world's largest book

Rumor is (and I just found this out), my former MIT Media Lab thesis advisor is working on creating the world's largest book. (He apparently called up Jeff Bezos and said something to the effect of "How would you like to be the world's largest book, store?")

Apparently, the largest book in the Library of Congress (John James Audubon's Birds of America) is over 1m tall, and contains "life-sized illustrations" of many birds. My thesis advisor wants to create something that showcases life sized photos of the many people in far-off places he's been to, and hence, he plans to create a book 7 feet tall.

I loved working at the Media Lab and especially with Herr Doctor Professor Mike Hawley on Project Voyager. Coming in every day to work was like going to a high-tech Disneyland. There were so many toys to play with and things to learn and experiment with. (It was at the lab that I played with my first SLR digital camera and fell in love with taking pictures...since then, I always have a camera on me wherever I go and annoy everyone I know by snapping more photos than you can count).

Mike was always full of crazy ideas, and the world's largest book is the least of them. Every time I would propose a project to work on, he would give me a strange stare, and say, "That's not crazy or wild enough. You need to think REALLY big. Do something crazy and remarkable."

I miss the lab, and I miss all the crazy projects I had the opportunity to work on. At least I still try to think REALLY big things and work on crazy and remarkable projects.