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August 14, 2006, 08:00 AM ET
'Enfant Terrible' No More, MIT's Media Lab Goes Practical
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Laboratory is reinventing itself to focus more on projects with practical applications, according The Boston Globe.
In changes led by a new director, Frank Moss, who took over in February, the high-tech center has been shifting its focus from multimedia and technology convergence to concerns like aging and health care. Mr. Moss told the newspaper that he wants to intensify the lab’s concentration on technologies that deal with the problems of society’s “disadvantaged, disabled, and disenfranchised,” such as $100 laptop computers, digitally controlled prosthetic limbs, and robotic elder care. And, in addition to seeking corporate sponsors, he has opened talks with philanthropic groups, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In the past, the lab attracted news-media buzz—and corporate support—with flashy events like fashion shows of “wearable computers” and collaborations with popular artists including Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, and Penn and Teller, the magicians (The Chronicle, October 12, 2001). A period of retrenchment, however, inevitably followed after the dot-com bubble burst.
Some outside critics see the moves as part of a trend of aligning academic research more closely with the agendas of corporate sponsors, but others praise the new direction. “It’s a very big challenge to take an exciting organization that’s past the stage where it’s an enfant terrible into a new era,” said Esther Dyson, editor of the newsletter Release 1.0, in New York. “Health and education are the most interesting problems today.” —Charles Huckabee
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