0. In my last blog I interviewed David Merrill (PhD Candidate at the MIT MEDIA LAB), who is the creator of SIFTABLES.
Having been in the i-team, finding a way for Siftables to enter the Market, I keep a close look for the NEW in this area and what I consider worth sharing at the moment are
For products like the latter, I thought Apple would be first, but lately I find that Apple really waits until a product has proven ground and THEN develops a “new” shiny version. So, we will have to wait a bit longer, until Apple makes something like the XO-2, although, they surely have a whole lot of the necessary patents to do anything they want!
3. And here is the Napkin PC, something I already showed to the i-team during our first meeting this spring. It is just a Design, BUT Siftables - you better hurry up! ;_)
Finally, I found the time to type up my 2nd INvenTERVIEW, where I interview great friends and people, who I have met on my path at MIT and my carreer. I try to show a more personal and different point of view than usually shown in the media.
Many more shall follow! Enjoy.
INvenTERVIEW – David Merrill
(Date: May, 2008)
David Merrill is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab who I collaborated with in this year’s i-teams class at MIT. His technology that needed a clear path to the market is called Siftables:
I asked David to start telling his story from his childhood and how he might have gotten into things like Siftables and such!
“As a kid I always building with building blocks (he was especially referring to Lincoln Logs, something to get for your child maybe in the near future, besides LEGO and all that or maybe some Siftables…)!”
“I liked building!”,
That he really did, inHigh School (1992-1996) he got into programming, at least as far as the computers would allow him to go, at this time. First, he was programming on his school Texas Instruments calculator (TI)! On the calculator he made simple math programs to help his classmates, and even built a simple driving game with multiple levels. He started making a more sophisticated battleship game, which was "quite a large piece of software for a calculator!", but he got too busy with college applications to release it.
In calculus class he built a program for his TI, where adding up squares underneath a curve computed an approximation of the integral of the curve. Showing an early interest in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Merrill was eager to find out how his fellow students would use his creations. The way to distribute programs at the time was through a cable to the other students’ calculators, an early peer-to-peer file sharing technique for mobile devices!
He was off to Stanford, and created his first website in his spare time at his job at the campus library.
“At that time, the question was: What are you supposed to have on your website? …Nobody knew what should have been there! Pictures of my friends, a bulletin board type system, Messages, which everyone could see, we used it to keep in touch.” – very much like today, I thought.
I asked David how Stanford supported his WWW education and he told that even back then they would have seminars in the dorm where the resident computer person would help you make a website.
“I thought I was going to study physics, but I ended up studying cognitive science, because it was more interdisciplinary.”
At this time David got really interested in computer science!, “I realized with a computer I could build even better greater things than with a calculator.” Still, the most exciting part for David was when other people would use his programs and benefit from his work. Now he had a word for this interest, however: computer-human interaction became his focus!
In undergraduate computer science he asked himself the question: How can the computer better represent information to us, and how can we interact with it in the most natural manner? As time went on, the question shifted to become: How does our body interact with a computer? And how can this interaction be improved? “What interfaces could I build if my toolset included the physical world, rather than just code?” At this point David’s focus moved from code to the additional use of embedded processors and sensors.
He pursued this interest from 2001 to 2002 at CCRMA, Stanford’s computer music center, in a class about physical music controllers. In the context of making new instruments, he learned by doing how to use basic electronics and sensors.
He was building physical objects that had computational behavior…objects that allowed a person to trigger and shape digital sounds. To put it in a nutshell he was designing systems that enabled a person to control sonic outputs through different physical inputs, and that is where he met his most difficult challenge and question:
“What is most intuitive? Now that we can connect any input gesture to any sound output, what should this mapping be?” He considered acoustic instruments and how they have become mature over hundreds of years, and wondered if a good instrument takes a long time to develop.
At this point in time, another event shaped David’s life dramatically :
“I wanted to pursue a Ph.D., but it was already November (Fall 2001) of the year that I was graduating. About half of the programs had deadlines in December and January, and I was not going to have enough time to make the December deadlines. I didn’t want to apply to only half of the interesting schools because of this deadline crunch, so, I said to myself: Why don’t I apply ONLY to my #1 choice (which at the time had a January deadline). And if I get in, I’ll go. Otherwise, I will just wait a year and apply everywhere else.”
