Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Whiplash
WORK NOTES: with Jeff Howe
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 6/19/1966
WEBSITE: https://joi.ito.com/
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Japanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joi_Ito * https://whiplashbook.com/ * https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/whiplash-how-to-survive-our-faster-future/ * https://joi.ito.com/about/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born June 19, 1966, in Kyoto, Japan.
EDUCATION:Attended the University of Chicago and Tufts University. Graduated from the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist. Creative Commons, board chair and CEO, 2003-; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, MIT Media Lab director, 2011-, professor of media arts and sciences, 2015-; PureTech Health, Boston, MA, 2014-, board member, became chair of the board; Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, visiting professor, 2017. Also a contributing editor for Wired.
AVOCATIONS:Scuba diving, meditation.
MEMBER:Has served on the boards of the New York Times Company, the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, Witness, Epic, the MIT Press, and many other foundations, media groups, and tech startups.
AWARDS:Named one of the 25 most influential people on the Web, BusinessWeek, 2008; Harvard University, Nieman Fellow, 2009-2010; Lifetime Achievement Award, Oxford Internet Institute, 2011; Doctor of Letters honoris causa, the New School, 2013; Golden Plate Award, Academy of Achievement, 2014; Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, Tufts University, 2015.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Joichi “Joi” Ito is an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate of Internet privacy and freedom. As director of the MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he explores how radical new approaches to science and technology can transform society in substantial and positive ways. Part of the first generation who has grown up with the Internet, Ito is an advocate for open-source software and promoting the sharing of digital information. In the New York Times, John Markoff wrote: “Even among the Internet generation, Mr. Ito has been extraordinary in the degree to which he has lived his life publicly and online in blog posts and on a dizzying array of social media.” Living in Tokyo and Boston, Ito also became a resident of Dubai in 2008 to gain a better understanding of the Middle East and as “part of his desire to understand intellectual property issues internationally and to become what he described as a ‘global citizen,’” reported Markoff.
Ito is also a long-time contributing editor at Wired where he coined the term crowdsourcing. Ito was previously board chair and CEO of Creative Commons, and he sits on the boards of Sony Corporation, the Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the New York Times Company, the Mozilla Foundation, and other organizations. In 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web. The Oxford Internet Institute presented Ito with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and in 2014 he received a Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement.
In 2014, Ito wrote the forward to The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges by Zaid Hassan, the facilitator and cofounder of Reos Partners. The book explores ways to develop solutions to world problems, such as poverty, racial conflict, and climate change, and offers methods for testing those solutions in the real world and using data to further refine them.
Ito published Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future in 2017 with cowriter Jeff Howe, who is the program coordinator for Media Innovation at Northeastern University and also an assistant professor there. Because technology is moving faster than society can adapt to it, Ito and Howe explore solutions to surviving and thriving in a world in which technology is more complicated, faster, and cheaper than ever before. A steep learning curve is necessary to navigate the new faster future while addressing the wisdom of the past and succeeding by thinking differently. The authors provide nine organizing principles to surviving in these times, such as embracing risk over safety, drawing inspiration, and implementing innovative ideas. Case studies and examples include Bitcoin and Kickstarter.
Whiplash covers a broad range of topics, including artificial intelligence, the flu virus, and social engineering. Ito and Howe also provide personal narratives, philosophical commentaries, and histories. The authors provide “compelling examples of how these trends challenge conventional approaches to facilitating and incubating creativity and productivity,” noted Raymond Pun in a review in Booklist. Despite reciting slogans like “be prepared to walk away,” the authors “also crack open new paradigms” for addressing future technological issues that seem to arise every day, observed a contributor to Success. Library Journal correspondent Cori Wilhelm called the book “a deeply researched think piece recommended for readers curious about the relationship between culture and technology.” Deeming the book Whiplash “a standout among titles on technology and innovation,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor stated, “This exhilarating and authoritative book actually makes sense of our incredibly fast-paced, high-tech society. Summing up the volume, a Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked: “This provocative gem is a must-read for anyone interested in the cutting-edge research and exploration” going on at universities and think tanks.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 15, 2016, Raymond Pun, review of Whiplash, p. 5.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2016, review of Whiplash.
