3 ms·

I'll repeat and extend what I've said in several other Media Lab posts. The lab has over its lifetime been a place where the creative arts, computer science, a

by mhalle 7y ago

I'll repeat and extend what I've said in several other Media Lab posts. The lab has over its lifetime been a place where the creative arts, computer science, and popular culture have come together. Have there been demos of ideas that didn't, or possibly even couldn't, work? Yes. Has the placed helped shape the connected world we live in? Yes. Has real stuff come out of it? Yes. Semour Papert and Mitchel Resnick are luminaries who helped define the landscape of computation and play for kids. E Ink came out of the lab. Todd Machover has been influential in shaping technology in music (Guitar Hero was developed by some of his students). Professors Muriel Cooper and John Maeda have had similar impact in technology and graphics arts and design. Steve Benton's Spatial Imaging Group and its student diaspora had a huge influence on the holography and 3D display world. We developed full color reflection holography, the first holographic video system, and the first image predistortion algorithms for light fields. Our 1 meter sq. hologram was at the time the world's largest computer generated 3D display. Unfortunately, Steve died pre-Google, and his contributions are not fully recognized. I was at the lab a long time ago (from its opening in 1985 until 1997). What made it unique at the time was breaking down the barriers between computation, technology, creative arts, and popular culture in a way that seems so natural now. On a campus where hundreds of other PhD students seemed to be working on amazing research on very detailed topics, we were building pieces of the future and demoing them daily to industry and lay people alike. That wasn't considered hard science at a place like MIT, but the ultimate impact on society was huge. One other area of huge but unsung impact was speech technology. Chris Schmandt's Speech Research Group group envisioned and developed audio assistants that paved the way for Siri and Alexa. His students and research have also helped shape an entire field. As for Nicolas Negroponte, he started the lab understanding that corporations were going to drive the computation and Internet revolution, while the rest of MIT was primarily government/defense funded. I have no doubt that that insight accelerated bringing technologies to market that we now consider ubiquitous. The current funding controversy was long after my time, as is the current work of the lab. There's just plenty of innovation in the history of the lab.

bbanyc 7y ago
I was there during the '00s. I'll admit my hostile attitude is partly sour grapes on my part, since I deservedly flunked out (otherwise known as getting a master's). But nearly all the bad press the lab has been getting lately rings true to me. Thinking back to how little of what I saw there turned into any kind of practical advances or useful products in the years since...what was the point? And of course I'm horrified at the source of so much of the funding. But then I've also been souring on the value of academia and research in general. "Publish or perish" leads to a lot of garbage getting published, as increasingly large amounts of money are thrown at increasingly small results. There's just not enough scientific truth to go around. The Media Lab, being particularly prominent and press-friendly, has this worse than many other places, but it's a problem everywhere.
- omegaworks 7y ago
  >There's just not enough scientific truth to go around. There's plenty of truth, just not enough resources. It's learned behavior, the scrounging and sensationalization, that has developed in response to larger forces driving societal investment away from academia.
sytelus 7y ago
I bet many people at MediaLab knew what was going on in OpenAg. Research world is small and these are the kind of things people cannot help but internally talk about. We now live in the world of instant popularity and power. Once you have good affiliation and can make big claims, you can count on getting on late night shows, TED, 60 minutes, NYT etc. Corrupt people fully leverage this media circus to become a force to get new funding, make org wide decisions, sit on boards and committees. I bet there are few other "Theranos" at MediaLab and everyone knows who they are. The question is not that whole lab was corrupt but the fact that lab culture allowed and even perhaps embraced these corrupt groups to exist and grow.
patrec 7y ago
> Semour Papert and Mitchel Resnick are luminaries who helped define the landscape of computation and play for kids. Have Papert or Resnick done anything in the field of compuation and play for kids that stands up to critical empirical evaluation?

by mhalle 7y ago

bbanyc 7y ago

I was there during the '00s. I'll admit my hostile attitude is partly sour grapes on my part, since I deservedly flunked out (otherwise known as getting a master's). But nearly all the bad press the lab has been getting lately rings true to me. Thinking back to how little of what I saw there turned into any kind of practical advances or useful products in the years since...what was the point? And of course I'm horrified at the source of so much of the funding. But then I've also been souring on the value of academia and research in general. "Publish or perish" leads to a lot of garbage getting published, as increasingly large amounts of money are thrown at increasingly small results. There's just not enough scientific truth to go around. The Media Lab, being particularly prominent and press-friendly, has this worse than many other places, but it's a problem everywhere.

omegaworks 7y ago
>There's just not enough scientific truth to go around. There's plenty of truth, just not enough resources. It's learned behavior, the scrounging and sensationalization, that has developed in response to larger forces driving societal investment away from academia.

sytelus 7y ago

I bet many people at MediaLab knew what was going on in OpenAg. Research world is small and these are the kind of things people cannot help but internally talk about. We now live in the world of instant popularity and power. Once you have good affiliation and can make big claims, you can count on getting on late night shows, TED, 60 minutes, NYT etc. Corrupt people fully leverage this media circus to become a force to get new funding, make org wide decisions, sit on boards and committees. I bet there are few other "Theranos" at MediaLab and everyone knows who they are. The question is not that whole lab was corrupt but the fact that lab culture allowed and even perhaps embraced these corrupt groups to exist and grow.

patrec 7y ago

> Semour Papert and Mitchel Resnick are luminaries who helped define the landscape of computation and play for kids. Have Papert or Resnick done anything in the field of compuation and play for kids that stands up to critical empirical evaluation?