The Media Lab – where to start. First, it is not much about news or traditional media – TV, radio, newspapers, etc… Here’s how the center website describes its work:
The Media Lab is a place where the future is lived, not imagined. Our domain is applying unorthodox research approaches for envisioning the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life—technologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities.
The Media lab also turns 25 this year. This week’s events lead up to Friday’s all day seminar and party. Sorry, neither is open to the public. But Nature Network will be there to fill you in. Also on the guest list: the lab’s 60 corporate sponsors — who fund most of the $25-million annual budget.
The list of gadgetry, inventions and innovation seems endless, from folding cars to a smart phone app that can be used for a mobile eye exam. Ever wish your wallet wouldn’t open when your bank account is low – the “Things that Think” consortium is working on that one. Ever heard of Guitar Hero? One Laptop Per Child? Those projects grew out of the lab.
And, if the contents were not cool enough, this anniversary will also take place in a new sun-lit building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki. Shared with the architecture department, it stands out at university with the Frank Ghery- designed Stata Center – also known as The Drunken Robot. (See pix and more on MIT architecture see this week’s NY Times story,)
This from the MIT press release.
The new six-story complex features an open, flexible, atelier-style layout designed to support the unique cross-disciplinary research style of the Media Lab and other academic units that will occupy the building. Laboratories and workspaces are arranged around light-filled central atria, with spectacular views of the Charles River and the Boston skyline to the south.
One person who won’t be there to celebrate is the late Bill Mitchell, who died this past June from cancer complications at age 65. He worked with lab’s Smart Cities research group, where, according to the lab, “he pioneered new approaches to integrating design and technology to make cities more responsive to their citizens and more efficient in their use of resources.”