As a part of this year’s Proseminar in Media Arts and Sciences, the newly-minted PhD cohort worked together to envision future Media Lab research groups and realize their vision in the form of sci-fi articles, publications, and media clips that explore the role and potential impact of developing technologies in the near and not-so-near future.

Traditionally, the MAS921 “Proseminar in Media Arts and Sciences” course informs and guides the new PhD cohort through all the steps in the doctoral process, from formulating research questions to the formal requirements of the general exam, thesis proposal, and PhD defense. We discuss potential research topics and committee members with each other, as well as inviting recent Media Lab alumni and subsets of Media Lab faculty to  a set of panel discussions to share their experience and wisdom. Although nobody denies the benefit of getting the fresh PhD students oriented into the process of obtaining their doctorate, the typical class structure felt like a missed opportunity to both the current instructor (Prof. Joe Paradiso), TA (Irmandy Wicaksono), as well as most of the students who had taken the class in past years. Having so many bright and talented students from across the Lab together for a term is an opportunity that won’t naturally repeat. Inspired by a recent visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where Joe saw their "A-Team"  in session (a workshop that cloisters participants from very different backgrounds in an intense multi-day session to flesh out the details of candidate planetary missions), we started the 2020 Prosem with the idea of bringing an activity like this into the class.

Hence, this year, we added a new element to the Prosem syllabus. As one of the major strengths of the Media Lab is its high level of intellectual diversity, we introduced a final Prosem project activity that would encourage students to collaborate in an interdisciplinary way, to reinforce cohesion, familiarity, and mutual respect across Media Lab groups that are built around different intellectual domains. 

"We wanted to leverage this close-knit opportunity to reflect and imagine, to look forward, to envision and design future possibilities. We set out to amplify the timely and timeless research rigor and boldness that continuously evolve in the Media Lab."

Even though we were convoluted by a stream of unpredictable events last year, culminating in pandemic-induced isolation, we thought that it was even more important to build innovative group activity into the Prosem, thinking broadly about how to come out of quarantine with an even better Media Lab. Therefore, we wanted to leverage this close-knit opportunity to reflect and imagine, to look forward, to envision and design future possibilities. We set out to amplify the timely and timeless research rigor and boldness that continuously evolve in the Media Lab. Inspired by Stewart Brand and his book The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, we found that extrapolating and envisioning the future based on our current research, and putting this into a piece of writing or storytelling could be a powerful approach that could inspire and spark discussions within our community and the world around us. These vignettes, although often fun and playful, are full of inspirations as we mused across possible futures, and serve as a memoir that will be there to reflect back upon as time collectively passes. In our first exercise, we questioned what the Media Lab itself could look like in 10, 30, or even 50 years? How could we convey this Media Lab X.0 as a group project? After a set of brainstorming sessions, we decided to work in teams (with members coming from different backgrounds) to create a collection of Media Lab scientific publications, sci-fi articles inspired by future Media Lab projects, and mixed media that would exist in the years of 2030 and 2050 as the output of our 2020-cohort Final Prosem project.

The second exercise was then to come up with our own Media Lab X.0 groups. Each student contributed to one or two groups with explanations of the vision, example projects, and backgrounds of students that each group would like to admit. As already reflected by the typical group currently at the Media Lab, future Media Lab groups will continue to have diverse, interdisciplinary teams and projects. We ended up composing a total of 22 groups, including Creative Silicon, which explores the role of synthetic actors in our communities; Growable Computing, whose research involves the development of a programmable amorphous biological computer embedded within nature; and Long Horizon, which explores the vision of extending human health and lifespan and how this will  affect society. Some of the hypothetical groups, like Synthetic Monsters, Enchanted Machine, and Interspecies Worldmaking, were very playful, yet imaginative and far-reaching.

This is just the beginning of our Media Lab X.0 journey; we thought that we could use these groups as a way to “admit” the students in Prosem into five interdisciplinary teams. An application portal was then designed, where “Cyborg Joe” guides the applicants through a personalized, interactive experience. After submission, an admission officer in the "Interdisciplinary Research Management and Navigation Department for Yearners" would scan through their choices, personal interests, research background, statement, and recommendation letters to evaluate and assign each applicant to the most relevant Media Lab X.0 group. 

Here are some stats and snapshots of personal statements from the Media Lab X.0 admission: 

• 47% of us are self-proclaimed Wizards, 41% are Cyborgs, and 12% are Martians. 
• "I would like a future where we tread lightly and breath fresh air."
• "A future with more biology and more connections to ecology."
• "A future where we disconnect from technology when we want to, but allow it to amplify our human experience when we do."
• "I would like to develop the next-generation intelligent food capable of communicating."
• "One where all sentient beings have a sense of peace, happiness, and magic in their lives."
• "To enter into kin relations with the more than human world."

"The final projects touched various aspects of emerging topics, including deepfakes, synthetic biology, psychedelics and brain augmentation, e-commerce networks, artificial intelligence and supercomputers, and space governance."

From here, we came to the most critical part of the Prosem exercise, where each assigned team, consisting of four members, conducts their own world-building activity and works together to submit a project that conveys either the vision or potential impact of the technologies developed by future Media Lab groups. Some teams focused on writing a piece that covers a particular, specific future Media Lab group, while others tried to create a larger narrative drawing on connections spanning future research from multiple groups. The final projects touched various aspects of emerging topics, including deepfakes, synthetic biology, psychedelics and brain augmentation, e-commerce networks, artificial intelligence and supercomputers, and space governance. In the end, we hope that the five outcomes of this year’s Final Prosem project, linked below, could modulate our broad and diverse research and thinking, while giving readers an entertaining and unique taste of our possible future research directions and their technological, social, ethical, and cultural implications, be it in the form of a video, presentation, scientific publication, or science fiction narrative.

Proseminar in Media Arts and Sciences 2020: Anastasia Ostrowski (Personal Robots), Abhinandan Jain (Fluid Interfaces), Alex Berke (City Science), Bridgit Mendler (Social Machines), David Colby Reed (Space Enabled), Erik Strand (Center for Bits and Atoms), Jake Read (Center for Bits and Atoms), Joanne Leong (Fluid Interfaces), Tay Won Shin (Synthetic Neurobiology), Manuj Dhariwal (Lifelong Kindergarten), Manushaque Muco (Responsive Environments), Maggie Hughes (Social Machines), Pat Pataranutaporn (Fluid Interfaces),  Nikhil Singh (Opera of the Future), Nicholas Hogan (Mediated Matter), Patrick Chwalek (Responsive Environments), Prathima Muniyappa (Space Enabled), William Brannon (Social Machines), Wakane Sebastian Kamau (Sculpting Evolution), and Zeguan Wang (Synthetic Neurobiology). Course Instructor: Joseph. A. Paradiso, Teaching Assistant: Irmandy Wicaksono (Responsive Environments).