Walter Bender

I am passionate about making things for my use, and for the use of others. I am also passionate about the Media Lab—a place to think big and take risks.

Occam's razor is dull; complexity gives life its edge.

Though medieval philosopher William of Occam admonished us not to increase (beyond what is necessary) the complexity required to explain phenomena, this principle has only limited applicability as a guide for living a full life.

The Electronic Publishing group is exploring a constructionist approach to the development of personal and community publishing tools, with the hope that it will support iteration and reflection in ways that static tools do not. Through the medium of programming (design), we hypothesize that we will find an increase in the level of personal and community participation and appropriation.

Filtering of content to suit the needs of individuals and communities of special interests was an emphasis of the early days of the Web. We built systems to fine-tune and prioritize information based on criteria that included timeliness, importance, and relevance. Still, the expectations of the Internet consumer closely aligned with those of the traditional media consumer—the need for an editor, whether human or machine, is to reduce complexity and to strive for parsimony by exposing the essence of available information.

But we are beginning to expect more than efficient access to ideas— the flow of ideas must lead to coherent thinking and learning. Our goal is to more deeply engage the information consumer—to expand scope rather than to restrict it. While we are not willing to be spoon-fed, we are willing to wrestle with the most ham-fisted of technological tools, if these tools lead us to self-expression and critical thinking.

In keeping with Brian Smith's notions of "critical computing," we are concerned with the approaches to media that will support future solutions to social, cultural, and economic problems. We view journalism (and other forms of information expression) as a model for thinking, creating, and decision-making.

To achieve this engagement with information expression, we are exploiting a unique feature of electronic media: you can tinker under the hood. Every Web browser has a menu item labeled "View Source," which allows any piece of content on the Web to reveal itself and its inner structure. This means that reading and authoring become synonymous.

Authoring is only one component of a publishing ecosystem. We advocate embracing the entirety of authoring, editing, publishing, and consuming. We further advocate using programming as a means of facilitation. Specifically, we are developing new programming languages as "things to think with," in the tradition of the spreadsheet, Logo, EGGG, DBN, Agent Sheets, and Squeak.

Our attempts are to remove the barriers to programming within the domain of publishing by building into our languages a representation of domain knowledge, but also representations of local knowledge (that which dictates local cultures and norms) and knowledge about people (that which is invariant among us). We aim to make the means of expression accessible, without diminishing quality or complexity.