October 17, 2011

Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab (USA)

Enabling Emergent Voices And Expression Through Technology

Respondent: Brendan Mcgetrick, Independent Writer & Designer (China)

Moore’s law and the Internet have dramatically reduced the cost of producing and distributing information. This has greatly lowered the cost of collaboration and has empowered a qualitatively different “public” to think, express, and act without, or in spite of, central authority. These changes and advances in technology enabled interventions such as low-cost video cameras in the case of WITNESS; blogs (Global Voices); or open hardware and software used to build, distribute, collect and visualize data from geiger counters (Safecast). Ito will discuss how these trends relate to media, citizenship, academics, and conflicts. Joichi Ito was named Director of the MIT Media Lab in April 2011.