Library Journal, November 15, 2016, Cori Wilhelm, review of Whiplash, p. 97.
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2016, review of Whiplash, p. 62.
Success, December 2016, review of Whiplash, p. 81.
ONLINE
Joi Ito Home Page, https://joi.ito.com/ (August 18, 2017).
MIT Media Lab, https://www.media.mit.edu/ (August 18, 2017), summary of Whiplash.
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ (April 26, 2011), John Markoff, “M.I.T. Media Lab Names a New Director.”
Whiplash, https://whiplashbook.com/ (August 18, 2017).
About Joi Ito
I'm the Director of the MIT Media Lab. I'm the chair of the board of PureTech Health and serve as a board member for various organizations including The New York Times Company, the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Digital Garage.
I'm passionate about learning new things, spending time with interesting people and the future of art, science, design and engineering. I spend most of my time supporting the research of the Media Lab research groups, centers and initiatives. We have around 400 projects.
I've invested in various companies through various vehicles and as an angel investor. I continue to make small investments through my current fund, Neoteny 3. You can see most of my portfolio on my Angel List page.
I recently co-authored a book with Jeff Howe called Whiplash.
I've taught a class called Principles of Awareness three times with the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi where we explore meditation and mindfulness and will be teaching it again for the spring 2018 semester.
I taught a class in January with Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard called Internet & Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control. We are having MIT students join the class together with the members participating in The Berkman Assembly. We will be doing the class again for the spring 2018 semester including another cohort of the Berkman Assembly.
I'm a scuba instructor and love to scuba dive. Recently I'm pretty excited about my rebreather. Having said that, I don't get to go nearly as often as I would like to.
I've been the host of a weekly TV show on NHK in Japan called Super-Presentation since April 2012. On the show, we watch a TED Talk and talk about the presentation and the topic. I've have a number of co-hosts and my current co-host is Media Lab Assistant Professor, Sputniko. (You can find a list of all of the TED Talks that we've covered on the Japanese Wikipedia page for the show.)
You can find a more complete bio on my bio page. My LinkedIn page has the more precise record of my various roles past and present. My conflict of interests page lists all of my investments and affiliations categorized by the type of relationship.
Other links:
My Wikipedia Article
Twitter
Facebook Page
YouTube Page
iTunes Podcast
SoundCloud
Flickr
Quora Page
Goodreads
Google+
Page on MIT Media Lab site
Joi Ito
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joi Ito
Joichi Ito Headshot 2007.jpg
Ito in 2007
Born Joichi Ito
June 19, 1966 (age 51)
Kyoto, Japan
Residence Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality Japanese
Alma mater Tufts University
University of Chicago (attended)
The New School
Known for Blogging, Moblogging, Creative Commons, MIT Media Lab
Relatives Mizuko Ito (sister)
Website Joi.Ito.com
In this Japanese name, the family name is Ito.
