"One hundred years from now, the role of science and technology will be about becoming part of nature rather than trying to control it.

So much of science and technology has been about pursuing efficiency, scale and “exponential growth” at the expense of our environment and our resources. We have rewarded those who invent technologies that control our triumph over nature in some way. This is clearly not sustainable.

We must understand that we live in a complex system where everything is interrelated and interdependent and that everything we design impacts a larger system.

My dream is that 100 years from now, we will be learning from nature, integrating with nature and using science and technology to bring nature into our lives to make human beings and our artifacts not only zero impact but a positive impact to the natural system that we live in."

"Obviously, this is just one student and doesn't necessarily generalize, but I love that the electrodermal activity is nearly flatlined during classes. ;-) (Note that the activity is higher during sleep than during class...)

"Changes in skin conductance at the surface, referred to as electrodermal activity (EDA), reflect activity within the sympathetic axis of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and provide a sensitive and convenient measure of assessing alterations in sympathetic arousal associated with emotion, cognition, and attention.""

"My sister calls me an "interest driven learner."…code for "short attention span" or "not a good long term planner" or something like that. I can't imagine being able to read the dictionary from cover to cover…don't think most people could…

Although reading the dictionary & the encyclopedia from cover to cover may seem a bit extreme, it often feels like that's what we're asking kids to do who go through formal education…

I love videos of professors, amateurs & instructors putting their courseware online…great resource for interest driven learners like me. However, I wonder whether we should be structuring the future of learning as online universities where you are asked to do the equivalent of reading the encyclopedia from cover to cover online. Shouldn't we be looking at the Internet as an amazing network enabling "The Power of Pull" & be empowering kids to learn through building things together rather than assessing their ability to complete courses & produce the right "answers"?"

[From 3. Joi Ito]

"The Japanese government once asked me to be on a committee about taxes and information technology. The first thing I said was, 'Let's figure out a way to use resources more efficiently to lower taxes.' And they said, 'No, no, no--this committee is about using computers to collect more tax.' So I asked, 'How do we reduce costs?' And they said, 'Oh, there's no committee for that.' [Laughs] That's the problem with large organizations. They create roles and constraints, and sometimes people forget why they're there."

"Neoteny, one of my favorite words, means the retention of childlike attributions in adulthood. Childlike attributes include learning, idealism, experimentation, wonder, and creativity. In our rapidly changing world, not only do we need to continue to behave more like children - we can teach our children to retain those attributes that will allow them to be the world-changing, innovative adults who will help us reinvent the future."

"Moore's Law and the Internet have dramatically lowered the cost of the creation and distribution of information, fundamentally changing the way we collaborate. We no longer live in a world of central control but rather in ecosystem of "small pieces loosely joined" with innovation on the edges. Open source software and open standards thrive in this environment and push the networks to be even more open, making it possible that the agility we see in software and consumer Internet services may spread to hardware. Joichi Ito will show what startups, the MIT Media Lab and citizen geiger counters in Japan have in common."

"Leadership today is about empowering those around you share your vision, embrace serendipity, have the courage to take risks and learn from failure rather than be crushed by it. Diversity must be embraced and organizational borders made porous. Assets such as intellectual property and lines of software code must not prevent aggressive agility. Organizations must be willing and able to pivot away from attachment to such assets lest these assets become liabilities holding back innovation and progress.

In this new world, leaders must be courageous, visionary and comfortable in an environment where control and complete knowledge are impossible and their pursuit futile and counterproductive."

"Leadership today is about empowering those around you share your vision, embrace serendipity, have the courage to take risks and learn from failure rather than be crushed by it. Diversity must be embraced and organizational borders made porous. Assets such as intellectual property and lines of software code must not prevent aggressive agility. Organizations must be willing and able to pivot away from attachment to such assets lest these assets become liabilities holding back innovation and progress.

In this new world, leaders must be courageous, visionary and comfortable in an environment where control and complete knowledge are impossible and their pursuit futile and counterproductive."

