Jezebel: mit

World's Con Artists: Yeah, We Know.

Sadie — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

Says an MIT researcher: "People are more likely to identify a designer handbag as authentic if the individual carrying it wears expensive clothes or has a certain aura that says rich person." [Bloomberg]

What Do People's Online "Personas" Say About Them?

Margaret — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:20:00 EDT

Personas, part of the Metropath(ologies) art installation on display at the MIT Museum, generates a visualization of a person's online identity. We entered a few famous names to see if the internet knows something about them that we don't.

The program scours the internet for information about the person and then fits them into a set of categories using an algorithmic process. Obviously from the results below, the process isn't perfect, but that's part of the point. The creators explain:

It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

In other words, it may be telling that one of Nadya Suleman's biggest categories is "fame," but "sports" winding up on Anna Wintour's profile probably means the computer misinterpreted combative phrases in articles about her.

You can check out what Personas reveals about your favorite (or unfavorite) people here. Feel free to share the results in the comments.

Click on the images below to make them larger:

Personas [MIT]

Why America Should Be Thankful Those Nice Cops Didn't Send Star Simpson Straight To The Morgue

Moe — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:00:55 EDT

Have you heard the one about the crazyhair Hawaiian who went to Boston Logan Airport with a bunch of play-doh in her hands and a bomby-looking thing strapped to her hoodie that she said was just an art project but then she turned out to be totally smart enough to make an actual bomb? Yeah, we weren't sure what to make of the whole thing either, except for like, "Star Simpson," what a name; and um, the Massachusetts state police really aren't taking any measures not to sound like they've been overdosing on anabolic steroids, have they? (And also, is this prank more or less funny if she was aware that two al Qaeda camp alums actually hijacked a Turkish plane using a fake bomb that turned out to be play-doh last month?) So anyway, we were wondering to ourselves, she's probs not against us, but is she with us? Do we care? And then we read about Star's latest project at MIT on her online resume:

MIT Media Lab, Personal Robots Group Spring 2007
Worked to construct and deploy the first Autom, a socially-interacting robot designed to encourage people to meet their weight loss goals by tracking and encouraging their efforts. This project became the company Intuitive Automat

Okay, she's so with us. Call us when you get out of custody, Star! We've got ten pounds that a videographer who would love to film a robot help us shed. Though if you really want to do a service to your country, call Britney Spears!

Fake Bomber Has An MIT Web Page (That Hasn't Been Accessible Since Radar Put This Damn Story Up)