Joichi "Joi" Ito (伊藤 穰一 Itō Jōichi, born June 19, 1966) is a Japanese activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, Director of the MIT Media Lab[1] and Professor of the Practice of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT.[2]
Ito has received recognition for his role as an entrepreneur focused on Internet and technology companies and has founded, among other companies, PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. Ito is the chairman of the board of PureTech Health.[3] Ito is a strategic advisor to Sony Corporation,[4] and a board member of The New York Times Company,[5] the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,[6] the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,[7] and General Partner of Neoteny Labs.[8]
Contents
1 Family and education
2 Later life
3 Journalism
4 Media "lists" and honors
5 MIT Media Lab
6 Publications by Joi Ito
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
Family and education
Joi Ito (c.1981)
Ito was born in Kyoto, Japan. His family moved to Canada and then when Ito was about age 3 to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, in the United States where his father became a research scientist[9] and his mother a secretary for Energy Conversion Devices, Inc., now Ovonics. Company founder Stanford R. Ovshinsky was impressed with Ito, whom he thought of almost as his son. Ovshinsky helped Ito develop his interests in technology and social movements, and at age 13 gave him work with scientists, saying, "He was not a child in the conventional sense."[10]
Ito and his sister Mizuko Ito, who is called Mimi, spent summers in Japan with their grandmother who taught them traditional Japanese culture.[11] At 14, he returned to Japan when his mother was promoted to president of Energy Conversion Devices Japan. He studied at the Nishimachi International School[12] and for high school, the American School in Japan in Tokyo.[13] Ito also learned "street language, street smarts, and computers". One of few Japanese using modems before deregulation of networking reached Japan in 1985, Ito had found The Source and the original MUD by his teens (and by 26 was working on his own MUD).[11]
Ito returned to the United States to attend Tufts University near Boston as a computer science major, where he met, among others, Pierre Omidyar, later founder of eBay.[14] Finding his course work too rigid and believing that learning computer science in school was "stupid",[14] Ito dropped out of Tufts to briefly work for Ovonics. Ovshinsky encouraged him to return to school. He enrolled at the University of Chicago in physics but dropped out on discovering, in his opinion, the program at Chicago to be more oriented towards producing practical engineers than towards teaching an intuitive understanding of physics.[10] In the Fall of 1985 he became the first student to register for a pioneering program of online courses offered by Connected Education, Inc., for undergraduate credit from The New School for Social Research.
Ito is one of Timothy Leary's godsons—a close non-traditional family-like relationship, an idea said to have been conceived by Leary for a few of his friends.[15][16] Ito's sister is Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist studying media technology use, and the musician Cornelius is his second cousin. Ito currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Mizuka Ito (née Kurogane).
Later life
Ito became a disk jockey working in nightclubs in Chicago such as The Limelight and The Smart Bar and to work with Metasystems Design Group to start a virtual community in Tokyo.[11] Later, Ito ran a nightclub in Roppongi, Japan called XY Relax with help from Joe Shanahan of Metro Chicago/Smart Bar. He helped bring industrial music from Chicago (Wax Trax) and later the rave scene, including importing Anarchic Adjustment to Japan.
Ito at the 2008 Creative Commons panel discussion: “The Commons: Celebrating accomplishments, discerning futures.
Ito was the Chairman of Creative Commons from December 2006 until 2012. He is on the board of Digital Garage,[17] Culture Convenience Club (CCC),[18] Tucows,[19] and EPIC,[20] and is on the advisory boards of Creative Commons and WITNESS. He is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny Co., Ltd. In October 2004, he was named to the board of ICANN for a three-year term starting December 2004. In August 2005, he joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation[21] and served until April 2016. He served on the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) from March 2005 until April 2007. He currently serves as a Board Emeritus for OSI.[14] He was a founding board member of Expression College for Digital Arts[22] as well as the Zero One Art and Technology Network.[23] In 1999, he served as the Associate to Mr. Mount (the executive producer) on the film The Indian Runner.[24] Ito also served as a Board Member of Energy Conversion Devices from 1995 to 2000.
