MIT media labs does exactly what other academic labs do, just more visibly.
ie. go down promising areas, end up with no significant inferences and a lot of utile effort, and in very rare cases, make breakthrough contributions.
The key difference being that the things Media labs work on is usually in areas with underdefined academic landscapes, which makes it hard to make any significant progress.
Media labs is not the frontier of academic research that some make it out to be. Rather, it is just like other insignificant academic labs, in that they mostly produce duds. Media labs is just higher risk and higher reward.
However, the amount of media hype they generate definitely belies the amount of significant progress it produces.
ie. go down promising areas, end up with no significant inferences and a lot of utile effort, and in very rare cases, make breakthrough contributions.
The key difference being that the things Media labs work on is usually in areas with underdefined academic landscapes, which makes it hard to make any significant progress.
Media labs is not the frontier of academic research that some make it out to be. Rather, it is just like other insignificant academic labs, in that they mostly produce duds. Media labs is just higher risk and higher reward.
However, the amount of media hype they generate definitely belies the amount of significant progress it produces.