But he got in, and by in, I mean, into the MIT Media Lab, to study physically embodied interactive systems. He worked with Ted Selker, Joe Paradiso, and Pattie Maes over his six years at the lab, and produced an impressive collection of new user interface devices, interactive installations and publications.
And it was the project Siftables that would become the focus of his Ph.D.: “Ever since my time at Stanford’s computer center, I have been a bit input device geek! I probably have 25 different game pads and joysticks that I have bought from eBay over the years…..!”
He was intrigued by how devices could be made for our hands: “Hands are most creative part of our body!”
Today we still interact with graphical content using a mouse and a keyboard. David thinks differently about how we might interact with digital content: “Today, my computer has 101 buttons and allows me one fingertip to touch the digital space. Imagine yourself sitting in front of a big pile of blocks and someone tells you that you can only use one fingertip to build structures with them… How can you do anything useful/creative?”
“We should be able to reach out with our hands, to grasp and move digital content around!”
Siftables can do just that. Having collaborated with David, I believe in it myself, but he needs move quickly, because Microsoft and Apple are trying to own this market!
But David is a multi-talented inventor and is already looking beyond Siftables, thinking about nano-bots in our body, as described by Ray Kurzweil, a well-known futurist and inventor. He is interested in neural implants and Kurzweil’s idea that we might be able to live forever, as described in a recent Wired magazine article. David knows that in the future he will be engineering solutions to such "what if we could do X…" questions, “My work is very applied”.
He has enjoyed recent press and feedback about his Sound of Touch project and other art installations, as well as blogosphere and news articles about Siftables.
Besides all of his technology work, Merrill has travelled the world: Ireland, England, France, Germany, Morocco, Canada, Peru, Hawaii, Spain, Portugal, and Iceland to date. All of this time abroad probably has something to do with the fact that his girlfriend is a “voracious traveler”!
Being originally from California, he enjoys the West coast very much. His friend Ben Olding, a statistics Ph.D. at Harvard who is also from California, articulates the appeal of the place in a way that resonates with David: California is full of dreamers. Everyone has a scheme about what they are going to do next, some high-tech, some not. Their plan might be the next social web service, or it might be mail-order homeopathic medicine. Whatever it is, they are open to new out-there possibilities and trying to make them happen.
"There is something fresh and naïve and wonderful about California, and although I love MIT and the Boston area I am looking forward to my future out West” says David Merill, PhD Candidate at the MIT Media Lab.
Daniel Pressl’s INvenTERVIEW Question List:
1.Complete the sentence: “I am…
excited to give people amazing new ways to interact with the digital world.
I am optimistic, a roll up the sleeves- and make things happen- kind of guy, who enjoys motivating people around me.”
2.Complete the sentence: “I like…
languages and understanding or decoding other cultures and places and processes. I like language barriers because they are challenging.”
3.Complete the sentence: “My heart was beating the last time,…
when I rode my bike to MIT. I need more exercise.”
4.Complete the sentence: “Once, I would like to drink coffee with…
Mohammed Yunis, who started the Grameen Bank.”
5.Complete the sentence: “Things that are never missing in my fridge are…
Yogurt and soy milk.”
6.Complete the sentence: “My favorite book is…
The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker.”
7.Complete the sentence: “The credo/moto of my life is…
We can built a solution to that.”
8.Complete the sentence: “My last words should be…
Die Maturanten der HTL Wolfsberg, Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr, haben sich in ihrer Diplomarbeit mit dem Thema Stroboskop-Phänomene auseinandergesetzt und ein Lichtblitzgerät gebaut, mit dem man Tropfen „einfrieren“ kann. Dieser so genannte „Piddler“ ist seit einiger Zeit in North Carolina (USA) im Hickory Museum oft Art zu bestaunen.
Markus Dohr (v. re.) DI Daniel Pressl und Bernhard Heine mit dem "Piddler", der in den USA ausgestellt ist.
Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr haben es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, einen so genannten „Piddler“ zu bauen, wobei der eine den elektrotechnischen Teil übernahm und der andere für die Software verantwortlich war.
