Social Sofware: Media Lab on Mass Innovation

BusinessWeek’s Stacy Perman interviewed Frank Moss, the new head of MIT’s Media Lab about his vision for the Media Lab as it enters its third decade. As expected, lots of talk about the entrepreneurial and “socieletal business models.”

You talk about education and the bottom-up effect that millions more people will play in societal advances. How do you see this unfolding?

We will undergo another revolution when we give 100 million kids a smart cell phone or a low-cost laptop, and bootstrap the way they learn outside of school. We think of games as a way to kill time, but in the future I think it will be a major vehicle for learning.

Creative expression (is another area). No longer will just a few write or create music. We will see 100 million people creating the content and art shared among them. Easy-to-use programs allow kids to compose everything form ringtones to full-fledged operas. It will change the meaning of creative art in our society.

We are already seeing early signs of it in blogs. The source of creative content is coming from the world. That revolution will go well outside of the written word to all forms of visual and performing arts.

BusinessWeekline Online Interview

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