New ML researcher Kyle Buza pointed me to this commentary regarding the future direction of the Media Lab. The original article in the our town's main newspaper, The Boston Globe, appeared here.
Being directly involved with the sponsored research mechanism through leading the SIMPLICITY consortium here at the Lab, I felt that the issues and questions raised in the article and commentary are for the most part valid. In my pre-MBA incarnation of early 2002, I thought a bit about this dilemma of industry vs. academia with no clear conclusions. There really are still no clear answers today in 2006 in my post-MBA self so I still have many open questions.
For academia to live in a completely protective bubble and invent new media for the sake of inventing seemed like a good idea in the 80s and 90s. At the time it was academia that had more computing power and expertise in new media than industry. Today industry, and also incoming MIT freshmen, outgun academic computing Labs in quantity and quality of computing power. Add to this the awesome might of a few kids in Peoria and countless grown ups in Bangalore (and their kids) with Xeon servers crunching in their basement and living rooms and the equation of power is clearly tilted in favor of the free world over your run-of-the-mill "computer lab" at school.
Clearly a lot can get done now in digital media without the help of academia. Websites can get built, cool mashups get born every day, computers get faster, and the polar ice caps melt more vigorously as an indirect result of the incredible pace we are afforded with modern technology. Industry is optimized for performance; progress in academia is generally as slow as molasses. When ROI is measured in days versus decades, a conflict in viewpoint is a natural outcome.
Perhaps Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare gives us some insight as to the paradox of how moving slowly and steadily can get you to the finish line faster than the fastest of competitors. In the modern Media Lab I think we're part tortoise and hare. Call us a "tortare" or a "hoise." Errr, maybe not. We do listen to the kind of problems our sponsors face as a way to get up to speed on what's most important to industry and then throw development muscle into the space. At the same time we have some slow moving work that continues to develop in spite of all the AJAX-infused flashy stuff that snap-crackle-pops its way across your display screen. Like any realistic organization, here at the Lab we're just doing both as a means to stay relevant and ecclectic. After all it's not just blondes -- tortares have more fun too.
Posted by maeda at August 27, 2006 11:52 AM