
Leadership Transition Announced for MIT Media Lab - infodocket
http://news.mit.edu/2019/media-lab-leadership-transition-0910
======
bbanyc
I'm a Media Lab alum, sort of. There may be a master's degree with my name on
it, but as I see it I basically flunked out. So I used to look back on it with
bittersweet feelings of what I wasn't good enough to achieve.

Now, though, after seeing what was really going on there... 30+ years of
rigged demos, high-profile failures like OLPC, and maybe one or two useful
inventions among the years of pointless impractical stuff that "looks cool",
all funded by the largess of child molesters. Forget about a "leadership
transition", the lab is unsalvageable. Burn it to the ground and salt the
earth.

Now, what to do with the two-year gap on my resume...

~~~
hnaccy
Where can I read on the rigged demos?

~~~
bbanyc
[https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-
food-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-food-
computers-dont-work-fake-staff-say-2019-9)

~~~
seltzered_
Thanks for sharing this.

""It's essentially a grow box with some sensors for collecting data,"
Cerqueira, a dietitian who worked as a project manager at the Open Agriculture
Initiative for two years [...] The boxes were not air-tight, so staff couldn't
control variables like the levels of carbon dioxide and even basic
environmental factors like temperature and humidity, Cerqueira and the other
person said. "

Looking at [https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-
openag/pro...](https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-
openag/projects/) it looks like the food computer project was just one among
several, though it might've been the more prioritized 'audacious goal' among
them considering it's prominence on the main open ag site:
[https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-
openag/](https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/)

The last paper I saw (2018-10-20) (
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-02683-...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-02683-7_79)
) on food computer version 2 is more about the building process of it, not so
much on results yet.
[https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/faq](https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/faq)
discusses the version differences.

Finally, Caleb comments on the BI article here:
[https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/can-we-get-a-
comment/51...](https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/can-we-get-a-comment/5186)

(sidebar: the food computer thing weirdly reminds me of
reddit.com/r/spacebuckets )

~~~
makomk
The thing is, they didn't need to have a whistleblower to find out that the
boxes couldn't control variables like the levels of carbon dioxide - they just
had to read the latest paper published using them:
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213918)
Apparently that level of control is planned for their currently-in-development
larger scale facility. Also, I don't think the quotes about controlling those
things even apply to the Personal Food Computer specifically - after reading
the linked articles they're either forward-looking claims about the whole
research that predate the PFC, or specifically refer to to the larger-scale
equipment.

On top of that, the headline claim that the "personal food computer" "simply
doesn't work" seems to be outright untrue. I had a look and the designs seem
to be pretty widely replicated and tested - everything from an MIT-supplied
version of the latest design in a New York museum operated by unaffiliated
volunteers to a homebrew version of an old foam-based design built from
scratch by a Baltimore school using material from Lowes. Some versions do seem
to be a little temperamental on the electronics side, to the point members of
the team have advised people not to built v2 on the forum, but they do work
and grow things. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the photoshoots and static
displays were faked, though; turnaround time for a real grow is at least a
month.

~~~
seltzered_
Yeah, while I'm still trying to wrap my head around whether it's an effective
solution, I'm not suggesting it doesn't work. It looks like some OSU students
in Bend are have had success with it :
[https://twitter.com/ATBF_NPO](https://twitter.com/ATBF_NPO)
[https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org](https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org)

------
tempsy
It’s actually a bit surprising as someone working in tech in SF how little I
ever hear about the Media Lab. It just doesn’t seem like it’s something tech
people here ever talk about, which maybe says something in of itself.

~~~
paggle
Do you work for a startup? Startups generally don't employ a lot of
university-research tech. The people who are reading current academic papers
and incorporating them into the company's products are more likely to work at
big companies than small ones.

~~~
cosmic_quanta
That statement surprises me. I have no experience of tech startup or big
enterprise, and I would have expected large organizations to be more
conservative. Granted, there may be a more research-oriented department in
large orgs, but the boat is harder to sway.