Ito is a venture capitalist and angel investor and was an early stage investor in Kickstarter,[25] Twitter,[26] Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, Last.fm, Rupture, Kongregate, Fotopedia, Diffbot, Formlabs, 3Dsolve and other Internet companies.[27][28] A vocal advocate of emergent democracy and the sharing economy, Ito is a doctoral candidate in Business Administration focusing on the sharing economy at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University. He is the author of Emergent Democracy.[29] Ito is Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC.[30] In May 2011, it was announced that Ito's company, Digital Garage, will provide PR, marketing, product marketing research and market research for Linkedin Japan.[31]
Ito is a PADI IDC Staff Instructor, an Emergency First Responder Instructor Trainer, and a Divers Alert Network (DAN) Instructor Trainer.[32]
In recent years, Ito has become critical of what he sees as Japan's inward focus. He stated in a 2011 interview that he thinks Japan needs to look internationally if it is to continue to be "relevant".[33]
Journalism
Ito has written opinion editorials for the Asian Wall Street Journal[34] and The New York Times[35][36] and has published articles in numerous other magazines[37] and newspapers. He has had regular columns in The Daily Yomiuri, Mac World Japan, Asahi Pasocom, Asahi Doors, and other media sources. His photographs have been used in The New York Times Online,[38] BusinessWeek,[39] American Heritage,[40] Wired News,[41] Forbes,[42] and BBC News.[43] He was on the early editorial mastheads of Wired and Mondo 2000. He has authored and co-authored a number of books including Dialog – Ryu Murakami X Joichi Ito with Ryu Murakami, and "Freesouls: Captured and Released" with Christopher Adams, a book of Ito's photographs that includes essays by several prominent figures in the free culture movement.[44] He has hosted televisions shows including The New Breed and SimTV shows on NHK.
He is currently the host of a TV show called "Super-Presentation" airing weekly in Japan on NHK.[45]
Media "lists" and honors
Ito was listed by Time magazine as a member of the "Cyber-Elite" in 1997. He was also named one of the 50 "Stars of Asia" in the "Entrepreneurs and Dealmakers" category by BusinessWeek[46] and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT in 2000.[47] He was selected by the World Economic Forum in 2001 as one of the "Global Leaders for Tomorrow"[48] and chosen by Newsweek as a member of the "Leaders of The Pack (high technology industry)" in 2005,[49] and listed by Vanity Fair as a member of "The Next Establishment" in the October Issue, 2007[50] and 2011.[51] Joi Ito was also named by BusinessWeek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008.[52] On July 22, 2011 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his role as one of the world's leading advocates of Internet freedom from the University of Oxford Internet Institute.[53] In 2011, with Ethan Zuckerman, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, in which he stated the Best idea is "Users controlling their own data".[54] Ito received the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, from The New School in 2013.[55] On March 11, 2014, Ito was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Festival Hall of Fame.[56] He was a TED speaker at the March 21, TED2014.[57] In 2014, Ito was awarded the Golden Plate Award by the Academy of Achievement.[58] On May 17, 2015 Ito received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Tufts University.[59] On May 11, 2017 Ito was awarded the IRI Medal.[60]
MIT Media Lab
The New York Times reported in April 2011 that Joi Ito was named to be the director of the MIT Media Lab. His appointment was called an "unusual choice" since Ito studied at two colleges, but did not finish his degrees. "The choice is radical, but brilliant," said Larry Smarr, director of Calit2.[61] Ito officially began his role on September 1, 2011.[1][62] He was appointed Professor of the Practice of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, effective July 1, 2016.[63]
Nicholas Negroponte, Media Lab's co-founder and chairman emeritus, described the choice as bringing the media to "Joi's world".[64] In an interview with Asian Scientist Magazine, Joi Ito discusses his vision for the MIT Media Lab, and how he likes the word “learning” better than the word “education”.[65]
Publications by Joi Ito
Ito, Joi; Howe, Jeff (2016). Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-1455544592.
No bio
Director
Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences
Joichi "Joi" Ito has been recognized for his work as an activist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and internet freedom. As director of the MIT Media Lab, and a Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences, he is currently exploring how radical new approaches to science and technology can transform society in substantial and positive ways.
Soon after coming to MIT, Ito introduced mindfulness meditation training to the Media Lab. Together with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Ito is promoting the contribution that awareness and focus can bring to the creativity process.
