artists can use the tools of game design—including space, time, and rule sets—to construct complex narratives that are deeply embedded in the settings in which they unfold. Participants will learn how to design and refine a game prototype through playtesting and observation; produce, gather, organize, and use concept art, music, sounds, and other source materials to establish the mood of a narrative setting; and evaluate their own and others’ creations in a critique-based studio environment.
No prior programming experience is required. Participants will review examples of stories that deal with spatial exploration; explore in and around MIT on foot; and work in teams to create tabletop game prototypes. Students who want to advance their projects may continue working with the researchers Jan. 21-24 & may exhibit and demonstrate these prototypes at a public event on Jan. 24 at the MIT Museum. There is also opportunity in the second week for exploratory visits with faculty and labs.
The MIT Visiting Artists Program will host filmmaker, animator, and mixed-media artist Guilherme Marcondes for a two-week residency. For more information visit http://arts.mit.edu/artists/guilherme-marcondes/.
To register, email Meg Rotzel at mrotzel@mit.edu.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society, MIT Game Lab, Comparative Media Studies

Contact: Meg Rotzel, 617-253-2372, mrotzel@mit.edu

How to Write a Great Abstract
2013-01-15 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 132, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Limited to 20 participants
Prereq: none
For your paper to be successful, people have to actually read it. A compelling abstract is essential for capturing their attention and making them want to read more. But writing an effective abstract is challenging because you need to summarize what motivated you, what you did, and what you found, in a small number of words. In this workshop, we’ll analyze sample abstracts from different fields, learn editing strategies, and practice revising abstracts. You’ll leave with a better understanding of how to write a strong abstract that clearly presents your research.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, 12-120, 617 253-4459, SMSTRANG@MIT.EDU

ModIT Workshop: Online HTML Game Engine/Creation Tool
2013-01-17 13:00 - 16:00 | MIT Building 32 (Stata Center), Room 124, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment:
Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/16
Limited to 30 participants
Prereq: see description
Introduction to a set of tools for creating games. Modit is currently in private beta but in this workshop, we will showcase our HTML5 game development. ModitTM seeks to transform HTML5 games into a new medium for self-expression by turning players into game creators. By bringing a full development environment into the browser, players will be empowered to modify the games they play and instantly publish and share those creations with the world.
Required of attendees: 1) Familiarity with JavaScript is ideal, but basic understanding of any programming language should be sufficient. 2) Laptop with Google Chrome, or Firefox, and Internet connectability. 3) Gmail account to log into the ModIt platform.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Game Lab
Contact: Sara Verrilli, akiru@mit.edu

Festival of Learning
2013-01-21 - 2013-01-22 | MIT Building E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The Festival of Learning is a two-day festival, where anyone from MIT’s Media Lab buildings (E14 and E15) can teach, learn, and collaborate!
Full info, including session suggestions, at fol2013.media.mit.edu.

Best of the 2012 European Short Film Festival at MIT
2013-01-23 19:00 - 21:00 | MIT Building 3, Room 133, 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Watch a rarely seen selection of the best European short films from MIT’s 2012 European Short Film Festival. These films give you a glimpse into contemporary short film productions from European film schools, young and established independent filmmakers, and European festivals. 15 films – many of them US premiers – that reflect the most compelling fiction, animation, documentary and experimental film from the 3-day festival in April 2012. A brief introduction will precede the screening.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Gabriella Horvath, ghorvath@mit.edu

Integrating Communication Instruction in CI Subjects: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-28 - 2013-01-31 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
Instructors of CI subjects often ask how they can more effectively connect writing and speaking instruction with the course content, so that communication assignments are not just additional requirements, but instead help students more deeply engage with the concepts of the course. How can we design instructional and assignment sequences that are organic to each subject, and that help students approach writing and speaking as the space for developing conceptual thinking? Working with some examples from CI-M and CI-H classes, we’ll explore how instructors can break down assignments to demystify research, writing, and presentation in their fields. Improved sequencing will help students experience a more productive writing experience.
Bring examples of assignments from your classes to share.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Teaching and Learning Lab, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Learn to Knit!
2013-01-28 13:00 - 16:00 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/25
Do you want to be able to knit your own cold-weather gear? Participants will learn the basic stitches, knit and purl, and other skills to make their first project: casting on, reading patterns, and understanding yarn and needles. Please bring materials (contact activity leader if you have any questions).
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Ayse Gursoy, agursoy@MIT.EDU