"…part of what managing the Lab is going to be about: trying to make that space perfect. Because the way it's laid out, the way things are connected, and how people run into each other and stumble on new things, a lot of that is affected by the layout. I don't think everybody gets how important that is…<br />
<br />
Multi-disciplinary is a really key missing part of society, whether you're talking about science or the economy or any of these things. We've gotten so good at getting deep and being more and more specialized about a smaller and smaller thing that now we've got so many people who are really, really smart but don't know how to talk, let alone build anything together…<br />
<br />
A physicist and a chemist and an architect are only going to work together really well when they're building something. You can have them sit around a table and argue but they'll really only be talking across each other. The minute you try and build something together it becomes rigorous."

"In most powerful institutions, corners are cut & methods are used in a somewhat "ends justify the means" sort of way. There are a lot of things that are done & said behind closed doors that wouldn't survive public scrutiny, but have become common practice. In many cases, these practices aren't necessarily critically wrong, but just embarrassing or politically incorrect in some way.

I believe that Wikileaks is just the beginning of a bigger trend where it will become harder & harder to hide information and citizen counter-surveillance will become a norm rather than an exception.

I think that this will cause a lot of pain to powerful institutions - some will be overthrown or crushed. However, I think that we can build institutions that are robust against transparency if we design them that way from the beginning. It will be harder than learning to write open source software, but I believe that in the end we'll have a society that is better, stronger, more effective and fair."

"It’s not about being a generalist. I like to go deep in a lot of things…deep enough to contribute. If I like scuba, I become an instructor…music, I become a disc jockey…movies, I want to work on a movie set. I don’t become a world class academic in that field, but I get good enough to understand the nuances. & then, because I have experience in so many fields, it gives me a pattern that other people don’t have. For me, being unique and having friends who are unique is a really important thing…<br />
<br />
When I was in Hollywood, I realized that if I wanted to be a Hollywood producer, I’d have to spend 120% of my time talking to only Hollywood people. It’s the same in every industry or with traditional academics. But the Media Lab is a place where you can sit around & talk about everything deeply & that’s the whole point…here I’ve been stitching this thing together & being called this crazy scatterbrained ADD guy when in fact, what I’ve been trying to do already exists at the Media Lab…"

"In the press release announcing my appointment, Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab co-founder and chairman emeritus says, "In the past 25 years, the Lab helped to create a digital revolution -- a revolution that is now over. We are a digital culture. Today, the 'media' in Media Lab include the widest range of innovations, from brain sciences to the arts. Their impact will be global, social, economic and political -- Joi's world."<br />
I really felt at home for the first time in many ways. It felt like a place where I could focus - focus on everything - but still have a tremendous ability to work with the team as well as my network and broader extended network to execute and impact the world in a substantial and positive way."

"For centuries diplomas have been synonymous w/ the nation’s universities.

That makes MIT’s decision to name a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist who attended, but did not graduate, from 2 American colleges as director of one of the world’s top computing science laboratories an unusual choice…

Mr. Ito first attended Tufts where he briefly studied computer science but wrote that he found it drudge work. Later he attended the U of Chicago where he studied physics, but once again found it stultifying…later wrote of his experience: “I once asked a professor to explain the solution to a problem so I could understand it more intuitively. He said, ‘You can’t understand it intuitively. Just learn the formula so you’ll get the right answer.’ That was it for me.”

Mr. Ito’s colleagues minimize the fact that he is w/out academic credentials. “He has credibility in an academic context,” said Lawrence Lessig…"

"As an "informal learner" who dropped out of college and managed to survive, "The New Culture of Learning: cultivating imagination for a world of constant flux" captures and provides a coherent framework for many of the practices that guide my own life. If their suggestions are able to be weaved into the discourse and practice of formal education, informal learners like myself might be able to survive without dropping out. In addition, even those who are able to manage formal education could have their experiences greatly enhanced.<br />
<br />
John Seely Brown has continued to help give me confidence in the chaos + serendipity that is my life and have helped those who seek to understand people like us. This book brings together a lot of his work and the work of others (like my sister ;-) ) in a concise book definitely worth reading."

