Today,
the founder and director of the distinguished MIT Media Lab -- and arguably
one of the founding fathers of the Information Age -- spends at least three
hours a day, seven days a week inhaling and exhaling E-messages with about
as much ceremony as he devotes to the act of breathing.
Whether
at work, home or abroad, Negroponte prides himself on answering all his
messages, usually within hours. "I'm incredibly hooked," he says. "Take
away my TV, refrigerator or car, but leave my online connection. I depend
on it enormously."
Which
is not to say that Negroponte is your basic computer dweeb in tweed. Bring
up the state of 20th-century cyberspace (as many people are wont to do
since his book, "Being Digital," was published last year), and he will
spin a web of terse--and sometimes obtuse--observations, predictions and
concerns, such as:
"The value of information about information can be greater than the value of the information itself. (American Airlines makes more from its reservation system than from carrying passengers.)"
"Videocassette-rental stores will go out of business within a decade. (It makes no sense to ship atoms when you can ship bits.)
"In the future, there will be almost as few humans browsing the Net as there are people using libraries today. Agents will be doing that for most of us."
And my favorite: "In human-to-computer interaction, your model of the computer is less telling than its model of your model of it. When this third-order model matches the first (your model of it), we can say that you know each other." (Really?, I murmur to myself ...this guy has lived in cyberspace so long he doesn't even talk like an earthling.)
Actually, it is simply
in Negroponte's nature (and architectural training) to want to zoom through
the technology and build something useful. Increasingly, he believes, computation
will be embedded into things like sneakers, cufflinks, toasters, chairs
and lamps. "Computing is not about computers anymore," Negroponte says.
"It is about living."
To usher in that era,
the Media Lab is launching a new research consortium called "Things That
Think" that will look at everyday objects in a radically new light. In
this vision, there are intelligent doorknobs that recognize you and open
the door so you don't have to put down your bags. Inside, the lights turn
on, and your CD player, sensing your need for relaxation, cues your favorite
Mozart piano sonata. The carpet uploads the day's news into your shoes
for personalized delivery to your glasses. Really.
Unlike most mortals,
Negroponte is in a position to make some of this stuff happen. His world-renowned
Media Lab is an interdisciplinary research hotbed spawning way-leading-edge
ideas at the convergence of computers, telecommunication, learning and
entertainment. Negroponte is fond of saying that all communication media
and technologies are poised for redefinition, and his life's work is to
help do the redefining.
Which, perhaps, explains
why he doesn't have an office. What could be more impressive to the Digital
Rich and Famous that regularly tour the Media Lab and fund its research
than to see the director eschew both paper and the office in which to store
it. Imagine their envy as he shows off his Media Lab closet, home of his
10-year-old dinosaur computer that he uses to connect to the Internet when
he's not traveling. (He takes two Powerbooks and a pack of batteries with
him on the road.) "The
future is about computer understanding," he wrote in his November 1995
Wired magazine column. "It's not about pixels, but objects. It is not about
ASCII, but meaning. For this reason, an incredibly difficult problem like
'computers with common sense' is a major part of the future for the Media
Lab. This is not a new problem, just a hard one. In fact, it's so hard
it has been more or less dismissed as impossible. What better challenge
is there?"
In "Being Digital"
you use two little words--bits and atoms--to help readers understand some
of the digital change we're experiencing. How do you define the two terms,
and why is it important to distinguish the two?
Atoms are things you
can touch, such as newspapers, magazines, books and videocassettes. Bits
are the smallest atomic element in the DNA of information. A bit has no
color, size or weight; it can travel at the speed of light. We are definitely
in the information age, but most information is still delivered in the
form of atoms. Our mind-set about value is driven by atoms. Companies declare
their atoms on a balance sheet, but their bits, often far more valuable,
do not appear. Strange, but true.
The change from bits
to atoms is uncontrollable and unstoppable, and this is causing immense
changes. When you borrow a book (atoms) from the library shelf, no one
else can read the book until you bring it back.
When you check out
a book online (bits), the bits remain, accessible to someone else. As more
and more things now delivered as atoms become delivered as bits, all this
information becomes instantaneously and inexpensively accessible. When
information is embodied in atoms, there is a need for all sorts of industrial-age
means and huge corporations for delivery. But when the same information
is shipped as bits, the traditional big guys are no longer needed. In a
world of bits, you can be small and global at the same time.
You have long said
the fax machine has been a serious blemish on the computer landscape. Why?
The fax machine allows
us to ship pages in exactly the wrong way ... atoms instead of bits. The
fax is a step backward because it is nothing more than a picture of something.
It is no more computer-readable than the page you're reading this on. The
same information delivered as an E-mail message takes much less bandwidth
to send, plus it can be retrieved, filtered, sorted and edited. You can't
do anything with a fax except read it.
Were you surprised
about the explosion of the Internet today and the ramifications?
No one predicted what's
happening, not even the founders of the Internet. I think we're all underestimating
the meaning and impact of it. The number of Web sites is doubling every
53 days. This is not a small event.
Do you agree with
John Perry Barlow that this is the greatest transforming event since fire?
John's pretty dramatic.
I think there is something to that. I think what's very telling is the
way that people in general are responding to it. It turns out that the
digital homeless of the United States tend to be very intelligent, affluent
and well educated. It's really the kids, and ironically the elderly, who
are getting online very fast. The big slug of people in between, who tend
to be the decision makers, executives and politicians, are really out of
it. They are not part of this digital world; they don't understand it.
You've offered
this advice to digital illiterates trying to learn the ABCs of cyberspace:
"Hire a kid."
Because they're wired
at birth. The demographics of computing are much closer to rock music than
theater. It's totally generational. The information haves and have-nots
have nothing to do with economic distinctions anymore. The control bits
of the digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the young.