Powerful Feedback: Strategies for Responding to Student Writing: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-29 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
What kind of feedback will help students understand how to revise their essays, reports or articles, or to write their next assignment more effectively? This workshop will help faculty and TA’s to articulate their criteria for student writing and to develop powerful feedback practices, from written comments to rubrics to peer review to individual conferences.= By considering feedback in relation to other forms of instruction, participants will learn to provide the kinds of comments and strategies that will help students understand how to improve their skills as writers.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Teaching and Learning Lab Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Oral Presentations and the Academic Conversation: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-31 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
This interactive workshop is geared to instructors across the disciplines who are interested in integrating oral presentation into their classes. We will discuss effective strategies to teach the oral component in CI classes as an act of critical thinking. Together, we will define goals for a variety of speaking genres in science and humanities classes. Participants will collaborate in sharing good practices from their own experience. Finally, we will explore some practical templates to teach oral presentation that encourage students to practice the following skills: (1) communicating complex ideas in accessible language; (2) creating presentations that clearly define goals and argument or hypothesis; (3) organizing presentations in the service of developing ideas in the broader context of the field.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Teaching and Learning Lab Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Annotation Studio Workshop
2013-01-31 15:00 - 18:00 | MIT Building 56, Room 180, Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/25
Limited to 20 participants
Have you ever wondered how to annotate online texts with your thoughts, comments, or associations? Does an image better express what you are imagining while reading a literary text? How about sharing your comments with friends, fellow students, or colleagues? How can you integrate digital text annotation in your teaching? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, please join us during IAP for HyperStudio’s workshop on digital annotation tools designed for humanities students, scholars, and educators.
In this hands-on workshop you’ll learn how to create, tag, link, and share annotations in web-based environments. The workshop will include:

Introduction to digital text annotation – evaluate various online text annotation tools
Hands-on sessions – work with your own text using Annotation Studio
Text annotation for teaching and scholarship – Discuss how to best apply these tools in your research and scholarship.

Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Gabriella Horvath, ghorvath@mit.edu

Nostalgia for a Not-So-Distant Youth: Digital Games and Affect in Urban China
2013-02-07 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Marcella Szablewicz
Young people born in 1980’s and 1990’s China are the focus of a great deal of scholarly attention as they are the country’s first generation of only children. They are also the first generation to come of age with the Internet, and, for many, playing Internet games forms an integral part of the youth experience. This presentation will explore the affective dimensions of digital games from the perspective of urban Chinese youth. What is the significance of an e-sports event that attracts tens of thousands of twenty-somethings, many of whom experience it as a teary-eyed “farewell to their youth”? Or a viral video created by World of Warcraft gamers that urges millions of viewers to “raise their fists in solidarity” to show support for their “spiritual homeland”? What should we make of these phenomena that demonstrate, ever more clearly, the ways in which games are intertwined with people’s spiritual and emotional lives? Are games the imagined utopia they are made out to be in these nostalgic accounts or might these affective attachments prove to be a form of what Lauren Berlant (2011) has called “cruel optimism,” a relationship in which the very thing that is desired becomes an obstacle to flourishing?
Marcella Szablewicz is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication and Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Duke University. Her research focuses on youth and digital media in urban China. She is currently working on a book based on her dissertation, provisionally entitled From Addicts to Athletes: Youth Mobilities and the Politics of Digital Gaming in Urban China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork supported by the Fulbright and National Science Foundations, the book will examine the precarious socio-economic futures of urban Chinese youth through the lens of digital gaming culture, while also considering how dominant discourse about digital leisure practice is shaped by larger cultural debates about patriotism and productivity, class and the crafting of the “ideal citizen”. Her work can also be found in the Routledge volume Online Society in China and in the Chinese Journal of Communication.
Co-sponsored by the Cool Japan Project.

