David's World

January 14, 2005

Obituary: Media Lab Europe

Media Lab Europe is closing its doors forever. The ambitious attempt of both MIT and the Irish government to establish an international research lab has failed. The press release, issued on January 14, 2005 reads: "The Board of Directors of Media Lab Europe announced today that it is putting the company into voluntary solvent liquidation."

Why did the promising research start-up have to close? Here is my analysis. (N.B.: I won't convey internal secrets that I've learned during my time at Media Lab Europe (MLE), which ended a few months ago. I will use and refer to public sources only.)

MLE, similar to its mother MIT Media Lab, conducted research into technology supporting human-human and human-computer interfaces. They often worked on the fringe between technology and art, producing installations such as award-winning sensor-deprivation floatation tanks, or many little pieces of technological art by Jonah Brucker-Cohen. There was a psychological background and a human-interface side of things in many cases, such as in a haptic remote control for television. Many of the projects were technically difficult: Jussi Angesleva's visible clock (see picture), which shows a time as you spin it on a lanyard, and MLE researchers worked on sensors to read people's minds - among many other things.

Crap background image. Makes it really hard to read articles.

The end sums it all up:

"MLE's overheads, that is, their expenditure on each researcher on top of the person's salary, were way over 100 percent, as you can roughly guess by counting researchers and looking at spending figures. A lot of MLE's money went into selling the research, not producing results. U2's Bono was on the board of directors, followed by The Edge."

OK, the playpen is officially closed. Having Bono on the board?! Amazing the crap that can be done with OPM (Other People's Money.)

Yet another way to piss away huge dollars.

Yeesh. I was going to read this article, but that annoying personal shadow on half the text that doesn't go away when I scroll is just TOO irritating.

Sounds abut right. I was at the MIT ML several years back, as a 2 day research visitor, and also knew of it when my employer was a corporate member. On my visit and afterwards it was plain to me that it was a gimmick, that the sale spitch was aimed at those who were clearly technologists (tech business leaders) but for whom technology was still quite elusive. It was designed to wow the board members.

I could not "connect" with my peers at MIT/ML because quite frankly they weren't "real". The profs/leaders were selling out to accept a larger benefit, and therefore didn't address the real questions openly. The "youngsters" were too highly-specialized to make sense, and thus more naive than most engineering students, yet so privileged and coddled they couldn't help exude arrogance. It wasn't accepted that ML could be "art" back then, but clearly that is what it was more than science or technology.

That MIT continues to grant doctorates in such niche application areas as "wearable computing", to people who may have demonstrated their creative smarts but haven't mastered the foundations of science/engineering/technology, can only lead further towards the erosion of competitiveness of this nation's tech base.

I am glad to see it fail, for it frees up resources but also removes some of the posers from the stage.

can you remove the background image? Typical Media Lab stuff, sacrificing usefulness for style :-(, no wonder they close you guys!

What were you thinking? Get rid of that background image!

You overlook or, at least only hint at, the fact that the Media Lab is an outgrowth of the hype, hubris and horseapples of the founder, Negroponte. Of course, he didn't have to use his own money to hype himself, he had other fools for that.

I went by the MIT media lab early in the 90s and left thinking the whole thing was just one big blather fest. I've seen nothing to prove otherwise since.

The irony is that Nick will sail nicely along and others will be left in the dirt. It's his method.

Thanks for you comments guys - and the background is white for now.

Yeah, Philip Greenspun wrote a good piece about the Media Lab at MIT being the last ones to get on the web, with a crummy set of over produced 'brochure ware' ... I think that pretty much tells you all you need to know.
JonathanW

I love the background image - how's it done??

yeah pedur, it's neat but in the end people better be able to read the text. So it'll be brighter for now, with much less contrast - I hope that's better and not as boring as a plain white background.

Good riddance. The Media Lab was and is useless.

I worked at the old Architecture Machine, which was Negroponte's group before the Media Lab. The Architecture Machine had a focus on doing something, designing and presenting buildings and spaces. The Media Lab never had a focus, except for "neat", as in "that's really neat".