Ito is chairman of the board of PureTech, and as served as both board chair and CEO of Creative Commons. He sits on the boards of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The New York Times Company. He also serves as a strategic advisor to the Sony Corporation. In Japan, he is visiting executive researcher of KEIO SFC, was a founder of Digital Garage, and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service p… View full description
Joichi Ito
Director, MIT Media Lab
Cambridge, MA, United States
Joi Ito's Web
TED Speaker
Personal profile
About Joichi
TED Cred 176
Bio
Joichi Ito is the Director of the MIT Media Lab. He is a Board Member of Sony Corporation, The New York Times Company, The MacArthur Foundation, The Knight Foundation, The Mozilla Foundation and co-founder and board member of Digital Garage an Internet company in Japan. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Twitter, Six Apart, Wikia, Flickr, Last.fm, Kickstarter, Path and other Internet companies. He is a PADI IDC Staff Instructor, an Emergency First Responder Instructor and a Divers Alert Network (DAN) Instructor Trainer.
Ito was named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008. In 2011, he was chosen by Foreign Poicy Magazine as one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers". In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute in recognition of his role as one of the world's leading advocates of Internet freedom. In 2011 and 2012, Ito was chosen by Nikkei Business as one of the 100 most influential people for the future of Japan. Ito received the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, from The New School in 2013.
Languages
English, Japanese
TED Conferences
TED2018, TED2016, TED2015, TED2014, TED2013, TED2012, TED2011, TED2010, TED2009
Areas of Expertise
education, The Sharing Economy, Venture Investing
I'm passionate about
Human Rights, Sharing, Internet, Consumer Internet startups, Middle East, Japan, Health, Photography
I am a…
Activist, Blogger, Change Agent, Connector, Entrepreneur, Investor, Philanthropist, Photographer, Social entrepreneur, World traveler
Universities
Keio University, MIT Media Lab
Talk to me about
Learning, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Human RIghts, Creative Commons, Japan, Blogging, Online Journalism, Consumer Internet, Angel Investing, Online Gaming, Photography
People don't know I'm good at
Diving, Photography, MMORPGs
M.I.T. Media Lab Names a New Director
By JOHN MARKOFFAPRIL 25, 2011
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For centuries diplomas have been synonymous with the nation’s universities.
That makes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s decision to name a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist who attended, but did not graduate, from two American colleges as the director of one of the world’s top computing science laboratories an unusual choice.
On Tuesday, the university plans to announce that Joichi Ito, known as Joi, will become the fourth director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, which was originally founded by the architect Nicholas Negroponte in 1985 and has since become recognized for its willingness to take risks in developing technologies that are at the edge of the computing frontier.
The Media Laboratory gained a global reputation during the 1990s as an avant-garde research center known for stunning high-technology demonstrations that pointed toward a future digital society.
Indeed, the Media Lab has on occasion been criticized for overemphasizing flashy demos. During the 1990s, under Dr. Negroponte, the lab evolved a research culture of “demo or die,” rather than the standard academic “publish or perish” model.
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The Media Lab pioneered a range of computing-based technologies like the Aspen Movie Map, a forerunner of Google Street View, the $100 Laptop, an educational tool intend for students in the developing world, and E Ink, the display technology that makes an Amazon Kindle book reader viewable in bright sunlight.
Perhaps its most important role, however, has been in helping to nurture a generation of innovative designers like John Underkoffler, a user-interface designer who is now a Hollywood consultant and who provided most of the futuristic interface ideas seen in the movie “Minority Report.”
In 1990, with American fears about Japan as a high-technology competitor running high, the Media Lab also briefly became a lightning rod for criticism after it struck a deal to transfer its research approach to Japanese industry and educational institutions.
Although that adds a touch of irony to the decision to choose Mr. Ito, he is neither a conventional Japanese technologist, nor your average college dropout.
Raised in both Tokyo and Silicon Valley, Mr. Ito was part of the first generation to grow up with the Internet. His career includes serving as a board member of Icann, the Internet’s governance organization; becoming a “guild master” in the World of Warcraft online fantasy game; and more than a dozen investments in start-ups like Flickr, Last.fm and Twitter. In 1994 he helped establish the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan.