Die Diplomarbeit der beiden begleiteten die HTL-Professoren DI Dr. Helmut Hebenstreit und Dipl.-Päd. Ing. Harald Weilguni. Heine und Dohr erhielten aber auch Unterstützung aus Übersee: DI Daniel Pressl war mit den beiden Maturanten ständig in E-Mail-Kontakt und gab ihnen wertvolle Tipps, die zum Gelingen des Projektes beitrugen.
Noch bevor die in Englisch verfasste Diplomarbeit von Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr fertiggeschrieben war, hatte ihre Maturaarbeit bereits einen interessanten Verwendungszweck: Daniel Pressl machte es nämlich möglich, dass die HTL-Schüler den von ihnen entwickelten „Piddler“ im Hickory Museum of Art ausstellen dürfen. Mit ihrem Stroboskop (Lichtblitzgerät) und den anderen Hard- und Softwareteilen im Gepäck flogen die beiden im heurigen Frühjahr über Einladung von DI Pressl nach Boston, wo sie am MIT-Campus ihren „Piddler“ zusammenbauten. Diesen brachten sie anschließend in einer zwölfstündigen Jeep-Fahrt ins Hickory Museum of Art (North Carolina).
Die Wolfsberger HTL-Schüler waren dort bei der offiziellen Eröffnung der Hochgeschwindigkeitsfotografie-Ausstellung anwesend und stellten gemeinsam mit DI Pressl ihr Stroboskop-Objekt vor, mit dem ein Wasserstrahl durch Lichtblitze optisch in Tropfen zerlegt werden kann. Der „Piddler“ ist im Hickory-Museum ebenso ein vielbeachtetes Ausstellungsstück, wie Hochgeschwindigkeitsfotos, die DI Daniel Pressl zur Verfügung gestellt hat. Zehn Tage lang waren Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr in den USA, ehe sie wieder in ihre Heimat zurückkehrten und fleißig für die Matura lernten, die sie mittlerweile erfolgreich hinter sich gebracht haben.
On Monday things cleared up when I spoke with Adam Holt from the OLPC Foundation, situated right across the street in Kendall Square. Yesterday I sent the check for the 15+15 Laptops to the foundation:
I was ensured that I will receive the laptops in 10 business days. Just in time, when I will be going to Austria.
Stephen Steiner at Los Alamos National Laboratory holding a silica aerogel in his hand
Birthday: 26th of March, 1982
Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
“Talk about some extreme chemistry! As if aerogel weren’t exciting enough, here we are in our fourth year of making the world’s lowest density solid in zero-gravity. So what’s the big deal? Why have we endured the gut-wrenching environment of NASA’s KC-135A over and over? Why do we go to such extremes to make this stuff in zero-gravity?
Because aerogel has the potential to revolutionize everything from your winter jacket to surfboards to computers, and aerogels made in zero-gravity are materials like nothing else.”
These are the first two paragraphs on the website http://zerogaerogel.com/ created by Stephen Steiner, who I had the pleasure to spend a dinner with and talk about his past, present and future as an inventor.
These three words—automated nanomaterials production—are constantly on Steve’s mind (from this point on I shall refer to Mr. Steiner as Steve, as we have been great friends for the past four years and have also been inventing and venturing together in our time at MIT). Already in high school, Steve had taken an interest in science and at the time was particularly interested in ways of generating hydrogen. His junior year he was looking at photoelectrolysis of sun light as a way to electrolyze water while simultaneously extracting energy in the form of electrical current. Going through the literature, he found that titanium dioxide semiconductors are great materials to do just that and so the 17 year-old teenager decided to make his own!
Set yourself a goal, try something, do it wrong, and keep trying until you get it right—that was certainly one lesson Steve had to learn right of the bat! Quickly he discovered that the material of choice had an extremely high melting point, which makes it complicated to render into usable forms. After many trials of blowtorches, explosive thermite reactions, even acids, he still had not found the right way to get what he wanted.
That meant, back to the drawing board, or in this case the Internet—albeit the early Internet (1999)! There he found another way of approaching his problem; he read about materials called aerogels made through a wet-chemistry technique called sol-gel processing, and so he thought, “Why not make titanium dioxide aerogels to make a semiconductor for photoelectrolysis?”
