Joi Ito Named Director of the MIT Media Lab | Hacker News Reader

Joi Ito Named Director of the MIT Media Lab

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110 pointshornokplease18 comments

Regardless of the Thiel Fellowship, this is the guy that I would want on the inside taking academic ideas from research to revolution. Ito represents a kind of energy and enthusiasm that higher education direly needs.

More creative, free-thinking skeptics of academia should definitely be empowered to lead it. I see Ito as one of them, and I think this is an inspired choice.

I saw Ito on a panel debate, in the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference -- incidentally the place where he was first approached regarding the position [1].

If Biz Stone made the funny web-cowboy comments, Ito definitely made the thoughtful ones. He came across as a thinker. Although a complete outsider's view, I'm really looking forward to how he will run the Media Lab.

Of course, no other university would have nominated such a person for such a position. Lead the way, MIT.

Unusual but interesting choice. Joi is a real networker and has lots of friends in tech. Maybe the Media Lab under Ito will have more direct influence on and be influenced by people who create outside academia.

I imagine those friends in tech will help him bring in new sponsors. Isn't that a big part of the job?

Outside academia?

Ito dropped out of college.

Ah! Outside of academia. sorry.

Read that as some sort of underground academia

Joi has posted to his blog about the announcement:

http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2011/04/25/joining-the-mit.html

Discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483392

>though he never completed a college degree

Interesting choice for such an academic powerhouse such as MIT.

His wiki page indicates he's a "doctoral candidate in Business Administration." Also interesting, it seems he's a godson of Timothy Learys.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joi_Ito#Later_life

[2] http://www.leary.com/joiito/

He still never finished an undergraduate degree. He dropped out of Tufts and U. Chicago.

True, but his new job won't have much to do with undergraduate degrees; the Media Lab is a research-only lab that doesn't have an undergraduate program (some of the profs do also teach in MIT's undergraduate programs, but in that capacity they'll report to someone other than Ito).

It's rare to complete a PhD without having a first degree of any kind - but it's not unknown.

They've done it before http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2...

I first heard of Joi when he made an impromptu visit to the Cambridge (UK) Computer Labs during the "Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge" conference in November. He really impressed me and my undergrad friends - here are some choice quotes from him that won us over at his talk:

http://twitter.com/#!/amirhhz/status/5611353515491328

http://twitter.com/#!/amirhhz/status/5616077065166848

http://twitter.com/#!/amirhhz/status/5610598578520064 (this one got claps, heh)

That first one is nonsense, tho', and that's easy to prove: the existence of the machine tools industry.

Joi is a fantastic person -- he'll make for a real inspirational leader. Looking forward to seeing what the lab will start to produce :)

Hogwarts has a new Headmaster.

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