I am naturally introverted. Although I love interacting with people, I like to spend slightly more than half of my time working in a solitary way. I love programming; especially when I get to develop elegant programing solutions to complex problems.

Fortunately, the world is filled with complex problems, so this gives me an unlimited supply of interesting ways to spend my time. But there’s a catch. Like anyone who voluntarily signs up for a “Technology and Social Change” class, I have had to face an inconvenient truth:  Technology does not solve complex problems. Apply technology to a problem, and that problem becomes more complex. I want to believe that I can spend my time solving interesting technical problems, while simultaneously making the world a better place. In reality, it takes engaging with the world and the people in the world to make a positive impact.

I’m not the first introvert to figure this out. For many years, Zuckerberg was convinced that a more “connected” world is also a better world. From the outside, it looks like he is beginning to understand that Facebook has made the world more complicated, and has probably not made the world a better place to live. We all want to believe that solving complex programming challenges can map to solving societal challenges.

A wealth of research in anthropology and psychology suggest that people are not equipped to handle relationships at the scale of the internet. Consider the work of Robin Dunbar, who compared the brains and social patterns in primates, and extrapolated that animals are cognitively limited to maintaining approximately 150 meaningful relationships. Or the writings of economist E.F. Schumacher that convincingly illustrate how large scale institutions  negatively impact our quality of life while also ruining the environment.

It would appear that to make the world a better place we have to look up from our computer screens and engage with the world around us. Can I please just go back to writing code now?

My Story

I’m a 3rd year PhD. in the Opera of the Future Group here at the MIT Media Lab. I’m interested making art and music that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the internet. The democratization and diversification of media was one of the original utopian promises of the internet. We don’t have to look backwards very far to see the enthusiasm from Wired Magazine in the 90s and the libertarian internet ideals of John Perry Barlow. The reputation of the internet has soured since then. In reality, taste in popular music continues to narrow, and more and more music is distributed through fewer and fewer channels. Is this an inevitability? Is the future of music one where all content comes from Spotify, and success is measured by market share? One where the biggest platform with the most data mined from its users dominates the competition via the “network effect” popularized with the advent of the web 2.0? Surely if I just code the right solution, we can push things toward a diverse world of dynamic music and media? Can I please just go back to writing code now? This is a technical problem that requires a technical solution, right?