Talk:MIT Media Lab

message: What tangible new technologies or inventions have been developed at MIT media lab?
It's not quite clear to me.
:eInk and Lego Mindstorms are probabliy the two of mostly widely known recent technologies that have been developed in the lab and then widely deployed but there are many such projects. I do not know if the lab itself has a complete list. -- mako 19:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Achievements? 

message: yes I agree the criticism is a bit harsh. and then there are a lot of 18xxx commentators from inside...
: Both the vandalism and the silencing of critics seems based in the MIT community. Much of this inter-lab animosity has a long and well established history. But it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. -- mako 17:12, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  vandalism of MIT Media Lab page 

message: OK, I don't get the most recent edit, but I'm going to refrain from removing it at this particular juncture. A) how does ONE faculty members views turn into a criticism of the entire lab's "non rigorous approach"? B) I can't read the New York Times article; you have to pay; its a bad link to put as supporting evidence. C) I can't really find, after a brief internet search, any evidence that supports the idea that the Media Lab is a hotbed of intelligent design proponents; and D) although I don't agree with the theological implications of intelligent design as espoused by the most visible supporters of that theory, I don't see why there can be no challenge to Darwin's theories, no scientific search for a more complicated or different answer. So why does the viewpoint of a scientist who's viewpoint I can't even find become a smear on the whole ML? Maybe it just needs to be reqorded in a more NPOV manner. Ms ArtGeek 16:28, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please. Remove it. I just read the article and Picard's name is mentioned in passing and in a list of other names. Quick googling didn't turn up much else on the topic except for signing that petition. I know of nobody else in the Media Lab who shares Picard's idea on this. Other more well known Media Lab faculty, like Marvin Minsky, are outspoken critics of religion in all of its forms. This is criticism of Picard and not of the lab and it doesn't belong in this article. I think it should be moved to her page or removed enitrely. There are 500+ scientists who signed that petition and I doubt that every institution that employs any of them needs a similar bit of criticism on its page. —mako 17:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  intelligent design 

message: I added the research groups and their leading professors to give a more fine-grained view of the lab, as well as provide a broad pointer to most faculty. It might be worth moving this to a new page. Any comments? - bwabes 01:25, 8 March 2006 (EST)
:It's an awful lot of information and comes almost at the beginning of the article... there's a lot of scrolling before you get to the other headings... Is it overkill to have each Media Lab Group have its own entry (a stub at least to start with)? Then this section could be a list of links that only show the group name and project leader (which itself gives an idea of the scope of projects within the article). I do think it's good info to have somewhow connected to the article- I think it's important to show the kinds of work the Media Lab does, how it's different from many other MIT projects in its intent, and the fact that some of the subjects they have to heavily engage range from electronic engineering to psychology to art. Ms ArtGeek 18:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just encountered this effort as I was watching recent changes. Do you really think this is useful? These articles seem very close to making this subarea of Wikipedia into a web directory for the Media Lab, which is something we are not. I really think this information needs to be presented more concisely. Imagine if every university had an article for every research group! To answer Ms ArtGeek, yes, it's overkill. FreplySpang (talk) 21:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The lab is different than other University departments which work around a well defined topic or area of interest. The media has everything from filmmakers to designers to quantum physicists. A list of groups helps demonstrate this fact and the area covered by this broad scope. —mako 00:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I think it would work better in prose - for instance, your phrase "everything from filmmakers to designers to quantum physicists" conveys the idea pretty neatly. Presenting it as a list can be overwhelming to the general reader. But most of all, I would like to avoid having a large set of separate articles unless/until they can be fleshed out. FreplySpang (talk) 00:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks. FreplySpang (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Added Research Groups

message: I suppose someone more familiar with MIT could confirm whether this new article is redundant or not. --Shuki 21:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would seem redundant, as the PMG is part of the Media Lab and is already discussed in the Media Lab article. Walter.bender 23:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:MIT Media Lab Physics and Media]] 

