Joichi "Joi" Ito has been recognized for his work as an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and Internet freedom. As director of the MIT Media Lab, he is currently exploring how radical new approaches to science and technology can transform society in substantial and positive ways. Soon after coming to MIT, Ito introduced mindfulness meditation training to the Media Lab. Together with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, founding director of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, Ito is promoting the contribution that awareness and focus can bring to the creativity process.
Ito has served as both board chair and CEO of Creative Commons, and sits on the boards of Sony Corporation, Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The New York Times Company. In Japan, he is executive researcher of KEIO SFC, and he was a founder of Digital Garage, and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. He was an early investor in numerous companies, including Flickr, Six Apart, Last.fm, littleBits, Formlabs, Kickstarter, and Twitter.
Ito’s honors include TIME magazine’s "Cyber-Elite” listing in 1997 (at age 31) and selection as one of the "Global Leaders for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum (2001). In 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Web." In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2013, he received an honorary D.Litt from The New School in New York City, and in 2015 an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Tufts University. In 2014, he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame; also In 2014, he was one of the recipients of the Golden Plate award from the Academy of Achievement.
“The choice is radical, but brilliant,” said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a University of California laboratory that pursues a similar research agenda to the Media Laboratory. “He can position the lab at the edge of change and propel it for a decade.”
Mr. Ito’s appointment comes at a time when the Media Lab, as well as other information technology research centers, have struggled to reclaim the financing levels that were characteristic of the era of the dot-com boom. Although the lab gets the bulk of its $35 million annual budget from corporate and government sponsors, that amount has declined measurably as a percentage of the overall budget during the last decade, Dr. Negroponte said.
“Funding got tight in 2002 and even tighter in the last economic downturn,” he said. That has made fund-raising the highest priority for the new director, he said. However, he added that Mr. Ito’s particular leadership qualities made him stand out among the 250 candidates who were considered for the position.
“Joi is very good at enabling others,” he said. “I’ve never met a 44-year-old who is able to enable others in this way. Most people who are at that age are into themselves and their career.”
L. Rafael Reif, the provost of M.I.T., called Mr. Ito “the right person to lead the Media Lab today,” describing him as “an innovative thinker who understands the tremendous potential of technology and, in particular, the Internet, to influence education, business, and society in general.”
Mr. Ito’s colleagues minimize the fact that he is without academic credentials. “He has credibility in an academic context,” said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who co-founded Creative Commons. Mr. Ito is currently chairman. “We’ve been collaborators, and I’ve stolen many ideas from him and turned them into my own.”
The Media Lab will benefit from a director who has Mr. Ito’s global connections, said John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. “What they really need right now is to have a two-way connection to the outside world. Who more to do that than Joi?”
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it. Instead, please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
I didn't think the question was so bad ... but the guess of cronyism is only one of half a dozen you could pick. As part of that list, it is in fact a possibility but to immediately jump to only that was a bit of a slight.
I'm also interested in the other half of the question - what made the MIT selection committee willing to promote an uncredentialed candidate - that's a gutsy move in a university environment as faculty are very protective of the status of their group.
If someone is talented enough, schools will bend the rules on credentials. You can't do it "on the way up", you have to be "already there." I suspect that a school out there would be willing to triple his salary, and Mr. Ito could walk with faculty and corporate contracts and rebuild the Media Lab somewhere else. This is a small price to pay to keep him.
This is perhaps also made a little easier based on the field. In the arts, faculty members do get by without Phds a little more often than in science. Sometimes an MFA is enough.
If he had written it in the same spirit as your excellent comment, of course it wouldn't have been a problem. Indeed you've done a fine job of turning it into something interesting (but note that you did it by depersonalizing).
But what he actually posted was a snarky drive-by smear. This doesn't strike me as a difficult distinction.
I wasn't faulting your reaction ... but I was looking for the best in his/her question rather than assuming it was a baseless attack. I like to play devil's advocate but even without personal attacks, that can be dangerous around here. When your handle is "untilHellbanned" people might perceive you to be trolling by default.
A genuine question would have been phrased neutrally, but that one was dripping with insinuation ("what kind of talent", "this guy", "seems like cronyism").
Snark posing as a question is toxic. Considering how easy it is to avoid when one wants to, I think it's reasonable to hold HN users to a higher standard on this.
The hand at matter is whether it was a personal attack or not, which it wasn't. It's OK to question someone's credentials; nobody is beyond scrutiny. It's not OK to attack his person in order to do so. (E.g. "how can this liberal/short/japanese/cat-loving guy have earned this position").
While I'm too old to care about your knee-jerk threat, I think you better be careful about policing HN like this. It is really off-putting and IMHO creates more of an existential threat to HN than my very reasonable inquiry.
There is nothing personal about my question. As I see it, this guy has questionable credentials to get such a prestigious job, so I ask what has he done. It looks he owned a bar, made some investments, his dad was high up in a quasi-impressive tech company. Again, very vague credentials which say he has money but no particular skill.
> There is nothing personal about my question. As I see it, this guy has questionable credentials to get such a prestigious job, so I ask what has he done.
If that's all you did, I would say that's not a personal attack. But how is saying "looks like cronyism to me" not a personal attack?
Well it's possible that he is a talentless fool that got his position through family connections. It's probably more likely that he is genuinely top of the game, but just doesn't spend much time building his public profile. That's a good and all too rare thing.
Being at the top of any game nowadays gives publicity. My 12 y.o. nephew's hockey league in North Carolina of all states has its own website, so not buying this argument.
