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Hard to say - but personally I think it's a positive that they went with an MIT^3. The Media Lab has many issues, but one of them is that it deliberately set i
by neffy 6y ago
Hard to say - but personally I think it's a positive that they went with an MIT^3. The Media Lab has many issues, but one of them is that it deliberately set itself aside from the main campus, and that attitude was part of what got them into this mess. You would also need to be an MIT insider to manage the byzantine way everybody does things there, and get moving quickly - an external person wouldn't have a chance on that score.
More interestingly, I hope this is also a signal that Space is back on the agenda in the US.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoYes, poor Joi Ito even felt the need to write some silly thesis to earn a doctorate just so he could fit in. But I don't see it as a positive. It just means more inbreeding. The goal for the Media Lab was to bring a different kind of person into MIT. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps the flashy demos were rather superficial. But if this just going to turn into an outpost of her old department and some folks from material science, I don't see that as adding anything to MIT.
- ghaff 6y agoI can see it both ways. Yes, they were always intended to be something different and were definitely the "new hotness" at one point. But, although good work has certainly come out of the Media Lab, when was the last time you saw them in the news other than for, well, that? Certainly not intended to be a knock on everyone at the Media Lab. But there was certainly a point when it was viewed as one of the places that was "inventing the future" as it said in the title of Stewart Brand's book. How much real impact has it had lately?