Convergence Journalism? Emerging Documentary and Multimedia Forms of News
2013-02-19 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Co-sponsored by the MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Hybrid forms of multimedia, combining aspects of newspapers, documentary film and digital video are a notable feature of today’s online journalism. How is this access to the power of the visual changing our journalism? What current projects are particularly significant? What will this convergence mean in the future?
Jason Spingarn-Koff
Jason Spingarn-Koff is the series producer and curator of Op-Docs, a new initiative at the New York Times for short opinionated documentaries by independent filmmakers and artists. He directed the feature documentary “Life 2.0”, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network’s Documentary Club, and his work has appeared on PBS, BBC, MSNBC, Time.com and Wired News. In 2010-2011, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

Alexandra Garcia
Alexandra Garcia is a multimedia journalist for The Washington Post. She reports, shoots and edits video stories on topics ranging from health care and immigration to fashion and education. Awarded an Edward R. Murrow award, eight regional Emmy awards and named 2011 Video Editor of the Year by the White House News Photographers Association, Garcia is currently a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Moderator: Sarah Wolozin, director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, has produced documentaries and educational media for a variety of media outlets including PBS, History Channel, Learning Channel and NPR.

Gregory Crane: "Automated Methods, Human Understanding, and Digital Libraries of Babel"
2013-02-20 17:15 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Organized by Literature. Co-sponsored with CMS, the MIT HyperStudio for Digital Humanities, and Ancient and Medieval Studies.
Greg Crane
Millions of documents produced around the world over more than four thousand years are now available in digital form — Google Books alone had scanned, by March 2012, more than 20 million books in more than 400 languages. Images of manuscripts, papyri, inscriptions and other non-print sources are also appearing in increasing numbers. But if we have addressed physical access to images of textual sources, we are a long way from providing the intellectual access necessary to understand the written sources that we see. This talk explores the challenges and opportunities as we refashion our study of the past from ethnocentric monolingual conversations into a hyperlingual dialogue among civilizations, where humans work with machines and with each other to communicate and where books do, as Marvin Minksy opined decades ago, talk to each other.
Gregory Crane is Chair of the Department of Classics at Tufts University, as well as an Adjunct Professor in Tufts’ Department of Computer Science. Since 1988, he has been Editor-in-Chief of the Perseus Project, a long-running digital humanities effort focused on Greek, Latin, and Arabic Classics.

A Conversation with Nate Silver
2013-02-28 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Nate Silver at MIT. Photo by Greg Peverill-Conti
The statistician and political polling analyst Nate Silver will discuss his career — from student journalist to baseball prognosticator to the creator of FiveThirtyEight.com, perhaps the most influential political blog in the world — and the ways in which statistics are changing the face of journalism in a conversation with Seth Mnookin, a former baseball and political writer who co-directs MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Angels of Death: David Foster Wallace and the Battle against Irony, Letterman and Leyner?
2013-03-07 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
D. T. Max
D.T. Max, staff writer at the New Yorker, will look at David Foster Wallace and irony, with an eye especially on his 1990’s attacks on David Letterman and the novelist Mark Leyner, both in publications and in private correspondence. When did David Foster Wallace become obsessed with irony and why? What made him so sure it was corrosive to civil culture or initiative? Or was the unease he felt in its presence really more the product of his own personal history?
Co-hosted with Literature at MIT.