Wow, untilHellbanned, I was actually on your side in this strange thread.
Until you mentioned your 12 y.o. nephew.
You may have just set a new Hacker News record, moving up Paul Graham's Disagreement Hierarchy from DH0. (Name Calling) all the way up to DH4. (Counterargument) in just 2 replies!
When I was at the Media Lab <mumble> years ago, his group was perceived internally as one of the top groups, and everyone I knew who worked in his group had great things to say about him.
pcl, out of curiosity, what group was that? I was under the impression he didn't have his own particular group. Just that he oversaw other groups. Could be wrong though...
I only ever worked down in the basement, and visited via the corporate sponsorship avenues, so I'm just repeating what I've heard. Have never worked with him directly.
So at minimum he's a great networker who can help his students get good placements.
He's also been involved heavily in creative commons and helped secure funding to keep it going.
He might rub you the wrong way but I'd give the probably not-stupid MIT people the benefit of the doubt that they chose him because they think he adds value to the institution, not because of some fluffy feely thing.
How about judging someone based on what they've done, rather than making idle speculation from their Wikipedia page? Sometimes the cynicism in this place is depressing.
Really? Because I feel like the comment sections here are usually people being positive and agreeing with each other, while dissenting opinions are silenced.
The truth of the matter is that there are certain topics that heavily follow the HN hivemind, and there are certain topics that are highly polarized and endlessly debated. Hivemind example: remote work is good and companies that refuse to do it are stupid. Endlessly debated example: college degrees are useless.
I asked what has he done. Considering how high profile this job is, a Wikipedia page in 2016 should make this obvious. In his case, it's decidedly not clear so I asked the question.
Yes, if you rephrase what you said in a way that takes out the nasty bits, it becomes less objectionable. When commenting on HN, though, that's what you should do in the first place.
Wow for an institution like MIT to offer a professorship to someone so clearly uncrdentialed sends a horrible signal to faculty and students. I will not talk about this persons lack of credentials because apparently that's a personal attack but I will say that academia and professorsship has everything to do with the philosophy of a subject not just its practice. I would never hire a surgeon who never went to medical school or a rocket scientist who didn't have a phD. Maybe they've achieved knowledge outside of academia, if that's the case that's where they should practice there skills, but to now have them share that unique and disorganized philosophy with students trying to learn structurally is unfair to the hard work and sacrifice those students have made to be able to get to MIT in the first place. They've earned the right to be taught and mentored by someone who has taken the same path they have and put in the time and admirable effort to study their subject academically.
Our prestigious universities like MIT are institutions that are aspirational to so many. Those who have taken the long and arduous path from student to researcher and then professors deserve the fruits of there labor. This is a slap in the face to so many people who have dedicated their lives to the advancement of knowledge.
It's also a pretty big insult to say that Ito doesn't deserve the job solely because he doesn't meet a cookie cutter list of credentials. MITs Media Lab is an amazing position and there is no way in hell they would've given the position to someone that doesn't wholey deserve it. Just look at the appointment of the head researcher for YC basic income project. New PhD student chosen over tenured professors from great institutions. Obviously, not everyone is the exception, but some people have qualities that aren't going to be noticed by someone reading an Internet article.
This sends a signal to students in the same way bill Gates sends a signal to students saying "drop out and you'll become a billionaire." you'd be an idiot to try and exactly replicate the unconventional paths of certain successful individuals. Do you really think just because he didn't follow the same path he can't help students ? Do you really think he doesn't bring things to the table that others don't? Do you really think he will stop students from getting what you mention from, I don't know, everyone else who went through the same path? Give me a break.
There's a word for this, and it's the word MIT used: "Professor of the Practice".
You wouldn't a huge portion of the university's faculty to be untrained in research or teaching -- that would be like running a software company where everyone has great ideas but no one knows how to lay down LOCs. But one person here or there who has something significant to bring to the table can be good for the institution.
> but to now have them share that unique and disorganized philosophy with students trying to learn structurally is unfair to the hard work and sacrifice those students have made to be able to get to MIT in the first place.
The author is not directly involved in leading a research group or in teaching. He's a director -- a vision/leadership role. And if he ever were to take up either teaching or advising research, he'd probably receive support and guidance from people who do have Ph.D.'s and have learned the long way around how to research/teach.
Again, that model obviously doesn't work well if you have a huge number of people like this, but one here or there can be a positive thing.
Joichi "Joi" Ito has been recognized for his work as an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and Internet freedom. As director of the MIT Media Lab, he is currently exploring how radical new approaches to science and technology can transform society in substantial and positive ways. Soon after coming to MIT, Ito introduced mindfulness meditation training to the Media Lab. Together with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, founding director of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, Ito is promoting the contribution that awareness and focus can bring to the creativity process.
Ito has served as both board chair and CEO of Creative Commons, and sits on the boards of Sony Corporation, Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The New York Times Company. In Japan, he is executive researcher of KEIO SFC, and he was a founder of Digital Garage, and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. He was an early investor in numerous companies, including Flickr, Six Apart, Last.fm, littleBits, Formlabs, Kickstarter, and Twitter.
Ito’s honors include TIME magazine’s "Cyber-Elite” listing in 1997 (at age 31) and selection as one of the "Global Leaders for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum (2001). In 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Web." In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2013, he received an honorary D.Litt from The New School in New York City, and in 2015 an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Tufts University. In 2014, he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame; also In 2014, he was one of the recipients of the Golden Plate award from the Academy of Achievement.