Genuine question: what exactly are the major contributions of MIT media lab? I will admit my priors might be unfair,y hostile and my reaction to current travails a little too schadenfreude-ish.
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The lineage of the Maker Movement + Digital Manufacturing came out of the Media Lab and affiliated Center for Bits and Atoms. The "Fab" book was my entry point.
media.mit.edu/groups/center-
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Did the media lab invent any key piece, like 3d printing? I’m wary of vague credit to lineages and manifesto-ish programs with aspirational names.
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You're right though in that when I just reviewed the history of core "Maker" tech, it's not a lot of MIT: Arduino (IDII, Italy), RaspPi (UK), RepRap (U. Bath, UK), Makerbot (NYC).
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So they’re innovation packagers and promoters mainly. Specialists in early-stage charisma engineering in the theater quadrant, as I called it on my last podcast. That’s the sense I get.
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Yea, for sure. It's called "media lab" for a reason, not the "advanced research in X lab". I have an affinity for such orgs like the Bauhaus who didn't really build any successful projects per se, but their alumni and influence reshaped the world.
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Yeah me too, so long as they don’t misrepresent what they do, which is unfortunately common. Weird insecurity because that role is also important. I guess it’s lower status than basic R&D in society today. It’s viewed almost like a vocational function.
“Basic innovation envy”
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That's funny. I think "basic inno envy" is a perception of engineers and no one else. People love Jobs more than Grove, and they've never heard of Shockley.
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Yes but most media lab people *are* engineers presumably? Or am I mistaken there?
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Yea, but it's a multi-disciplinary place, so people are often engineering intersected with something else "media".
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