The Media Lab was always about technology, not about solving problems, and the great ideas come from trying to solve problems. As the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT discovered, you don't always solve the problems you set out to solve, but you do produce things that other people can build on and use.

I'm sure there were lots of creative and intelligent people working at MLE, but the environment was bad. The goal was use something, rather than do something.

I described the MLE as being just like Grand Academy of Lagado from Swift's book "Gulliver's Travels". The MLE was situated near the area where Swift lived. It is almost as if Swift time-travelled and saw the useless waste of money that was MLE. There is a good, robust Irish term for the people who ran MLE and Medialab. You'll get the odd media happy-clappy technology journalist who will mourn MLE's passing but most Irish people couldn't give a damn. They're worried about underfunded hospitals and poor infrastructure.

Regards...jmcc

YoThe is what the American hobbyist's garage is for. u can't mainstream or plan for the transformation of a hobby interest into something worthwhile or of economic benefit to the general population. Centralized economic planning has long proven to be a scam, so it's good to see things like the Media Labs also falling into their own pit of pump-and-dump exposure. Things like this SHOULD collapse under the gravitic weight of their own responsibilities to make a return on their investments, since they can ONLY find out that heat and light aren't enough to stem such an implosion. Good riddance to them all; there should be no wealth without work, and people of their education levels can't pretend to not know this!

John McC: look at the significant scientific output, that is, peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Are you aware of its contribution to Irish technology culture? Maybe you haven't even been there to see the wealth of ideas at this lab. Much of Irelands investment was money well spent, at a fraction of the cost of running hospital or building a motorway.

Peahippo: why can't you? Support the creating of new things in the early stages, support the garage! People do work in such garages, and they worked hard and produced a wealth of results.

DR, I judge technology by its results and benefits not by how many citations it gets in peer-reviewed academic journals. I also remember the sick and the dying. That money wasted on MLE could have helped them. It also seemed to have contributed feck all to the Irish technology culture apart from a few good jokes.

I for my part enjoyed the DATA sessions at the Stag's Head (led by an MLE researcher, using MLE equipment), or the Darklight Festival to which MLE has contributed a lot. MLE also had a big booth at this young science fair in 2003. Don't forget the Computer Clubhouse for kids from the liberties, supported by many MLE researchers, fostered by MIT Media Lab's Mitch Resnick, sponsored by Intel.

David Reitter: You seem to be confusing a session in a Dublin pub as being a contribution to the Irish technology culture. The Irish technology culture is bigger than Dublin and MLE. Sure there was a lot of interesting stuff going on but it what did it produce? If it was going much longer, some of its "research" would have been up for some igNobel Prizes. It is a sad thing that some talented people lost their jobs but in the greater scheme of things, it is for the best. MLE just got technology's equivalent of a Darwin Award.

Indulgent and pretentious and very irritating background image is still on.

You want to have people actually pay attention to what you say, or do you want them to just sit in awe of your dedication to keeping the sense of anything you say from coming through?

You need to learn to ditch this kind of stuff. Been there. Done that. Have the t-shirt. It was old when it was new.

If, perhaps, the denizens of Media Lad had been made to attend and pass a course in basic typography and graphic design, the Lab might have made something other than useless toys for nerds with no math skills.

Yeah, background picture is back - but so bright that it can hardly be annoying. I suspect your browser has cached the CSS and is therefore still getting the old version.
Granted, Windows PCs usually have a higher 'gamma' resulting in a stronger contrast - but with the current picture, it shouldn't really distract from the picture.
Either way, I am always commited to avoid text clutter.

I'm hardly surprised it closed and neither am I particulary upset about it. As another ex-MLE'er, I've written my own thoughts on MLE over at my blog: http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2005/01/mle-is-dead-long-live-research-in.php

This is an amusing blog. For me, it is interesting to see how people and especially bloggers are so influenced by flows of positivism and negativism. Here, you can clearly see that in a blog everybody is very much entitled to have an opinion (especially if it’s negative or extreme) whether you are very knowledgeable or not.

