Music Technology in Education

This past Wednesday, I had the distinct pleasure of taking a tour of the MIT Media Lab along with my co-worker with the incredible Tod Machover serving as our guide. Seeing the inside of this building has always been a dream of mine, and I was not disappointed. The MIT Media Lab houses a unique program where graduate students from various disciplines join specific research groups, focusing their talents on one goal (though many might emerge from their work). So many incredible innovations have been born at the MIT Media Lab, especially within the wireless technology, Internet, robotics, and gaming worlds. Perhaps one of the most famous innovations to come out of the lab in recent years is the wildly popular GuitarHero game, which spun off to RockBand. In short, there is no shortage of creativity flowing through the building at any time. It is an exciting place to say the least.

We visited Tod Machover’s research group called Opera of the Future. When we entered their area of the lab, we were met by many fabulous instruments and innovations, all being actively worked on by a set of brilliant students. I won’t go into any specifics about the types of things the students were working on, but needless to say, my face hurt from smiling. I really look forward to seeing Tod’s project come to fruition. He is an incredible composer and visionary thinker on the role that technology can play in music making. After a tour of his area, Tod took us around the rest of the lab and all I kept saying was “wow”. To write specifically on everything we saw would take volumes, but there is a wonderful page on the MIT Media Lab site that has links to all of the research groups with tons of multimedia presentations on the projects the students are currently working on. Everything in that lab has potential to be on the shelves for consumers, and I am sure that quite a few things will make it - in about 5 years. I’m not sure that society is ready for everything I saw. but I sure am. Our lives in the future will be even more intertwined with technology, and the students in this program are the ones writing the framework for the future right now. I hope that in your future you have an opportunity to see what I saw last Wednesday. I am looking forward to going back to the lab in the near future. Perhaps I should head up there now…