Brand,S. The Media Lab. 1987
Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York:
Viking, 1987. 285 pages.
Futurist Stewart Brand, the man behind the Whole Earth Catalog, has
never met a gadget he didn't like. After spending three months at MIT's
Media Lab in 1986, he was positively dazzled. When it was founded in 1985 by
Nicholas Negroponte, the Lab emphasized computers and multimedia. Ten years
later it began its silly season with "Things that Think" (chips in shoes or
clothing that communicate with the wearer, for example). But just then the
Internet materialized out of nowhere and caught the Lab with its micropants
down. Judging from its website, by now the MIT Media Lab has made up for
lost time by promoting projects that expand e-commerce.
More interesting than Brand's futurism are the observations he makes
about the funding behind the Lab. (Brand hit the major points, but these
figures are from 1995 instead of from his 1987 book.) The Lab's annual
budget is $25 million, mostly from 95 corporate sponsors, half of which
are overseas. While the Lab claims that sponsors cannot dictate the research,
it's also true that grad students have to sign a nondisclosure agreement
before receiving aid, and sponsors often fund research that is proprietary.
Given this history, it's not surprising that since the Internet arrived, the
Lab has been chasing the dot-com rainbow. But one has to ask: What about the
public sector? Where's the vision? Does anyone at the Media Lab care?
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