And at that point, a new question arose: “Can I make an aerogel?” Soon after, he started in on trying different techniques and, with the help of his former high school chemistry teacher, ordered the chemicals he needed to start to make silica aerogels—or so he thought. But the recipes he got from the Internet wouldn’t work and again Steve said to himself, I have to make my own!
The process was made up of two steps—first, making a gel in a beaker and second, extracting the liquid to turn it into the so-called aerogel. Making the necessary gels didn’t seem to work at first until by accident he found that a method which worked very well—instead of adding catalyst all at once, he broke the process into two steps. In fact, this way, he was able to control the gel time quite precisely, which seemed to be an advantage over current procedures at the time.
Now, to extract the liquid from the gel, he would need to perform a supercritical drying procedure (which is as dangerous and expensive as it sounds!) But this didn’t hold Steve back and rather was exactly why he wanted to do it! So he purchased high-pressure pipe components with the help of his dad, Teflon-taped and epoxied everything together, bought liquid carbon dioxide from a welding house nearby, and found that his system could hold the needed pressure but eventually the epoxy seals would fail and fly across the room. With time he improved the setup and got it welded to replace all the Teflon tape and glue.
But that was not enough for Steve, so he started to call scientists at Lawrence Livermore and asked them tons of questions, always extracting the bits of information that he needed to use his machine. After 20 trials trying to operate the so-called manuclave (or “manual autoclave”), everything finally started to work!
Although he didn’t make titanium dioxide semiconductors, he ended up building an autoclave and inventing a new manufacturing procedure for creating silica aerogel and instead
• Exhibited his work at the International Science and Engineering Fair, where he won 2nd place in Chemistry
• Received a patent for his autoclave design and the rapid gelation technique
• Won an Intel Achievement Award for doing research without the resources of a lab or mentor (in fact, one of the Intel Judges said: “We looked at using aerogels for integrated circuits a few years ago, but we couldn’t get the gel time fast enough!”)
• Won a free trip to Space Camp from NASA
• Won $2,500 for the United States Air Force
Today, he is a PhD candidate at MIT and his rapid gelation technique has been used for the study of aerogel production aboard zero-gravity flights performed by NASA. The length of each zero-gravity period during the flight is relatively short (only 23 seconds), but his technique allows the gel to form that fast.
Set yourself a goal, work hard, go back to the books if it doesn’t work, and then work even harder and you will win big!
In the next weeks my students and I will show you, how to build your own Multi-Flash. Here, a great example of a multi-flash photograph (Harold E. Edgerton):
Tennis Player
The famous "Piddler" also relies on a built-in strobe!
STROBE KIT – Intro
Components:
·Printer board
·3 potentiometers
·1 LCD
·1 switch
·1 taster
·1 power connector
All these things are located in a black case. Furthermore you need at least one LED-panel and of course a power supply.
LCD: displays the time between the flashes.
1: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the display brightness.
2: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the length of each flash (duty cycle).
3: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the time between the flashes.
LED PANELS
Each LED-Panel consists of ten LEDs. You can connect a maximum of four LED-Panels.
More to come in the following weeks!
The opening of the High-Speed Photography exhibition in North Carolina certainly was an event!
(Photo Courtesy of Martin Waugh).
Many of the big names in this art were visiting the opening:
Martin Waugh, who was an exhibitor at 2fast4u in April 2007, but who I never met in person and finally got to meet yesterday (Photo Courtesy of Ted Kinsman).
Roy Dunn (Photo Courtesy of Martin Waugh),
who seems to be the world’s best photographer of Hummingbirds in flight.
Loren Winters (Photo Courtesy of Ted Kinsman), who again showed some of his students most amazing works and discoveries!
Bob Edgerton, who brought many of his family members to the opening and gave a marvelous talk again about the life and work of his father.
Gus Kayafas, who I also never met in person before and who told most amazing stories about his work as the printer of Harold Edgerton.
Bob preparing his talk in the planetarium of the Science Center, where we would all present two to five of our photographs and give a panel discussion for the audience.
We are off to North Carolina to present the piddler to the Hickory Museum of Art for the opening of their High-Speed Photography exhibition (details will follow).
In the 3nd video you can follow the amazing chair challenge:
Sit down on a chair. Climb underneath the chair, come back out on the opposite side and sit back down. Without! ever touching the floor! Five people have been able to do this so far! Can you do it!?