"Whenever I leave India, I always end up comparing it in my mind to China and thinking about "the cost of democracy". India is messy, has slums, has it's share of corruption, but it is democratic and democracy is messy and inefficient. On the other hand, China is extremely efficient and well organized at one level, but pays for this in a lack of political freedoms. It's not fair to compare the two countries too directly, but the contrast in their approaches as well as the potential of both countries is something that I look forward to watching as the scenarios play out."

"One of the great thoughts in the book is the idea that you should set a general trajectory of where you want to go, but that you must embrace serendipity and allow your network to provide the resources necessary to turn any random events into a highly valuable one and that developing that network comes from sharing and connecting by helping others solve their problems and build things."

"[My sister an I] were discussing formal learning vs informal learning & how I probably survived because I had the privilege of having access to smart people & mentors, support of an understanding mother, an interest driven obsessive personality & access to the Internet. I completely agree that improving formal education & lowering dropout rates is extremely important, but I wonder how many people have personalities or interests that aren't really that suited for formal education, at least in its current form.

"...While we retain many our childlike attributes into adulthood most of us stop playing when we become adults & focus on work...It's time we listen to children & allow neoteny to guide us beyond the rigid frameworks & dogma created by adults." + “We may notice that while most of humanity stop play and begin to work most of the daytime in their early twenties and play only in their spare time, there is a significant minority who continue to play all the time. They are usually the most gifted and talented, they become scholars, students and artists and occupy themselves with tasks for which their is no immediate substantial gain for themselves, intellectual tasks in fact. This is a continuation of childish behaviour and that minority contains all the intelligentsia. With the development of automation, the increase of prosperity and the availability of unlimited energy...the proportion of the neotenous minority will increase until it becomes a majority.”

"... one thing I've learned from my still brief time is that it's much more complicated than it appears. Just calling Muslim law and governance "medieval" and writing it off is ignorant. It's very different and isn't in sync with what many of us might think is "fair". They treat bounced checks and drug smuggling very seriously. Moving to the Middle East casually and assuming that everything should be just like home is dangerous and I wouldn't recommend it. However, I knew about the drug thing even before I visited and I learned about the "bounced checks land you in jail" thing on my first day. In summary, I think that if you're looking for fast money or a "rags to riches" dream, I would recommend against going to Dubai. On the other hand, if you're looking for a safe place to park while you explore opportunities or culture in the Middle East, I think Dubai is fine, for now."

""Education" and the notion that we actually understand the world causes us to be unprepared for the unpredictable. ... Science, which makes a great attempt at trying to make the world appear predictable, is really a rough approximation of things so that our simple minds can try to grasp the complex world around us. ... part of the reason for my moving to the Middle East was that while I continue to learn in any environment, days that I spend in the US or Japan tend to be mostly similar to previous days & relatively predictable, pushing me towards the somewhat typical mode of feeling in control or knowledgeable about what's going on. ... every day I spend in the Middle East is completely full of surprises & pushes me closer & closer to the understanding that I really don't understand anything. Sort of the pure idiot mode. In a way, I've become more aware & much more mindful of everything. One effect of this is that I less & less fear of the unpredictable & the unknown & unknowable."

"I'm shy and relatively lazy. I've worked most of my life overcoming my fear of meeting new people and my tendency to slack off. I actually remember a conscious moment when I noticed that the things I wanted to do the least were at the bottom of my to do list and never got done. I started working on my to do lists from the bottom instead of from the top. I forced myself to do little things like this to overcome my problems. It turns out that I may be lazy but I'm trainable and have trained myself to be a bit more productive than I was as a youth."

"...to v.c.'s and shareholders wanting profits than to users who want their rights and interests protected. We need to have more choices - which should include plenty of non-proprietary, grassroots, open alternatives."