From Lead Users to open-source innovation, Eric Von Hippel observed and analysed how creative individuals share knowledge and organize its commodification. All his books are on-line and free to download on http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/

Paul Mijksenaar, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Paul is a great graphic and experience designer that created many navigation systems in Airport (Schiphol, JFK, The Terminal movie), Hospitals, and Transport (Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, New York City Transit).

Hiroshi, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Hiroshi Ishii, my boss at the Media Lab. Originally working in CMC, he was then asked by Alan Kay and Nicolas Negroponte to join the lab and to reBoot! His work in establishing tangible bits as a major interaction paradigm is remarkable. Some of his works here.

Mechatronics Hand, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Yesterday, Lucy Suchman and our class of computing anthropology visited cynthia’s robot group at the Media Lab. Her class examines the foundations of cybernetics and the socio-technical implications of the ideologies and power systems that led to this field in the 20th century. More generally, her works at Xerox PARC in the last twenty years manifested how technological imaginary is crafted by designers and detailed many of the complex narrative assumptions that drive their creative process.

Other pictures from the trip, and some of the robots we’ve met :

Chuck Hoberman, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Chuck Hoberman, engineer and inventor gave a talk today at the Media Lab and at GSD. His amazing work uses nature as inspiration to create living building that react to the conditions of their environment.

I had a nice conversation with Jesper Juul, researcher at MIT Gambit Lab, a collaboration between Singapore and Cambridge. They produce very interesting new kind of games narratives and mechanics. His blog is called the Ludologist.

20090120_0130, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Marcelo Coelho gave today a lecture on responsive materials for MAS672 class at MIT Media Lab. Here are some notes linked to his presentation on new kind of materials.

Two big class of materials

Property Changing (e.g. Thermochromics)
Energy Exchanging (e.g. Photovoltaics)

They support i/o capabilities (transducing), some example are:

Composites

Textiles, papers, foams, etc.

SMA – Shape Memory Materials

Fan and Schodek concept of shape shifting furniture

Martensite to Austenite – Temperature hysteresis – transitions

Chemistry in the toy store

Gijs, originally uploaded by jeanbaptisteparis.

Gijs Bakker, designer and founder of Droog in Amsterdam did a short intervention two days ago in Cambridge. His influential theoretical writings and playful performative artefacts inspire designers all over the world. More infos at www.gijsbakker.com/ and www.droogdesign.nl/

A interesting talk about rapid prototyping of buildings! Behrokh Khoshnevis is a true inventor, encompassing the many disciplins of creativity, from engineering to philosophy, architecture and design.

The nature of construction has remained intensely manual throughout recorded history. Unlike in manufacturing, the growth of automation in construction has been slow. A promising new automation approach is Contour Crafting (CC). Invented by Behrokh Khoshnevis, Contour Crafting is a mega-scale fabrication process aiming at automated construction of whole structures as well as subcomponents.

The potential of CC became evident from investigations and experiments with materials and geometries. Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses may be constructed automatically in a single run with all plumbing and electrical utilities imbedded in each house; yet each could be a different design.

The implication is especially profound for emergency shelter construction and low income housing. NASA is exploring possible application of CC in building on other planets. This new mode of construction will be one of the very few feasible approaches for building on planets such as Moon and Mars, which are being targeted for human colonization before the end of the century. CC has received international attention and could soon revolutionize the construction industry.