MIT Media Lab is an internationally known research center. Founded in 1985, many Japanese companies collaborated with this Lab in research projects so perhaps this might have made the Lab even more known in Japan.
A Big Bright News is that Joi Ito was recently appointed as the director of this Lab. I had an opportunity to have dinner with Joi and Dr. Hiroshi Ishi, associate director of the Media Lab several days ago. Dr. Ishi also participated in this year’s TEDxTokyo as our guest, and he gave a wonderfully enthusiastic speech for us.
At the dinner, our topic covered broad range, but basically the discussion was about how to encourage Japanese youths mix with the world. In addition, since Joi is actively measuring the radiation around the Fukushima area after the “3.11”, we exchanged views on this issue, too.
This year, Dr. Ishii was introduced in the “Portrait of Modern Age Leader (Gendai no Shozo, 現代の肖像)”, in the April 25 issue of the AERA magazine. Joi Ito also appeared as the “Cover Person” in the August 8, 2001 issue together with the article titled “The Future of ‘The Places to Make Future of the World’ (‘Sekai no Mirai Wo Tsukuru Basho’ no Mirai, 「世界の未来を作る場所」の未来)”.
Joi has been well recognized in the world as one of the alpha-bloggers for more than 10 years and Dr. Ishi is very active as you see in twitter （@ishii_mit）. These two are forever hot.