The MIT Media Lab is a beacon of modern technology and the source of countless technological advances in many different fields.
Fueled by over sixty sponsors (including many major corporations), the lab is populated by the best and the brightest of MIT faculty and graduate students as well as visiting minds from all over the country and abroad. I imagine it as the Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of technology, with the exception of orange midgets.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of parallels between the two places.
In Wonka’s factory there are multiple cutting edge projects being developed in different areas of the factory. In the media lab, the efforts of its occupants are broken into consortia. For example, while Wonka devotes one team to the development of fizzy lifting drinks, the media lab has a team working on electric cars that can be stacked and charged at various stations around the city (see photo inset).
We plan to keep a close eye on the Media Lab to report on all of the amazing concepts as they are born and grow to become mainstream technology. To preface our coverage of the lab, see the following list of tech products you may know and love now, but had no idea were developed at MIT Media Lab:
That’s right, the technology that makes it possible for us to be rock stars from the comfort of the living room was first developed in the media lab. The base technology was developed by two grad students in the media lab and Harmonix headquarters is also in Cambridge.
Remember the way Tom Cruise threw images and panels around on that super-futuristic computer interface in Minority Report? It wasn’t real at the time, but all the technology was inspired by work being done in the media labs. Media labs researcher, John Underkoffler served as technological advisor for the film, and is now working in LA developing it for actual use today. Be sure to check out the demo video on their website.
They were the coolest toy block sets growing up, and now they’re even cooler after some work in the media labs. Lego Mindstorms lets kids (or adults) build their own programmable LEGO robots – allowing young geniuses to design their toys to put themselves away.
Ambient Devices is responsible for some incredible ways to display information like time, stock market trends, weather and more. From clock radios to glowing orbs, Ambient Devices produces some of the coolest gadgets found in your local Brookstone or Sharper Image.
E Ink specializes in electronic paper displays (EPD). You know them for the technology behind many new E-reader and E-book devices like the Kindle and Sony reader. It was research at the MIT Media Labs that yielded these low-energy displays that display text clearly without eating up battery life.
If you’re into new and upcoming technology, then the MIT Media Labs is definitely a site you’ll want to keep tabs on. We’re eager to start exploring more of their current projects in hopes to get a glimpse of the next great innovation to become part of our everyday.
If you’d like to learn more about the MIT Media Lab, be sure to visit their website which is packed with information on history, people, previous successes, and current projects.
