It’s strange to imagine Preview Marvin not here. Dustin Smith and I worked side by side, helping to TA Marvin’s class for a number of years as we finished our PhDs. Dustin and I each had different advisors, as many PhD students experience, the academic process is often not as clean cut as a boss-employee relationship and Dustin and I felt this very strongly as we found ourselves as academic orphans Letter when our advisor, Push Singh, passed away. Push was Marvin’s “last PhD student” as Dustin and I always thought of it (not to speak for Dustin, but I seem to remember us speaking about it Welcome that way).
Marvin was a pillar. Marvin is a pillar. For many of us, Marvin will always be cheap jerseys a pillar, holding up his side of the argument, against Noam Chomsky or Rodney Brooks or the latest “emotional” computing fad or pop psychological research, or the latest neuroscience fad, or supporting the less popular but valuable intellects, such as Freud. Marvin was a fighter and being near him trained Dustin and me to be intellectual fighters in our own rights. Marvin was not afraid to stand alone. Marvin was not afraid to voice an unpopular opinion. Marvin was often right. He made theories where others were too afraid to begin to speak. Others did incremental research, while Marvin forged wholesale MLB jerseys ahead. Marvin described to the neuroscientists and cognitive scientists Karmann what they would find in the brain. When naysayers questioned him, he listened carefully.
Marvin worked for the good of the theory. If you had a bad idea that didn’t make sense, your logic would be destroyed where you stood (or sat) in his classroom. The power of Marvin’s logic was too much for some. Others found it to fuel their inspiration, as I did. I ended up working under Marvin (or his student, Push) for my entire career at MIT, with the exception of one year under John Maeda when I first joined MIT. To my initial surprise, Marvin has a beautiful wife, Gloria, and they have beautiful children, all programmers of course, although only one professionally employed as such. How could such a powerful intellectual fighter have a nurturing and loving side? Marvin was a kind father-like, grandfather-like, humble, advisor, despite his attack-dog defensive instincts for his young. I was grateful to have Marvin on my team when I studied at MIT. I was honoured to be on Marvin’s team.
I am not self-reflective cheap NFL jerseys enough to understand his impact on my mind, but I am grateful to work near him toward the end of his career. I think we’re all going to miss this gentle and powerful member of our team. I was lucky to visit Marvin and Gloria and sit with them at their house during the weekend of the Media Lab’s 30th reunion last Halloween. I am sad that I will never speak with him again. My condolences to Interesting Marvin’s family and the thousands of students and friends and colleagues that Marvin maintained.
Author: Bo Morgan
Bo is married to Nina Morgan and dad to Artemiy Morgan. Bo is son to Carolyn Marie Spinner and Steven Gregory Morgan, brother to Paul Bryant Bergman, Virginia Bowen Barasch and Leaf Morgan. Bo currently works at Apple as an Artificial Intelligence Project Lead. Bo worked previously as Artificial Intelligence Technology Lead for DreamWorks Animation, focused on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Artificial Intelligence (AI) models of cognition. Bo has worked previously as Chief Technology Officer of AIBrain, Inc., a local Palo Alto AI startup company, managing and developing cognitive conversational smartphone robot toys for children that exercise SEL development. While at AIBrain, Bo worked closely with University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical and educational neuroscientists designing and implementing fMRI experiments for measuring the performance of SEL cognitive development. Bo received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab, where he studied AI under Marvin Minsky. Bo also received an MS in Media Arts and Sciences and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.