I am a person who loved David’s new blog design and was very happily surprised to see David’s scrolling picture and so was even more surprised about Van der Leuns comment. (By the way, not that it is so important, but personally, I have done tons of design courses and official degrees complementing that...) Correct me if I’m wrong, but from good sources I know that David is a researcher and not an ‘official’ designer. Why should he be? There were all very different kinds of motivated people in the lab, which caused very interesting synergies, projects and discussions. David used to be a strong advocate of a white background and black letters. What made him change?

I believe that the lab was a very unique and inspiring environment and that it did have an important impact on technical/ creative innovation and digital culture in general. There were also all kinds of different (too many?) directions the lab was exploring to go or pushed in. Point is, that if you dare to be unique and different you will get a lot of critique. The lab and its very various (hit and miss) projects attracted a lot of attention. It has been discussed in various media, blogged, published and exhibited worldwide. You can build the most amazing projects, or do the most amazing research, but if nobody gets to see or discuss it, it will be all lost in vain and especially then it would be a waste of money and effort.
I believe that it’s better to explore and be daring than to create nothing or be boring which is very similar in the end. How can you know you don’t want to go somewhere if you haven’t explored it yet?

Bye Meejalab, bye nice and talented researchers. Whether people want to realize it now, in the future or not, you will be missed.

Infrastructure: The Luas (new tramline in Dublin) costs were higher than the mission to Mars; Media Lab’s fault!? A very small, but remarkable contribution to the Irish infrastructure, check out this MLE- project, called Ample Time (e.g. Will I catch the bus in time?): http://www.medialabeurope.org/el/project.php?id=1

Health care: In comparison to the rest of Europe, the Irish government is one of the countries to spend the least percentage of its national income on health care. I noticed that the toilets in most Dublin hospitals are the filthiest I have ever seen. I would advice to look a bit closer to potential health problem causers first, than to blame MLE.
A very small, but remarkable contribution to the Irish health care, check out this mle- project by the human connectedness group: http://www.medialabeurope.org/hc/projects/openwindow/

Irish mono- culture multi- cultural nature of the Media Lab: Ireland used to be a country of emigration, but where is the willingness now towards its own foreign immigration…?

Some good points made here.
But I would say that the Darklight Festival ( which was around BEFORE MLE) and DATA Group had more to do with the personal efforts of Nick Gogan and Jonah Brucker-Cohen than government funding, AOL or Bono ...:-)

The LUAS didn't cost anywhere near the Mars mission's overhead. Don't believe the hype.

Intolerance to immigration in Ireland is an undoubted problem, but I'm struggling to see how the meejalab was A. multi-cultural, or B. anything to do with those issues.

A bit cheeky - trying to rope Darklight into the 'contributions' of the lab.

I spent three years working at MLE (not as a researcher), and can't help but criticise the board and most (but not all) of the management team.

However, I am really disappointed to see how much harsh criticism there has been for the researchers and their work. I agree that some of the projects were a total waste of time, money and energy, but a huge proportion of them were anything but. The MindGames group, for example, worked very closely with the CRC (rehab clinic) and with (I think) Our Lady's Hospital, and the feedback they got from both was pretty amazing.

The problem with MLE was that the hugely inept board (and some management) spread everyone too thin. Its not that they didn't give ENOUGH direction, they just sent everyone off in a different direction! The result was little cohesion of thought and inefficient lines of communication.

The Lab had its inadequacies, but they centred around structure and direction, not around ability, vision or creativity. I feel very bitter towards the board and management for wasting the incredible resources available to them - not just money from the govt, but also the huge wealth of talent and passion thrown into the pot by everyone who worked there.

Those involved in the set up and running of MLE are to blame for this waste. Had they done their jobs properly (in terms of getting funding), and had the researchers been better managed and directed the place would not just be surviving today, it would be thriving.

To be a sustainable commercial success, this type of research needs funding from people with imagination: vision even. Looking in European boardrooms for that commodity is always going to be a case of needles and haystacks. The Irish government should be ashamed of itself for failing to sustain support.

Why did they keep appointing people to run this venture other than me? (the kind of people who are too scared to act or who blether on about background images)