Re:Help Us Find a New MIT Media Lab Director
by _delirium on Sunday November 14, 2010 @07:08PM
(#1904646)
Some of it fits, but the Media Lab also wants cred in academia, and there's already some feeling that it's a little too commercialized/PR-based. Hiring someone from Silicon Valley angel-investing culture with no experience in research is not likely to push that perception in the right direction. A director not from the research world and without a PhD would also find it harder to get the professors and researchers in the lab to follow his direction.
Their main problem is that they really want Negroponte to run it again. ;-)
Re:Help Us Find a New MIT Media Lab Director
by _delirium on Sunday November 14, 2010 @09:05PM
(#1904944)
Huh, somehow I had completely missed that. I think that would probably still not be enough, though, since he hasn't been involved in research culture (either in academia or at a research lab like IBM's or Microsoft's) for a long time.
But it seems unlikely to matter either way, since my guess is that "leave YC to direct an academic research lab full-time" isn't high on Graham's list of priorities.
Re:Help Us Find a New MIT Media Lab Director
by _delirium on Sunday November 14, 2010 @09:42PM
(#1905012)
True, but he was a professor and/or academic researcher for about 20 years before founding the Media Lab. Partly it's because he was originally in architecture, and art/design fields didn't used to insist on professors having PhDs as strongly as they now do (masters or MFA used to be sufficient, and MFAs sometimes still are).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte#Later_caree...
Frank Moss
More about him on
http://www.media.mit.edu/people/fmoss
manage a highly creative, unconventional, and extremely diverse research organization;
set strategic directions;
raise support from corporations, governments, and philanthropic organizations;
and
serve as the leading public voice for the Media Lab and its vision.
Their main problem is that they really want Negroponte to run it again. ;-)
But it seems unlikely to matter either way, since my guess is that "leave YC to direct an academic research lab full-time" isn't high on Graham's list of priorities.