message: The article titled Institute Professor has been nominated for deletion by user:Kane5187, who says not all of the 10-or-12-or-so Institute Professors are notable. This while many MIT professors who are not Institute Professors have Wikipedia articles and are universally considered notable (and so do most of the Institute Professors). Please opine at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Institute Professor. Your input is needed! Michael Hardy 00:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Institute Professor" nominated for deletion

message: On October 1st, 2006 I added "Verification needed" or "citation needed" notes to a number of unsubstantiated, "weasel-worded," and seemingly slanderous/attacking claims in the "Criticism" section. Three months have passed without a single citation being found for any of the malicious claims. If six months pass, I will propose that we remove this section, as they are so vague and sneaky as to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. As Jimmy Wales noted, "There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced." I tend to err on the side of open discussion, which is why I tagged this part with 'needs to cite' tag anyway, and it seems that various parties are battling over the article -- but, this is an extremely odd article. Can't believe this kind of stuff winds up in Wikipedia. (Amaranth12498 06:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of citations in article 

message: The user 18.85.22.204 (what appears to be a Media Lab address) should create an account: someone making so many edits to the page should not be doing do anonymously. --Walter.bender 18:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  18.85.22.204 

message: Please do not copy text from Media Lab web pages into this article. Wikipedia cannot accept material that is not available under a free license. Also, the descriptions in an Wikipedia article need to be written from a neutral point of view, which an organization's own promotional material usually isn't. I have just removed several group descriptions copied from Media Lab web pages, but I may have missed some. FreplySpang 02:16, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyrighted text 

message: By this I mean the people who were hanging out there in the "old days." Richard M. Stallman comes to mind; I have read that this is were he developed his GNU "manifesto." --John Bessa (talk) 00:22, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Media Lab "community" 

message: A rewrite is in order. Perhaps along the lines of other long-standing departments/divisions?  Bell Labs, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study... 
;Sections: "History", "Buildings" / "Art and architecture", "People", "Research Groups", "Publications" 
;Buildings: Both have some architectural and historic interest.
;Research: For each group, list the primary researchers and core projects [major projects already have their own articles].  A couple research groups have individual articles that could be merged here.
;Publications: Would need paring and focus, there is quite a lot [and no central page of same for the whole lab, only individual groups, afaict]
;People: most profs have their own article; needs comprehension.  Perhaps best suited to category.
;Art: faculty have produced some excellent contemporary art: both installations and permanent pieces. 
... – SJ + 16:18, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overhaul needed :) 

message: This is still pretty bad; acting on some of the overhaul notes above.   – SJ + 20:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text removed from article 

message: Joi Ito's description of the lab as antidisciplinary has been removed (again), and it's been removed on the very day that the media is reporting significant increase in the lab's growing Epstein scandal, which scandal seems to make Ito's description all the more interesting. Anyway, just a footnote. No suggestion here on what to do about any of this, if anything at all. Bob Enyart, Denver KGOV radio host  (talk) 21:57, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ito's description as "antidisciplinary" has been removed (again) 

message: It seemed odd to me that it wasn't, and at a quick glance I didn't see anything on the Talk page about it, so I decided to be bold and link it.
Is there some point of principle here that I'm missing?
Dpbsmith (talk) 21:10, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any reason not to Wikilink Jeffrey Epstein's name? 

message: I'd like to ask that the Goodwin Procter report regarding the donations from Jeffrey Epstein be referenced in the lede. Currently, the launch of the investigation is referenced in the lede, but the results of the investigation are only referenced in the MIT_Media_Lab#Connections_to_Jeffrey_Epstein section. ChiaLynn (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request to update lede to include Goodwin Procter report 

message: As of 6 November 2020, there does not seem to be any reference to the wikipedia OpenAg page, or any other mention of OpenAg.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceblair (talk • contribs) 21:11, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  No OpenAg reference?