Michael Hawley

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Michael Hawley in Barcelona 2007
Michael Hawley in Barcelona 2007

Previously at MIT’s Media Laboratory, Michael Hawley is an artist and researcher working in the field of digital media. He is the founder of several research programs and projects including MIT's GO Expeditions program, the cofounder of the Things That Think research program, and founder of the nonprofit organization Friendly Planet. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Time, the New York Times, and several major television networks. His work at MIT has, in his own words, “sought to creatively stretch digital infrastructures, embedding intelligence into all sorts of artifacts and advancing the web of communications.”

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[edit] Biography

Hawley was born in November 1961 and grew up in New Providence, NJ, a suburb of New York City. He attended New Providence High School in 1979. As a teenager he had a job at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey), working in the linguistics department. He did his undergraduate work at Yale University in the areas of music and computer science; he went on to do his doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the early 90's, while working at NeXT, he was key in the development of the world's first digital library, creating digital versions of Shakespeare and other classics. From 1993-2002, he was on the faculty at MIT as the Dreyfoos chair, and from there he became Director of Special Projects at MIT's Media Laboratory. His work and research have spanned the topics of psychology, computer music, digital video editing, human-computer interfaces, documentary photography, and more. Hawley is also an amateur pianist; he won the Van Cliburn Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2002. Notably, his competition pieces included his own piano arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. He also accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma in performing the wedding march at the marriage of TV host and scientist Bill Nye and musician and author Blair Tindall at Richard Saul Wurman’s 2006 The Entertainment Gathering convention.

[edit] Notable works

Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom (2003)

The world's largest book, a photo documentary of the kingdom of Bhutan.

Michael Hawley's Bhutan (2003) - http://web.media.mit.edu/~mike/0305-ngs-bhutan.pdf

Article and photos for National Geographic.

Counter Intelligence (2001) – http://www.media.mit.edu/ci

Integrating high technology into the kitchen to foster a return to the “hearth” as the center of family life.

Toys of Tomorrow (2002:ended) - http://toys.media.mit.edu

Exploring and implementing technologies with several major toy companies to improve the way children learn and play.

Things That Think (2000) - http://ttt.media.mit.edu

Sponsor-driven effort to develop digitally augmented objects and environments.

[edit] Advisory and founding roles

[edit] References

[edit] External links