Black ships and samurai In 1853 four ships under Commodore Perry anchored off the coast of Japan against the wishes of the Japanese. According to historian John Dower, "This initial encounter between the United States and Japan was eye-opening for all concerned, involving a dramatic confrontation between peoples of different racial, cultural, and historical backgrounds. We can literally see this encounter of "East" and "West" unfold through the splendid, yet little known, artwork produced by each side at the time." This beautiful exhibition includes many examples of this artwork, juxtaposing scenes of the encounter from Japanese and American artists' points of view. (Part of MIT's open courseware initiative.)
posted by carter on Mar 14, 2004 - 18 comments

From MIT's Media Lab: "The Corporate Fallout Detector reads barcodes off of consumer products, and makes a noise similar to a gieger counter of varying intensity based on the social or environmental record of the company that produces the product"
posted by sharksandwich on Jul 25, 2003 - 18 comments

Alien Equipment
Turning immigrants into cyborgs. A small video monitor and loudspeakers are installed at the center of the instrument and in front of the user's mouth. The monitor and the loudspeakers replace the real act of speech with an audio-visual broadcast of pre-recorded statements.
posted by riley370 on Nov 6, 2002 - 13 comments

MIT's R&D for the US Army of the future appears to be based on a comic book.
posted by dchase on Aug 28, 2002 - 31 comments

Lying with video. Researchers at MIT have created videos of people uttering sentences they never said that consistently fool viewers and are accepted by them as real. Once upon a time, it was a lot harder to be false with film, but whether the medium will be in any way trustworthy going forward seems doubtful. What will it mean when you can't even believe your own eyes?
posted by zoopraxiscope on May 15, 2002 - 17 comments

Teflon: The biggest accidental invention of the 20th Century. I was wondering how if nothing sticks to Teflon, then how does it stick to the bottom of a frying pan? This search lead me to a really cool site, MIT's Inventor Archives. Organized alphabetically by inventors' last names and also by invention, it's a great jumping-off spot for research information and observing the interconnectivity that keeps research going.
posted by Mack Twain on Apr 26, 2002 - 11 comments

Boy quits school at 7, becomes MIT professor at 20. Is alternative education a good idea? This article seems much more positive than another recent boy-genius post. It appears that most reporters assume that child prodigies are antisocial and that their parents are over-ambitious (they use negatively-connotated synonyms of those terms).
posted by alex3005 on Feb 17, 2002 - 20 comments

MIT's Erotic Computation Group. "By developing advanced sexual appliances and techniques, we seek to broaden the range of human amative expression and heighten our potential for sexual gratification." Good to see that at least some people are doing research that will benefit all mankind.
posted by Eloquence on Nov 25, 2001 - 22 comments

This is either a hack or the people running M.I.T.'s web site have a nice sense of humor. I suspect it's the latter.
posted by rdr on Nov 6, 2001 - 18 comments

Stanford, MIT, Duke, and UNC refuse to block Napster. Wahoo! Go Stanford!
posted by hobbes on Sep 22, 2000 - 4 comments

Scientific American has an interesting article on brand loyalty on the web. Researchers at MIT are concluding that people stick with familiar commerce sites. Even though the web is supposed to enable shoppers to choose from any site, they instead stay with their favorite, even paying more for the security and familiarity. The researchers also concluded that $20 off coupons and bargain deals aren't going to bankrupt top sites, because it's a considerable investment (from a user's prospective) to shop at a new commerce site, and the offers offset that cost accordingly.
posted by mathowie on Feb 21, 2000 - 0 comments