He was also an early participant in the open-source software movement and is a board member of the Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the development of the Firefox Web browse, as well as being the co-founder and chairman of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that has sought to create a middle ground to promote the sharing of digital information.
Photo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology plans to announce that Joichi "Joi" Ito will become the fourth director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory on Tuesday.
Credit Mizuka Ito
“The choice is radical, but brilliant,” said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a University of California laboratory that pursues a similar research agenda to the Media Laboratory. “He can position the lab at the edge of change and propel it for a decade.”
Mr. Ito’s appointment comes at a time when the Media Lab, as well as other information technology research centers, have struggled to reclaim the financing levels that were characteristic of the era of the dot-com boom. Although the lab gets the bulk of its $35 million annual budget from corporate and government sponsors, that amount has declined measurably as a percentage of the overall budget during the last decade, Dr. Negroponte said.
“Funding got tight in 2002 and even tighter in the last economic downturn,” he said. That has made fund-raising the highest priority for the new director, he said. However, he added that Mr. Ito’s particular leadership qualities made him stand out among the 250 candidates who were considered for the position.
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“Joi is very good at enabling others,” he said. “I’ve never met a 44-year-old who is able to enable others in this way. Most people who are at that age are into themselves and their career.”
L. Rafael Reif, the provost of M.I.T., called Mr. Ito “the right person to lead the Media Lab today,” describing him as “an innovative thinker who understands the tremendous potential of technology and, in particular, the Internet, to influence education, business, and society in general.”
Directing the Media Lab is an alluring challenge because of the potential of blending the longer term focus of university research and development efforts with the agility and risk-taking approach of Silicon Valley start-ups, Mr. Ito said.
“You embrace serendipity and you pivot as you go along this longer term arc. That’s the way I have lived my life. I’ve jumped around in terms of career and geography,” he said.
Mr. Ito, who maintains a home outside of Tokyo, became a resident of Dubai at the end of 2008 to gain a better understanding of the Middle East. He said that was part of his desire to understand intellectual property issues internationally and to become what he described as a “global citizen.”
Even among the Internet generation, Mr. Ito has been extraordinary in the degree to which he has lived his life publicly and online in blog posts and on a dizzying array of social media. Last year he traveled about 230 days, and it is possible to follow his adventures on a Web site he maintains in text, images and video including a diving trip this month that involved feeding sharks in the Caribbean.
Mr. Ito first attended Tufts where he briefly studied computer science but wrote that he found it drudge work. Later he attended the University of Chicago where he studied physics, but once again found it stultifying. He 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 without academic credentials. “He has credibility in an academic context,” said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who co-founded Creative Commons. Mr. Ito is currently chairman. “We’ve been collaborators, and I’ve stolen many ideas from him and turned them into my own.”
The Media Lab will benefit from a director who has Mr. Ito’s global connections, said John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. “What they really need right now is to have a two-way connection to the outside world. Who more to do that than Joi?”
