Thursday, April 4, 2013

Of High-Speed Internet, Entrepreneurship, and Surprising Facts: the ML Conversations Series

The Media Lab’s 2013 Conversations Series is off and running, with two fantastic talks in the last two weeks.
Yancey Strickler MLTalks
Mar28-2013

On March 28, author Susan Crawford spoke with Ethan Zuckerman and Andy Lippman about her new book, Captive Audience, and the disparities in Internet speeds in the US caused by telecom companies’ monopoly. In Crawford’s view, "We should be able to take connectivity for granted - it should be ubiquitous, like the air we breathe." Instead, however, we’re faced with high costs and limited options, and yet none of the fastest cities in the world for Internet connectivity are in the US. You can view the full archived talk online.

On April 3, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler came by to chat with Joi Ito about crowdfunding and entrepreneurship. From Veronica Mars to the $5,000 projects that make up the bulk of Kickstarter’s 38,000 successfully funded enterprises, Strickler maintains that "the most important step is putting the idea out there." Watch the full archived talk online.

In related news, the Media Lab now has a curated page of projects that have been funded or are seeking funding on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/pages/mitmedialab. Be sure to check back periodically to see amazing projects from the Media Lab community!

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