The first time I walked into the Media Lab building at MIT I was filled with as sense of awe, but also an unexpected feeling of somehow coming home. I sat for quite a long while in an interior courtyard on the second floor gazing up at the glass windows of labs. Many of the them were two stories, stacked together like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle: The first floor of one lab connecting via spiral staircase to the second floor of another. The architecture encouraged peripheral vision—my favorite! Then some students rolled out a samovar for afternoon tea with a side of junk food and I seriously considered missing my flight home to begin a new life as a Media Lab stowaway.
Media Lab was founded in the 1980s as a place for the university's misfits to pursue the kinds of ideas and projects that simply couldn't be shoe-horned into departmental missions. With some key funding by Steve Jobs when he was between jobs, the Lab gained a foothold and went on to become a legend. Perhaps even more remarkable is that it has managed to maintain a perch on the cutting edge. Famously "anti-disciplinary," it is also in a sense anti-institutional. Just when you think you know what Media Lab does, it goes and does something else.
Media Lab "looks for spaces between and beyond disciplines," explains Joi Ito, the director for the last half dozen years. "Can we fund those crazy ideas that in retrospect seem obvious?"
The short answer is Yes! For details, watch the video. (Related: Joi Ito's book, co-authored with Jeff Howe, "Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future")
Media Lab was founded in the 1980s as a place for the university's misfits to pursue the kinds of ideas and projects that simply couldn't be shoe-horned into departmental missions. With some key funding by Steve Jobs when he was between jobs, the Lab gained a foothold and went on to become a legend. Perhaps even more remarkable is that it has managed to maintain a perch on the cutting edge. Famously "anti-disciplinary," it is also in a sense anti-institutional. Just when you think you know what Media Lab does, it goes and does something else.
Media Lab "looks for spaces between and beyond disciplines," explains Joi Ito, the director for the last half dozen years. "Can we fund those crazy ideas that in retrospect seem obvious?"
The short answer is Yes! For details, watch the video. (Related: Joi Ito's book, co-authored with Jeff Howe, "Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future")
