4 ms·

Nah, the novel thing actually has to be implemented. Most of the projects at the Media Lab are not as novel as they seem. They just take some existing idea or

Nah, the novel thing actually has to be implemented. Most of the projects at the Media Lab are not as novel as they seem. They just take some existing idea or product and tweak it a little bit to seem more novel. SOME stuff is very novel but really not that much. But it's all implemented. It wouldn't be very interesting to say that you're going to make an animatronic teddy bear or a robot DJ and then not make it. I'm not really sure what you're getting at anymore.

amichail 18y ago
In traditional CS, you typically wait for others outside of CS to come up with a novel app (e.g., social networking) and then you try to make it better in some way. Entrepreneurs come up with the big ideas. Computer scientists tweak those ideas and try to come up with faster, more memory efficient, secure, better structured, etc. implementations. In fact, if a computer scientist is working on a novel app, then his/her work would not be considered important as he/she is not working on the solution to a well established problem.
- cperciva 18y ago
  In fact, if a computer scientist is working on a novel app, then his/her work would not be considered important as he/she is not working on the solution to a well established problem. Not at all. Computer scientists invent new problems all the time.
  - amichail 18y ago
    And their peers generally don't care. Also, consider the criteria for having a paper accepted at a prestigious conference. Generally, there must be a non-trivial proof of some sort or strong empirical evaluation. This is a great way to discourage people from submitting novel ideas that are hard to evaluate.
    - scott_s 18y ago
      Some means of demonstrating the fidelity of an idea - either through formal proof or empirical evaluation - is expected of all scientific and engineering papers. There are lots of interesting ideas that don't work. The value of knowing an interesting idea does work is enormous. Evaluating ideas is the basis of the scientific method.

amichail 18y ago

In traditional CS, you typically wait for others outside of CS to come up with a novel app (e.g., social networking) and then you try to make it better in some way. Entrepreneurs come up with the big ideas. Computer scientists tweak those ideas and try to come up with faster, more memory efficient, secure, better structured, etc. implementations. In fact, if a computer scientist is working on a novel app, then his/her work would not be considered important as he/she is not working on the solution to a well established problem.

cperciva 18y ago
In fact, if a computer scientist is working on a novel app, then his/her work would not be considered important as he/she is not working on the solution to a well established problem. Not at all. Computer scientists invent new problems all the time.
- amichail 18y ago
  And their peers generally don't care. Also, consider the criteria for having a paper accepted at a prestigious conference. Generally, there must be a non-trivial proof of some sort or strong empirical evaluation. This is a great way to discourage people from submitting novel ideas that are hard to evaluate.
  - scott_s 18y ago
    Some means of demonstrating the fidelity of an idea - either through formal proof or empirical evaluation - is expected of all scientific and engineering papers. There are lots of interesting ideas that don't work. The value of knowing an interesting idea does work is enormous. Evaluating ideas is the basis of the scientific method.