MOOCs and the Emerging Digital Classroom
2013-03-21 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
MOOCs and other forms of online learning have the potential to disrupt traditional classroom education — or to help us better understand how to exploit the many learning spaces students now inhabit. This forum examines the ongoing migration of our analog practices into digital forms, looking at the ways in which digital technologies are transforming teaching and learning both on and off campus. What gaps in our curricula, or in our students’ experience, can be filled through technology? What elements of teaching practice can be effectively translated into new media, and what aspects of “teaching” must be redefined?
Anant Agarwal the president of edX, a worldwide, online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University, and a professor in MIT’s electrical engineering and computer science department.
Alison Byerly holds an interdisciplinary appointment as College Professor at Middlebury College and, during 2012-2013, she is a visiting scholar in the Literature Section at MIT.
Daphne Koller is the Rajeev Motwani Professor in the computer science department at Stanford University. Koller will join the conversation live from the west coast.

The Cultural Feedback of Noise
2013-04-04 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Noise, an underground music made through an amalgam of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects, first emerged in the 1980s, circulating on cassette tapes traded between fans in Japan, Europe and North America. With its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances, Noise captured the imagination of a small but passionate transnational audience, despite remaining deeply underground. How did the submergent circulations of Noise become such a compelling metaphor for the complexities of globalization, intercultural exchange and participatory media at the turn of the millennium? In this talk, I trace the “cultural feedback” of noise through the productive distortions of its mediated networks: its recorded forms, technologies of live performance, and into the lives and creative practices of musicians and listeners.
David Novak teaches in the Music Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work deals with the globalization of popular music, media technologies, experimental culture, and social practices of listening. He is the author of recent essays in Public Culture, Cultural Anthropology, and Popular Music, as well as the book Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (Duke University Press).

News or Entertainment? The Press in Modern Political Campaigns
2013-04-11 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
In the 2012 presidential campaign, a handful of media outlets deployed “fact-checking” divisions which reported the lies and distortions of the candidates. Some commentators have argued that these truth-squads exposed the inadequacy of standard print and broadcast coverage, much of which seems more like entertainment than news. This forum will examine the changing role of the political media in the U.S. Is our political journalism serving democratic and civic ideals? What do emerging technologies and the proliferation of news sources mean for the future?
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.
Mark McKinnon is a senior advisor of Hill & Knowlton Strategies, an international communications consultancy, a weekly columnist for The Daily Beast and The London Telegraph, and is a co-founder of the bipartisan group No Labels. As a political advisor, he has worked for many causes, companies and candidates including former President George W. Bush, 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, late former Texas Governor Ann Richards and Congressman Charlie Wilson.

The Future of Print in the Digital Age
2013-04-17 19:00 - 20:30 | MIT Building 6, Room 120, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Co-sponsored by Comparative Media Studies/Writing, its Graduate Program in Science Writing, and the MIT Program in Science Technology and Society.
David Carr writes the Media Equation column for the Monday Business section of the New York Times that focuses on media issues including print, digital, film, radio and television. He also works as a general assignment reporter in the Culture section of The Times covering all aspects of popular culture. Carr blogs regularly at Media Decoder.
For the past 25 years, Carr has been writing about media as it intersects with business, culture and government.
Seth Mnookin is a former baseball and political writer who now co-directs MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a 2012-2013 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT and a senior editor at The Atlantic where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle.

Size Is Only Half the Story:Valuing the Dimensionality of BIG DATA
2013-04-18 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Mary L. Gray
Recent provocations (boyd and Crawford, 2011) about the role of “big data” in human communication research and technology studies deserve an outline of the value of anthropology, as a particular kind of “big data”.
Mary L. Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, will walk through the different dimensions of social inquiry that fall under the rubric of “big data”. She argues for attending to different dimensions rather than scales of data, more collaborative approaches to how we arrive at what we (think we) know, and critical analysis of the cultural assumptions embedded in the data we collect. By moving from the “snapshot” of quantitative work to the

Film Preservation in the Age of Digitality
2013-04-25 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Chris Horak
We now live in a digital age, seemingly guaranteeing instant accessibility. Much of the general public in fact believes that every film and television program ever made has already been digitized and is now available in Netflix’s catalog. That is hardly the case, because digitization is still massively expensive, there is no such thing as a digital preservation medium, and even the migration of digital films is fraught with technical difficulties.
Chris Horak is Director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