A version of this article appears in print on April 26, 2011, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: M.I.T. Media Lab Names a New Director. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
(Dec. 2016): p81.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 R & L Publishing, Ltd. (dba SUCCESS Media)
http://www.successmagazine.com/
WHIPLASH
How to Survive Our Faster Future
By Joi Ito and Jeff Howe
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Joi I to, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, and Jeff Howe, program coordinator for Media Innovation at Northeastern University, know change. "Even in Boston ... decades of progress seem to melt away in the time it takes to walk from the humming laboratories of MIT to the cash-strapped elementary schools just a few blocks away." Ito and Howe pepper their book with old-school slogans: "Question authority," "Be prepared to walk away," and "Get out of your comfort zone." But they also crack open new paradigms for grasping a confounding future that arrives every day. (December; Grand Central; $28)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future." Success, Dec. 2016, p. 81. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471850250&it=r&asid=1acecfc238296cc4cdc89399a1776cc0. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471850250
Ito, Joi & Jeff Howe. Whiplash: How To Survive Our Faster Future
Cori Wilhelm
141.19 (Nov. 15, 2016): p97.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Ito, Joi & Jeff Howe. Whiplash: How To Survive Our Faster Future. Grand Central. Dec. 2016.288p. notes. ISBN 9781455544592. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781455544585. BUS
What comes next, and are we ready for it? Two bright minds from MIT's Media Lab, Ito, its director, and Howe (Crowdsourcing), a visiting scholar, attempt to put our fast-approaching future into a framework that readers can understand. With "everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate," Ito and Howe propose nine organizing principles to help "bring our brains into the modern era." Each chapter is devoted to one principle and concludes with "The DIY": how to translate the principle into an "actionable strategy." This helps the reader apply the concept to a variety of industries and situations and encourages unconventional and interdisciplinary thinking. Throughout, the authors explore wide-ranging topics including artificial intelligence, the flu virus, and social engineering in an effort to illustrate their nine principles in practice. Stressing the importance of flexibility, diversity, risk-taking, and relationship-building, the book can be used as inspiration for both individuals and institutions to weather the changes ahead successfully. VERDICT A deeply researched think piece recommended for readers curious about the relationship between culture and technology as well as those who plan never to stop learning.--Cori Wilhelm, SUNY Canton Coll, of Tech. Lib.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wilhelm, Cori. "Ito, Joi & Jeff Howe. Whiplash: How To Survive Our Faster Future." Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 97. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470367226&it=r&asid=0abb42b5c64ce7fa46ba9ba74b010afd. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470367226
Ito, Joi: WHIPLASH
(Oct. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Ito, Joi WHIPLASH Grand Central Publishing (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 12, 6 ISBN: 978-1-4555-4459-2
Two cybergurus offer a "user's manual to the twenty-first century.""Our technologies have outpaced our ability, as a society, to understand them," write MIT Media Lab director Ito and veteran Wired writer Howe (Media Innovation/Northeastern Univ.; Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, 2008). "We need to catch up." In this heady, immensely rewarding book, they expand on the nine principles animating the celebrated MIT Lab to craft a blueprint for success in a world undergoing revolutions in technology and communications. As a result of Moore's law--everything digital gets faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate--and the rise of the internet, "the very nature of innovation" has changed, "relocating it from the center (governments and big companies) to the edges (a twenty-three-year-old punk rock musician and circuit-board geek living in Osaka, Japan)." New products are produced "at great scale and little cost in a matter of weeks, if not days." The authors devote a chapter to each of their tools for using the world's new operating system. For example, they encourage crowdfunding and using resources as needed rather than stockpiling them to exploit the reduced cost of innovation. They discuss the value of undirected discovery, the need to accept risk and experimentation ("and a willingness to fail and start again from scratch"), and the importance of maintaining "a culture of creative disobedience." They emphasize that planning is costlier than improvisation, that diverse aptitudes trump expertise, and that human systems are most resilient at their most diverse. They also argue that responsible innovation must focus on "the overall impact of new technologies." They describe how leading MIT researchers work at the lab, which Ito, an entrepreneur and college dropout, joined in 2011. This exhilarating and authoritative book actually makes sense of our incredibly fast-paced, high-tech society. A standout among titles on technology and innovation, it will repay reading--and rereading--by leaders in all fields.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ito, Joi: WHIPLASH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329322&it=r&asid=5669d0072ca88b802a8d097e434d030c. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466329322
