At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined.
In a world where radical technology advances are taken for granted,
we design technology for people to create a better future.
The Media Lab was conceived in 1980 by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President and Science Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner. It grew out of the work of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, and remains within MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. The Lab opened the doors to its I.M. Pei-designed Wiesner Building in 1985.
- In its first decade, the Lab pioneered much of the technology that enabled the “digital revolution,” and enhanced human expression: innovative research ranging from cognition and learning, to electronic music, to holography.
- In its second decade, the Lab literally took computing out of the box, embedding the bits of the digital realm with the atoms of our physical world. This led to expanded research in wearable computing, wireless “viral” communications, machines with common sense, new forms of artistic expression, and innovative approaches to how children learn.
- Now in its third decade, the Lab is focusing on “human adaptability”–work ranging from initiatives to treat conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and depression, to sociable robots that can monitor the health of children or the elderly, to the development of smart prostheses that can mimic–or even exceed–the capabilities of our biological limbs.
The Wiesner Building, home of the MIT Media Lab.
Photo by Steve Rosenthal.
Research Groups
Photo by Steve Rosenthal.
Research Groups
The Media Laboratory provides a unique environment for exploring basic research and applications at the intersection of computation and the arts.
Research at the Media Lab comprises interconnected developments in an unusual range of disciplines, such as software agents; machine understanding; how children learn; human and machine vision; audition; speech interfaces; wearable computers; affective computing; advanced interface design; tangible media; object-oriented video; interactive cinema; digital expression—from text, to graphics, to sound; and new approaches to spatial imaging, nanomedia, and nanoscale sensing.
- eRationality
- Object-Based Media
- Neuroengineering and Neuromedia
- Robotic Life
- Computing Culture
- Media Fabrics
- Sociable Media
- Physics and Media
- Biomechatronics
- Physical Language Workshop
- Tangible Media
- Molecular Machines
- Changing Places
- Software Agents
- Viral Communications
- Opera of the Future
- Physical Language Workshop
- Ambient Intelligence
- Society of Mind
- Smart Cities
- Future of Learning
- Responsive Environments
- Human Dynamics
- Affective Computing
- Lifelong Kindergarten
- Cognitive Machines
- Speech Interfaces
- Context-Aware Computing
- Music, Mind and Machine
