MIT Aims for the Bottom Line

With its building extension project still in limbo, and layoffs a fresh memory for some of its staff, the leaders of the MIT Media Lab met with electronics companies this week to persuade the businesses that the lab is serious about making technologies for the consumer market.

By Mark Baard

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"We’re entering a period where we will be eating, wearing and breathing computers," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the Media Lab.

And the Media Lab, Negroponte said, is developing the sensors, smart devices and wireless capabilities that companies like Sony will want to license for their consumer products.

Negroponte was speaking Monday during an announcement of the Media Lab’s new initiative, CELab, or consumer electronics lab, which will capitalize on the convergence of new technologies and consumer demand for easy-to-use devices.

The Media Lab in January 2004 was a first-time exhibitor at the Consumer Electronics Show, an annual trade show run by the Consumer Electronics Association, which participated in this week’s CELab announcement. CEA members, which include Sony, Sanyo, Hewlett-Packard and Philips, generate more than $90 billion in sales annually.

Consumer electronics technologies, such as those that go into handheld phones, video games and other gadgets, have long been a part of the Media Lab’s mission, Negroponte said.

"We are going back to our roots," said Negroponte.

But the CELab announcement may come from Negroponte pulling out his roots, rather than returning to them. Funding shortages, such as those behind the school’s languishing building extension project (now symbolized by an empty lot next to the Media Lab) have dogged the lab in recent years.

The CELab will enjoy low overhead costs, while potentially generating millions of dollars annually from its corporate sponsors. The CELab will not occupy any physical space. Instead it will serve as an umbrella covering dozens of research projects at both the Media Lab at MIT and Media Lab Europe, based in Dublin, Ireland.

The CELab will partner with industrial designers and architects to make consumer goods easier and more fun to use, said Negroponte.

CELab will include research of the Smart Cities group, headed by William Mitchell, who is working with students and architect Frank O. Gehry to design a smartcar that warns drivers of upcoming obstacles in the road. The smartcar, which may eventually be built by GM, may also have a steering wheel that front-seat passengers can pass back and forth to each other.

In exchange for their annual CELab memberships, which will cost each member up to $200,000, consumer electronics companies will earn the right to license the lab’s intellectual property. Member companies will also be able to collaborate with researchers in the Media Lab, and join the CELab’s steering committee.

The partnership between the Media Lab and consumer electronics companies will benefit both sides, said Negroponte. Engineers, he admitted, are partly responsible for making today’s electronics "bigger, fatter and less reliable," instead of better.

"Clearly we’re doing something wrong," said Negroponte. "Instead of making machines easier to use, we’re piling on more stuff (features). It just can’t continue; people can’t accept it."

One speaker at the meeting urged engineers to focus on the bottom line, and he welcomed the participation of the consumer electronics industry.

"Use the rich to do your market research and pay for the tooling," said Nolan Bushnell, who founded both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theaters. As for design applications, Bushnell said, "Focus on toys, gadgets and hobbies. Focus on wants, not needs."

The head of one Media Lab research group said he is not worried that the CELab initiative will steer money away from more compassionate, if less financially rewarding, projects.

"As we develop things for the masses, there will be offshoots for the fringe groups," said Mitchel Resnik, director of the Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten, which develops new technologies and activities for classroom learning.

Resnik, who also co-founded a network of computer learning centers for poor communities, said that funds from the CELab initiative will not affect his lab’s mission to serve learners everywhere.

"The labs are very much run by the personalities of the professors," said Resnik. "And as long as I’m around, young people in low-income groups will be a part of our mission."