Communications - July 2011

“Social media
makes me feel
like an observer,”
says Amr hassanein.
“It gives me a sense
of what’s going
on around me
at all times.”

of interest include Hands Along the Nile Development Services, a nonprofit organization that promotes intercul-tural understanding between the U.S. and his native Egypt. Now working as a freelance producer for ABC News, Hassanein is also using Facebook as a vehicle to showcase his own firsthand accounts of political unrest in the Middle East. Recently, for example, ABC sent him to Libya to assist with news coverage of the nation’s conflict.

“My usage of social media tools is
from a neutral side,” says Hassanein,
sounding very much like an objective
news reporter. “Social media makes
me feel like an observer. It gives me
a sense of what’s going on around me
at all times. The impact events here
in Egypt, like the demonstrations,
were organized and known through
Facebook.”
Still, it’s impossible to live through
these times without getting caught up
in the politics. His sympathies remain
with We Are All Khaled Said, an anti-
torture group that uses social media
to allow voices of the Arab uprisings to
be heard. (Sample Facebook post from
the group: “Gaddafi has vowed it will
be a ‘long war’ in Libya. Let’s hope his
[sic] wrong & Gaddafi’s massacre of his
people will end very soon.”)

Hassanein recognizes that social me-
dia provides an opportunity to deliver an
unfiltered message to the world about
local developments, as well as debunk
stereotypes about people of the Middle
East. Yet, aside from this bigger-picture
purpose, these tools allow him to easily
remain in close contact with loved ones
and work associates.

Max
Mathews,
1926–2011

max mathews, often referred to as the father of computer music, died on April 21 in san Francisco at the age of 84 from pneumonia. in 1957, as an engineer at Bell Laboratories, mathews wrote the world’s first program for playing synthesized music on a computer. the 17-second composition—played on an iBm 704 mainframe— served as a foundation for much of today’s music.

“mathews was above all a
visionary and an innovator,”
says michael edwards, program
director for the school of Arts,
Culture and environment at the
university of edinburgh (and
author of this month’s cover
story; see p. 58). “his legacy is felt
every day.”
At the time of his death,
mathews was a music professor
in the Center for Computer
research in music and Acoustics
at stanford university.