1:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Time Zone
October 18, 2002
Bartos Theater, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Speakers
    Mr. Bimal Sareen
Managing director of Media Lab Asia
    Professor Sanjay Dhande
Academic director of Media Lab Asia and director of IIT Kanpur
    Professor Neil Gershenfeld
Director of Media Lab Center for Bits and Atoms
    Professor Mitchel Resnick
Co-director of MIT’s Digital Nations consortium
    Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala
Head of the Media Lab Asia’s Tamil Nadu Laboratory and founder/leader of the TeNet group at IIT Madras
    Professor Alex (Sandy) Pentland
Media Lab Asia’s founding director and co-director of MIT’s Digital Nations consortium


    Reception
    Following the presentations there will be a private reception for faculty and sponsors.

Media Lab Asia is a research organization dedicated to bringing the benefits of cutting-edge technologies to everyone, with a special focus on meeting the greatest challenges in learning, health, and economic development. With core participation from MIT, seed funding from the Government of India, and significant industrial funding, Media Lab Asia is inventing technologies that respond to the needs of the vast number of individuals living in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Media Lab Asia consists of regional laboratories and participating grassroots communities, with administrative headquarters in Mumbai, India, and a research program office within the MIT Media Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Each regional laboratory is formed around several core projects, each involving academic, industrial, and community partners. The first regional laboratories are at IITB, IITM, IITK, IITD, and IITKg, with new laboratories anticipated at several other leading institutions. For more information see http:///www.medialabasia.org.

Media Lab Asia includes both university laboratories that generate and prototype new concepts, and field projects that develop, test, and evaluate these laboratory prototypes. The research projects may be divided into three technical initiatives:

  • Bits for All: How to bring digitally enabled services to everyone on earth. The focus of Bits for All is viral, terrestrial wireless systems for rural connectivity.
  • Tomorrow’s Tools: Translating the vision of fine-grain, pervasive computing to rural communities. Tomorrow’s tools are about connecting the disembodied world of bits to the real world through novel sensors, effectors, and fabrication tools.
  • World Computer: A computer for the illiterate, for communities, for everyone. The design goal of the world computer is a localized, grassroots interface.

These three technical themes come together in a fourth initiative that seeks to find a synergetic combination of technology with societal need:

  • Digital Village: The goal is to create a sustainable digital ecology that maintains traditional values and community while opening economic and expressive opportunities. The twin themes of the Digital Village projects are tools that empower invention and expression, and advanced financial tools for simple lives.