Joi Ito, Jeff Howe: WHIPLASH
(Oct. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Joi Ito, Jeff Howe WHIPLASH Grand Central Publishing (Adult Nonfiction) 28.00 ISBN: 978-1-4555-4459-2
Two cybergurus offer a “user’s manual to the twenty-first century.”“Our technologies have outpaced our ability, as a society, to understand them,” write MIT Media Lab director Ito and veteran Wired writer Howe (Media Innovation/Northeastern Univ.; Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, 2008). “We need to catch up.” In this heady, immensely rewarding book, they expand on the nine principles animating the celebrated MIT Lab to craft a blueprint for success in a world undergoing revolutions in technology and communications. As a result of Moore’s law—everything digital gets faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate—and the rise of the internet, “the very nature of innovation” has changed, “relocating it from the center (governments and big companies) to the edges (a twenty-three-year-old punk rock musician and circuit-board geek living in Osaka, Japan).” New products are produced “at great scale and little cost in a matter of weeks, if not days.” The authors devote a chapter to each of their tools for using the world’s new operating system. For example, they encourage crowdfunding and using resources as needed rather than stockpiling them to exploit the reduced cost of innovation. They discuss the value of undirected discovery, the need to accept risk and experimentation (“and a willingness to fail and start again from scratch”), and the importance of maintaining “a culture of creative disobedience.” They emphasize that planning is costlier than improvisation, that diverse aptitudes trump expertise, and that human systems are most resilient at their most diverse. They also argue that responsible innovation must focus on “the overall impact of new technologies.” They describe how leading MIT researchers work at the lab, which Ito, an entrepreneur and college dropout, joined in 2011. This exhilarating and authoritative book actually makes sense of our incredibly fast-paced, high-tech society. A standout among titles on technology and innovation, it will repay reading—and rereading—by leaders in all fields.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Joi Ito, Jeff Howe: WHIPLASH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466551572&it=r&asid=42859ed06d22dca53cd828c2ad1d0628. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466551572
Publishers Weekly. 10/17/2016, Vol. 263 Issue 42, p62-62. 1/5p.
Innovation and technology guru Howe (Crowdsourcing) teams up with his colleague Ito, an Internet privacy activist and the director of MIT's Media Lab, for a highly entertaining and thought-provoking look at the ongoing shifts in technology and communication affecting the business sector. The authors have come up with organizing principles to help the reader navigate a chaotic landscape, focusing particularly on embracing innovation and disruption as vehicles for success. They bring abstract principles such as "Emergence over Authority" or "Systems over Objects" to life by narrating historical turning points, such as the Lumière brothers' 1895 screening of the first motion picture; recent failures, such as Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster; and recent innovations in technology, such as the development of bitcoin. The writing style avoids the trap of being overly conceptual and is instead snappy and accessible, sprinkled with ideas such as how to form a new "cognitive toolset" geared to ongoing advances. This provocative gem is a must-read for anyone interested in the cutting-edge research and exploration happening at MIT's Media Lab, innovation at countless universities and companies worldwide, or futuristic thinking in general. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Dec.)
By: Pun, Raymond. Booklist. 11/15/2016, Vol. 113 Issue 6, p5-5. 1/6p. ,
Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster
Future.
By Joi Ito and Jeff Howe.
Dec. 2016. 288p. Grand Central, $28 (9781455544592).
303.48.
Ito and Howe, affiliates of the MIT Media
Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
describe nine core principles that are rapidly
disrupting, shifting, and opening the world in
a new direction of innovation. The principles,
such as risks, diversity, and systems, derive from
the collision of two important revolutions:
communications and technology. Fittingly,
each chapter moves quickly and offers compelling
examples of how these trends challenge conventional approaches to facilitating and
incubating creativity and productivity. From
Bitcoin to Kickstarter, the book is filled with
a variety of case studies, personal narratives,
philosophical commentaries, and histories
which make up Ito and Howe’s core themes.
With them, the authors explore where society
is heading and how to make sense of these
swift technological developments. Also cited
are experiments and creative reflections from
the MIT Media Lab which position how these
principles can be applied in society. Readers
interested in technology, science history, futurism,
innovation, and entrepreneurship will
find this book to be very fascinating, thought
provoking, and focused. —Raymond Pun