Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Showing posts with label MIT Media Lab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MIT Media Lab. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
He Who Must Not Be Tolerated; The New York Times, September 8, 2019
Kara Swisher, The New York Times;
He Who Must Not Be Tolerated
Joi
Ito’s fall from grace for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was
much deserved. But his style of corner-cutting ethics is all too common
in tech.
"Voldemort?
Of all the terrible details of the gross fraud that the former head of the M.I.T. Media Lab, Joichi Ito, and his minions perpetrated in trying to cover up donations
by Jeffrey Epstein to the high-profile tech research lab, perhaps
giving a pedophile a nickname of a character in a book aimed at children
was the most awful.
“The effort to
conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some
staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein
as Voldemort or ‘he who must not be named,’ ” wrote Ronan Farrow in The
New Yorker, in his eviscerating account of the moral and leadership failings of one of the digital industry’s top figures."
The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab; Slate, September 8, 2019
Justin Peters, Slate; The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab
"Over the course of the past century, MIT became one of the best brands in the world, a name that confers instant credibility and stature on all who are associated with it. Rather than protect the inherent specialness of this brand, the Media Lab soiled it again and again by selling its prestige to banks, drug companies, petroleum companies, carmakers, multinational retailers, at least one serial sexual predator, and others who hoped to camouflage their avarice with the sheen of innovation. There is a big difference between taking money from someone like Epstein and taking it from Nike or the Department of Defense, but the latter choices pave the way for the former."
"Over the course of the past century, MIT became one of the best brands in the world, a name that confers instant credibility and stature on all who are associated with it. Rather than protect the inherent specialness of this brand, the Media Lab soiled it again and again by selling its prestige to banks, drug companies, petroleum companies, carmakers, multinational retailers, at least one serial sexual predator, and others who hoped to camouflage their avarice with the sheen of innovation. There is a big difference between taking money from someone like Epstein and taking it from Nike or the Department of Defense, but the latter choices pave the way for the former."
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