Igoe’s List + Descendant

Igoe’s List

Overall I can get behind the idea of expanding interaction modes beyond these rather than refining them. I have to admit I’m rather partial to gloves, and might be tempted to make a case for making gloves an element of something a bit more ambitious… we’ll see how that goes.

A couple of things came to mind when scrolling down this list that others might be interested in.

Video mirror / mechanical pixels: https://breakfastny.com/brixels

gloves, gestures, and my last job: Oblong Industries + g-speak

Not from the list, but worth checking out considering our theme: Access+Ability

Descendant (Milo goes to space)

What jumped out at me most was this line:

“There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.”

While Banks (or the narrator in his story) refer to this as a hoary adage in whatever century they live, I am quite fond of this idea. There’s a lot of (overblown) talk about machines powered by AI taking all of our jobs, and perhaps wiping us out while they’re at it, but I am a bit more optimistic. I expect that machines will simply get better at extending our capabilities.

While ultimately our hero met his demise (sorry for the spoiler), his suit served him for over a century, kept him alive far longer than he has any right to have lived, and even made efforts to improve his emotional state. My goal at CMU (and beyond) is to make things that help expand people’s capabilities, and to teach machines empathy much like the suit in this story.

Author: Matt Franklin

I'm a recovering engineer + sales guy... BSEE from UMD 2004, and then 15 years of working with signal processing, AV, control systems, networking, and other gadgetry (mostly B2B). Now I'm in the Master of Human-Computer Interaction program, graduating in August 2020. I have pretty solid experience with: - Linux - audio - video - rs232/422/485/midi/dmx protocols - sketchup and other cad tools - soldering - music (mostly guitar, but others too) - general troubleshooting - networking (wired + wireless) - signal processing - streaming video/audio - python I have some experience with or am mediocre at: - woodworking - welding - laser cutting - sewing - reverse engineering - ML (none really but I'm currently in a class) - some javascript - rusty with C++ and Java, but used to be decent - tube amplifiers - RF

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