Media Lab Europe
Encyclopedia
Media Lab Europe was a research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
institute in Dublin, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
based on the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
. It went into voluntary liquidation
Liquidation
In law, liquidation is the process by which a company is brought to an end, and the assets and property of the company redistributed. Liquidation is also sometimes referred to as winding-up or dissolution, although dissolution technically refers to the last stage of liquidation...
early in 2005.
MLE was created in July 2000 and was initiated by the Irish Taoiseach
Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the head of government or prime minister of Ireland. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas , and must, in order to remain in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil.The current Taoiseach is...
Bertie Ahern
Bertie Ahern
Patrick Bartholomew "Bertie" Ahern is a former Irish politician who served as Taoiseach of Ireland from 26 June 1997 to 7 May 2008....
. The lab received start-up funding of 35 million Euro from Irish Government
Irish Government
The Government of Ireland is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland.-Members of the Government:Membership of the Government is regulated fundamentally by the Constitution of Ireland. The Government is headed by a prime minister called the Taoiseach...
, as well as sponsorship from industrial research partners (see below). It was located in a former Guinness
Guinness
Guinness is a popular Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is directly descended from the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide, brewed in almost...
warehouse in the historic Liberties
The Liberties
The Liberties of Dublin, Ireland were jurisdictions that existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. They were town lands united to the city, but still preserving their own jurisdiction. The most important of these liberties were the Liberty of St...
area and was to have been a flagship project for the Irish Government's Digital Hub project, an urban renewal scheme aiming to encourage digital media companies to locate in the area. The MLE board initially included celebrity Bono
Bono
Paul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
from U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
: in 2002, he stepped down in favour of fellow band member The Edge
The Edge
David Howell Evans , more widely known by his stage name The Edge , is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record...
whose technical interests better fit the laboratory's mission and who (unlike Bono
Bono
Paul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
) regularly attended meetings of the board.
The lab focused on innovation in digital technology and human-machine interaction. MLE was quite successful and managed to recreate the creative play research atmosphere of the MIT Media Lab. By 2004 MLE was in full swing, and in the lab's short lifespan the researchers produced 21 refereed journal articles, 59 refereed full papers for conferences, and 62 refereed shorter papers for conferences, for a total of 142 refereed works. The Lab achieved international recognition for a range of its work including EEG
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
based mind-computer interfaces; the BumpList and Iso-phone. The latter two projects received honorary mention at the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
. Furthermore, MLE researchers regularly contributed to international research forums of the European Commission, the Association for Computing Machinery, and others concerned with advancing technologies and their constructive uses.
MLE held a highly successful international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME-02, in May 2002. In May 2004, in conjunction with Ireland's hosting of the EU Presidency, MLE and the Department of Education and Science assembled New Futures for Learning in the Digital Age. MLE also organized an associated international symposium, Incremental Progress or Fundamental Change?, featuring Prof. Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
, to question attitudes and progress in digital learning.
Research partners included Allied Irish Banks
Allied Irish Banks
Allied Irish Banks p.l.c. is a major commercial bank based in Ireland.AIB is one of the so called "big four" commercial banks in the state. The bank has one of the largest branch networks in Ireland; only Bank of Ireland fully rivals it. AIB offers a full range of personal and corporate banking...
, BT, Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
, Intel, and Orange. The lab also cooperated with several Irish universities and the Higher Education Authority
Higher Education Authority
The Higher Education Authority is the authority in Ireland with responsibility for higher education since 1968 and placed on a statutory basis in 1971. The authority supports HEAnet, part of the GEANT network....
.
The lab was unfortunate to have been founded just as the internet bubble collapsed and with it the corporate ability to invest in projects of this sort. Compounding difficulties, some members of the Irish university sector expressed concerns about the government money invested in the Lab. Although, in a call for proposals, the Higher Education Authority contradicted this by noting, "The HEA is delighted at the level of collaboration (between MLE and Irish universities) which has been achieved in the short time since Media Lab Europe was established."
2004 saw increasing emphasis on the long-term financial viability of the project and it encountered funding difficulties: it did not seem likely that the lab would become self-financing with its original funding model in the near future and the Irish government appeared unwilling to provide sufficient further support. On 14 January 2005 MLE's Board announced that the lab would be put into voluntary liquidation and close. In the declaration of insolvency Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
, the liquidator
Liquidator (law)
In law, a liquidator is the officer appointed when a company goes into winding-up or liquidation who has responsibility for collecting in all of the assets of the company and settling all claims against the company before putting the company into dissolution....
, noted a surplus of €325,000.
Commenting in the Irish Times (Lillington 2005) Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association ....
, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, said that the research at MLE was "beyond [his] wildest expectations"; he was critical of European companies for their unwillingness to invest in the lab and said: "Many visitors to MLE thought the work in Dublin was more edgy than at MIT. In this regard, Ireland received what it asked for in spades. The failing was economic and the financial model was freakishly untimely."
However, it was also reported in the media (see for example Weckler 2005) that both internal and government reports commissioned when the lab first reported financial difficulties came to critical conclusions about the initial elements of the labs operations and practices. For example it was noted that the number of patents produced by the lab up to 2004 was very small, though the account did not reflect on how long processes of research development and patent application would normally take. Furthermore, independent assessments of the Laboratory's operation commissioned by MLE noted significant improvements in management and operations since mid-2003. It was also reported in (Smith 2005) that the Irish government would have provided further but limited funding, if the board had agreed to governance changes. Inevitably such brief, unofficial reports cannot present the full picture of these complex negotiations, in which both parties discussed a range of possibilities but ultimately found closure of the lab to be the only mutually-agreeable option.
The Irish Government has funded a new research organisation at the same location, the National Digital Research Centre
National Digital Research Centre
The National Digital Research Centre is a private non-profit company located in Dublin, Ireland, founded in 2006.The NDRC concentrates on applied digital technology with a commercial focus and an emphasis on industry collaboration...
, with a more applied focus.
MLE was not the only attempt to recreate the innovative spirit of the MIT Media Lab: Media Lab Asia was founded by MIT and the Indian government in 2001, but it parted ways with MIT in 2003. Consistent with the premise of MIT's OpenCourseWare movement, it seems there may be no substitute for "being there."