~~~
Konnstann
From what I've heard, it takes a lot of work to translate something out of
academia into a business-viable product, and working in an academic setting I
can see why. The code that I write is designed to work, but not necessarily to
be performant or robust. Small team sizes and specific goals don't make for
something easily transferable.

------
clebio
Context (icymi):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901572)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20891907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20891907)

------
ilamont
The first three names on that list are respected researchers and group heads
who have been deeply involved in the day-to-day research of the lab, which
includes mentoring/working with students and doctoral candidates, and dealing
with lab sponsors.

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ocschwar
Just shut the place down. The grants won't be coming in any more. Let's not
pretend otherwise.

------
bobosha
MIT CSAIL alum here, the Media lab wasn't exactly a bastion of fundamental,
more known for whizz-bang demos and media interviews etc. I remember reading
somewhere they were "all icing no cake" or the "MIT marketing agency".

I hope this crisis refocuses it on breakthrough research,where its talent and
resources could be very well spent.

~~~
mhalle
Some of that was typical inter-departmental rivalry, even jealousy. The Media
Lab had the big parties, the popular press attention, the visits by pop stars
and celebs. And it had its audacious claims and characters. But mostly it had
the money pouring in from sources untapped by other departments that
functioned in the post-WWII MIT model of government funding. Personally, I'm
grateful for full funding as a graduate students and the highest stipends on
campus.

But that's because the LCS and AI labs were doing different stuff from the
Media Lab. They weren't comparable. Computation and networked devices were a
tool towards something larger at the Media Lab. Yes, there were demos didn't
work, or couldn't work. In Spatial Imaging, we couldn't fake physics, so we
were somewhat immune. But with years of retrospect I look back fondly on some
of those crazy "unworkable" ideas and see successful modern versions of them.
Broadening one's vision is supposed to be part of academia; the Media Lab just
approached it in a non-hardcore science MIT way.

I also think the Media Lab changed CSAIL (when LCS and AI merged) much more
than vice versa. Start with the Geary-designed building but look at the type
of research and approach to funding. There's plenty of research at CSAIL that
would have fit right at home at the ML in its old days, precisely because it
is aimed at technology closer to end users and aligned with corporate sponsors
and interests. Maybe that's because the world has changed; it's hard to
interpret cause and effect. But the Media Lab was clearly a part of that.

Disclaimer: left in 1997, not part of current controversy.

------
edmoffo
And why it matters to us? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really interested. What
will this event affect?

------
klimenok1991
I've heard about this lab. They really have great merit!

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
Amusing/sad how the announcement doesn't mention Joi Ito _at all_ , even with
a perfunctory "thanks for your service". Apparently taking a donation from an
unperson is enough to make you an unperson as well these days.

~~~
acdha
You mean breaking institutional policy and covering it up doesn’t get you a
gold watch and a laudatory press release?

~~~
throwaway2048
Breaking policy, covering it up, and getting paid six digit amounts of money
for it.

But no, this is obviously some kind of witch hunt. /s

Edit: six digit

~~~
DonHopkins
Epstein paid Ito seven digits for his own personal investment fund, more than
twice what he gave Media Lab.

~~~
nonce42
Serious question: what does it mean that Epstein paid $1.2 million into Ito's
personal investment fund? Is that an investment fund that Ito ran? Or did Ito
get the money personally? I did some web searches a couple of days ago but
couldn't find an explanation of this strange wording.

~~~
DonHopkins
It means Ito's investment fund was his main gig, and Media Lab was only a side
hustle.

------
trdtaylor1
"... whose goal is to stop taking hidden donations from child sex traffickers
and murderous princes for reputation building"

nope, wait, didn't see that in the press release, taps still open boys.

~~~
azinman2
That was in the previous announcements by MIT, their hiring of an independent
law firm to investigate what happened and all previous potential grants, and
upcoming changes to how donations work.

This is about leadership transition, not everything to date. Don’t over
sensationalize.

