(2011-04-30) Ito Heading Media Lab

Joi Ito will be the next head of the MIT MediaLab, despite being a Drop Out!

High on Ito’s to-do list, judging from what Pattie Maes told me, will be orchestrating a hiring binge at the lab.

Dec'2012 update: Welcome to Ito's vision for opening up the 27-year-old MediaLab, one in which -- for example -- urban agriculture might be researched in Detroit; the arts in Chicago; coding in London; and in which any bright talent anywhere, academically qualified or not, can be part of the world's leading "antidisciplinary" research lab... By opening up the Media Lab, Ito hopes to move closer towards his goal of "a world with seven billion teachers", where smart crowds (Crowd Sourcing), adopting a resilient approach and a rebellious spirit, solve some of the world's great problems (Grand Challenge). His is a world of networks and ecosystems, in which unconstrained creativity can tackle everything from infant mortality to climate change. "We want to take the DNA [of the lab], the secret sauce, and drop it into communities, into companies, into governments," he says. "It's my mission, our mission, to spread that DNA. You can't actually tell people to think for themselves, or be creative. You have to work with them and have them learn it themselves."... As Ito sees it, the lab's mission "is to come up with ideas that would never be able to occur anywhere else because most places are incremental, directed and disciplinary". And that means turning the lab into a Platform rather than a physical place. "Nicholas comes from a slightly top-down, design-led background. I come from a very unorthodox community-building place --Creative Commons, Mozilla, Witness, Global Voices -- which are all about creating Movemment-s. To me there's a science to Community Building. If you extend the Media Lab as a network, and bring in different types of partners and nonprofits, and create more Diversity, the lab itself could become a mission, a movement. People think of the lab as a lot of smart people in a really cool-looking building making really cool gadgets. But I want it to have a much stronger normative political message -- a lot of the kids at the Media Lab today don't want to make more money, don't want to become immortal, they just want to figure out how to fix this unhealthy system we have. There are lots of kids who are not happy with this massive consumerism, this unsustainable growth, but who have really smart science and technology values. That's a type of person we can draw into what I think will become a movement."