The Hi-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab has created something profoundly intriguing – a series of pop-up books with an added layer of interactivity.

While the books, in themselves, are certainly something to behold, they hint at a much deeper set of implications, namely: the use of paper-thin electronics that can convey a narrative that responds to either direct or indirect user input. These popables, as they’re named, in combination with technology that reads data from the user’s environment or portable devices, might in the near-term help realize dynamic, customized storytelling – or even something akin to immersive three-dimensional textbooks when integrated with augmented reality technologies.

Until that point, of course, you might simply enjoy them for what they are.

The WikiCity project is concerned with the real-time mapping of city dynamics. This mapping however is not limited to representing the city but instead becomes instantly an instrument for city inhabitants to base their actions and decisions upon in a better informed manner. In this way the real-time map changes the city context as well as that altered context changes the real-time map accordingly. This with the ultimate aim of leading to an overall increased efficiency and sustainability in making use of the city environment.

Despite the current troubling economic times, which affect the media industries and the academy alike, I can’t help but find myself personally optimistic. The primary reason, I would suspect, is that I am just naturally an optimistic person, or so I’ve been told. That can perhaps lead to some naivete, but I’ve always hoped to err toward finding the best possible outcome of a situation, or at least a guarded optimism.  I realize as well that my own personal optimism within the current economic climate is tempered by my own good fortune.  In my academic life, the publishing of a book project (on the current state and future of the soap opera industry) and my involvement in ongoing projects with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium has given me plenty of stimulating issues to mull over and have been quite intellectually fulfilling.  Meanwhile, I started a new career in the past two years in the public relations industry, working as an in-house academic of sorts to connect the work I’ve been doing in media studies with industry practice. That has likewise provided me with promising new projects and a fresh way of looking at issues I’ve long researched, making this a professionally rich and exciting time for me.  On a very personal note, I have a daughter who is coming any day now, and I have a strong support system of family, friends, and a wife of eight years this week that all contribute to my positive state of mind.

From a media studies perspective, I see trends like NBC’s continuing commitment to Friday Night Lights and realize that there are still commitments outside the economic.  Even in my own research on the current state of the soap opera industry, where Guiding Light has just been cancelled by CBS after being on the air on radio and then television since 1937, our book focuses on what’s still unique about the genre and why there is still cause for hope and ways to “save” the genre.  Online, new communities and initiatives have continued, and industry and academic sites and conferences are as vibrant as ever. If anything, the difficulties presented by the economy have made people feel more desire than ever to act, and to get fulfillment outside of just monetary compensation.  Combine with that the collective drive and intelligence pushed forward by the Obama Administration and a prevailing attitude that we can’t rely on government nor especially on corporations to take care of us but rather on our own communities and you have a grassroots sense of community that helps counteract the despair one would expect from following Wall Street.

In the industry, it’s no secret that times of economic uncertainty can also prove quite beneficial, weeding out outdated ways of thinking and clearing the path for the most innovative business models. For those companies that innovate during a down period, there are unprecedented possibilities, as many are finding, for instance, in new authentic and transparent ways of communicating online (to use two buzzwords I actually like).

In my mind, maintaining optimism throughout both one’s professional and personal lives requires having the proper balance of what’s important and not trying to live your professional life as if your personal self doesn’t exist. It requires taking on projects that you personally believe in and finding work, whether it is one’s “day job” or not, that is intellectually and emotionally fulfilling. It means having a good sense of humor and a strong sense of self. And it means finding professional and personal networks that one is loyal to, no matter who their current employer or what their current project is. In uncertain economic times, I feel blessed, personally and professionally, and I think there is much hope for the future if we all channel our collective energies into making the world a better place and doing work we are passionate about and driven by.

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Sam is Director of Customer Insights at Peppercom, and a Research Affiliate with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium. You can read a number of his contributions to the C3 weblog here.

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This post is a selection from The Optimist Conspectus – an ongoing not-for-profit attempt to both quantify and qualify resurgent optimism. To learn more or submit your own sources of optimism, click here.

To celebrate the institutions’ 150th anniversary, the MIT Museum is crowdsourcing its’ celebratory exhibition, asking users to nominate pieces from their substantial collection for display – 150 of which will ultimately be included.

It’s a wonderful idea, as befits a museum of this regard (it really is a priceless space – one often overlooked even by local residents), and not dissimilar to an idea espoused here with respect to the archives of the American Museum of Natural History.

Read more about MIT’s program here, or go straight to nominating. Better still, plan a visit to the museum itself and see Connections, a new series of works by the Sociable Media Group.

via Everything is Miscellaneous.

• cellar door: Demure Optimism
  Acknowledgement v. Optimism through the prism of fashion – though I think it reaches well beyond.
• “Technology” is the problem
  Helge Tenno follows up on McCluhan and Davies.
• Open plan vs. open to distractions « (almost) always thinking
  A strong argument in support of open floorplans for creative organizations.
• The Well-Constructed Document | Serial Consign
  Michael Place and stacked transparency. Beautiful to behold.
  (tags: design drawing graphic typography)
• Putting heads (and computers) together to solve global problems – MIT News Office
  Predictive solutions. Concept is within my grasp, but just barely.
• The Hofmeister Kink: A Lasting BMW Design Detail – New Media Campaigns
  Joel Sutherland on the staying power of little things. Easily one of the most fascinating things I've read in months.
• What Do You Mean? » House of Naked
  Evan at Naked wonders whether enjoyment is necessarily tethered to meaning (or, at least, finding meaning). I'm inclined to think not.
• This Much SADness | Serial Consign
  Greg Smith on a public art installation by Sung Lee Design. Gorgeous (and sad).
• Who Generates User-Generated Content?
  Mark Laporta reminds us that "user-generated content is as much a product of the space it’s created in, as it is of the users who create it". Good stuff.
• News from the Herd: You and me
  Deliciously biting take on youth marketing. Vicious…and dead-on. via Ruby Pseudo.