And actually, nothing could make me happier.
Do you worry about
people using this advanced communication technology to disseminate disinformation
rather than information?
Any medium of expression
can express things that are not true as well as true, you know. Just because
they are bits doesn't make them truer than if they weren't bits.
How might the Internet
change the role of the journalist?
Journalists will have
to learn how to write stories in more than one dimension. Right now, you're
off the hook. You can basically make one version of an article and put
it to bed. Tomorrow, you'll have to report the story from multiple perspectives,
which will be at least twice the work . . . but very important work. In
fact, one of the professions that's probably going to increase in terms
of number of jobs per capita will be journalism.
Is that partly
because of the increasing need for more perspective in a rapidly changing
world?
Absolutely . . . somebody's
got to filter the onslaught of bits. The personal information filter business
will be a big business of the future.
What is your definition
of information?
That's in the eyes
of the beholder. It is that which is meaningful to a particular person
at a particular time. If it's not meaningful people don't call it "information."
But again, information and understanding do not necessarily go hand in
hand. I'm personally more interested in the other side of the equation,
which is the understanding. I think it would be nice to spend a little
bit more time on the understanding.
I'm curious about
your interaction with computers. Is it a love relationship . . . or love/hate?
I think my interaction
with computers is probably like yours is with air. In other words, I don't
think about it until it's missing. I just use it all the time. I'm on a
keyboard three to four hours a day, minimum, every day of the week, every
week of the year.
Are you ever frustrated
by computers, with all the new upgrades and gadgets?
Oh, sure. I'm frustrated
that the last six years of advances in personal computing have resulted
in diminishing returns on performance. My old Mac 512K went "boing" and
it was on. My new computer takes forever to start up. Each new release
of an application seems to come with an army of tiny icons, the meanings
of which I no longer remember. I'm also frequently frustrated by the fact
that I can make a tiny typing error and it doesn't understand my command.
Are you satisfied
with the progress being made in the human-machine interface area?
I've spent my life
worrying about that, and no . . . human input to machines is still Paleolithic.
That's why so many of our parents and friends aren't wired. We give a great
deal of attention to human interface today, but almost solely from the
perspective of making it easier for people to use computers. I think it's
time to reverse this thinking and ask how to make it easier for computers
to deal with people, not the reverse.
I advise people to
put yourself in the place of your computer. You can lift your hands from
a computer keyboard and your computer does not know whether the pause is
for momentary reflection or for lunch. Your face is, in effect, your display
device; it makes no sense for the computer to remain blind to it. Computers
are still vision- and hearing-impaired. It is time we moved on this interface
backwater.
Do we know the
effect of working with a computer over time? Does it affect such things
as human thinking patterns, decision making and writing?
There are many answers
to that question. I can give you examples of where autistic children use
computers to communicate with other children over the Net and gain so much
confidence from doing that that they find they can talk to adults in ways
they never could before. I can give you examples of somebody like myself
who has been on the Internet for 25 years. It makes my life very independent
of space and time. In other words, it isn't a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday
life. It's much more integrated. Sometimes I'll stay in my pajamas until
noon. Sometimes I work all weekend. That kind of lifestyle might have been
associated with a studio painter at the turn of the century. Now it's becoming
part of . . . banking. There are so many effects. I find myself very impatient
by having to wait that millisecond while the computer brings up the next
screen.
Does this impatience
carry over into your personal life, I wonder?
That's a very interesting
question . . . sort of do you tolerate fools less? Maybe. It's a nice thought.
How far are we
on this continuum toward intelligent machines?
Thinking of it as a
continuum is exactly the right way to do it. This continuum is a mile long
and we're only a few inches down that mile. There's a long way to go.
Are the PC and
TV becoming one machine...a PC-TV?
I may be a little bit
PC-centric on this question, but it makes no sense to think of the TV and
the PC as anything but one and the same. They are both processors; they
both deal with bits. The real difference is in the viewing experience.
The TV set is a PC you look at from the sofa. It's more important to focus
on the broadcasting side. We won't be pushing bits at people like we do
today.
The Media Lab is
now 10 years old. Is it just beginning to be understood?
Whether the Media Lab
is understood or not understood is not something I've paid much attention
to. I think that it's fair to say that 10 years ago we were considered
sort of all icing and no cake. Now 10 years later I think people are understanding
that what we're dealing with is pretty deep. Just because it sounded like
color in motion doesn't mean that it's superficial topping.
Where do good new
ideas come from?
That's simple . . .
from differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best
way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures and disciplines. That's
why you'll find at the Media Lab a mix of engineers, artists and scientists
who collaborate, not compete.
Stewart Brand's
book on the Media Lab quotes computer visionary Alan Kay saying that the
way to improve is to get the first good image of the thing that is least
prejudiced by what we already know. Do you have any advice on how to do
that?
Alan is brilliant in
his remarks like that. The corollary to that, which I would credit to Marvin
Minsky, is that the way to implement what Alan said is to make sure that
you understand things from more than one perspective. This is something
that corporations are very bad at doing.
Do you have advice
on that?
Seeing things from
more than one perspective? I think it requires looking outward more than
companies do, and I hope the Internet and the Web helps that. Corporate
America spends too much time in meetings with itself. New concepts and
big steps forward come from left field. The global landscape is the most
fertile ground for new ideas.
What's the best
future that you can imagine? What would it be composed of?
The best future would
first be global, not nationalistic. It's certainly a future that has a
lot more communication and consequently less tension. A lot of our problems--from
fundamentalism to bigotry to all sorts of other nasty things come from
a lack of communication. We're not going to solve every problem in the
world with better communication, but clearly an interconnected world is
going to be better than a world that's not. I think you're going to see
the differences between the haves and have-nots shrinking over time, and
that to me would make a really wonderful place to be.