Programming by example (or by demonstration) is a technique for teaching the computer new behavior by demonstrating actions on concrete examples. The system records user actions and generalizes a program that can be used in new examples.

MIT. Affective computing, texture and pattern modeling, video and image browsing, retrieval and annotation.

MIT Media Lab. Gesture and narrative language, animated agents, intonation, facial expression, computer vision.

Summarizes a bits vs. books argument. [Wired]

His page. One of the pioneers of artificial intelligence; a significant contributor to cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, optics (microscopy). Published writings and links to research groups. [MIT Media Lab]

Papert was a founding faculty member of the Media Lab, and now works there part-time. The Media Lab site has been hard to reach lately and is often inaccessible, but be patient and keep at it: it is well worthwhile.

Reading list for an MIT seminar, most of the mentioned publications are directly available on their web server or linked to Amazon's book section.

University project describing a cheap wireless Linux palmtop using both open source hardware and software.