Negroponte Not Far Enough Out On The Lunatic Fringe
from the is-that-so? dept
Nicholas Negroponte, who many say was always a little too far out on the edge with his technology predictions during the boom years, says that he needs to get even crazier. He's specifically talking about his much hyped, but unimpressive so far, expansion of MIT's Media Lab to Ireland. He says that most complaints from the industry these days are that the stuff they're working on isn't far enough out on the fringe. Next generation research can be done by the companies themselves. They look to the Media Lab to see what's coming a few generations down the road.
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Recent MIT Lab Expo
Music Bottles - So they have this little display of bottles lying around. They have a booth drone (you can't touch them) take out the cork. It makes noise/music. He moves the bottles around one another. They make a different noise depending on what color bottles are put near one another. Amusing for about three minutes. Maybe a child's toy if it could be made cheaply enough and if the bottles were unbreakable.
Wearable Computers - Not exactly a new idea, and I already take off my belt and shoes when I go through an airport metal detector. I didn't hang around this display very long since I just don't get it, but I am admittedly not the target demographic. Yawn.
Electronic Paper - This wasn't in their brochure, but the one thing that did impress me in the booth. Xerox and others have been talking about this for a long time, but to actually see a demo of it was pretty neat. If they can get this out of the lab, I see some real applications.
Printed Displays, Nanotech - A few "static" demos in this area. Others are also working in these areas, and I don't know enough about what others are doing to say whether the Med Lab is superior or different.
There were a few others which just weren't demo friendly and seem just like features that a product manager might add to an existing product line: TalkTV, Genomic Cartography, Audio Spotlight, etc.
Overall, I walked away from the booth with the impression that there were a few neat things they were doing, but that most of them were science projects to keep the researchers amused and only a few things would ever be commercialized.
But I think this the job of the Media Lab?
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