Web impresario Josh Harris burned through millions during the dot-com boom. Following the 2009 release of We Live in Public, which documented Harris' bizarre rise and fall, the Pseudo.com founder earned his living for a year by playing high-stakes poker in California.
Now Harris is back with a new plan: He wants to run the MIT Media Lab. The Boston-area think tank has for 25 years championed sociable media, wearable computing and interfaces capable of "fundamentally transforming our most basic notions of human capabilities and daily life," according to its website. The Lab will be hiring a new director and wants input about candidates.
As stated on its nomination page, The Media Lab seeks "a dynamic and visionary leader ... to: manage a highly creative, unconventional and extremely diverse research organization."
In this Wired.com exclusive, Harris lays out his Singularities Effect stump speech for the MIT Media Lab directorship, saying he wants to accelerate the creation of "billions of human brains weaved together in a vast data net that form a new, higher-level intelligence."
By Josh Harris
There was a time in the 1990s when I was one of those hot, rich, internet entrepreneurs everyone talked about and envied. Everywhere I went, doors opened and people glad-handed me to distraction. Back in New York City now after a 10-year absence and with the millions gone, I live in an anti-universe where, for better and worse, no one bothers me.
Considering that the two companies I founded -- Jupiter Research and Pseudo Programs -- were critical drivers of New York City's technology boom in the 1990s, you would think the city would welcome me back with open arms.
Guess again.
The business and venture-capital guys must have seen the piece on CNBC last year where I told reporter David Faber the truth -- that it was all a Ponzi scheme and that Pseudo was an "art project."
A couple years ago, We Live in Public, a documentary film starring me, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. I thought the worldwide notoriety would reinvigorate my career, though there is some confusion about exactly what my career is. I went on a bit of a tour with the film thinking maybe this is the traction needed to get my Wired City project off the ground. Nope. Just a bunch of business types barely concealing their "this guy is a kook" thinking as I explained my project. (Maybe they were having flashbacks from the film, which showed me on the crapper taking business calls.)
Some people argue that my ability to see the future is downright preternatural. I was visited by the Singularities in 1992. They insisted I make "Launder My Head" [a video featuring animated figures, with PCs for heads, that discuss the hidden meaning of Gilligan's Island] in order to spread the word that they were coming and describe a little about who they were. You might say I am the real-life version of Howard Beale from the film Network. Rightfully you should suspect that I am a bit crazy, but I can assure you I started out normal, just like you.
Others would say that I am the "Warhol of the web." I would argue that my special gift is the ability to use technology to create the future in the present. And of course, I do it with great showmanship.
The MIT Media Lab Mission
Future Case Study
How toothpaste will generate the singularities effect:____• The advent of the home studio (a television studio in the home) is comparable to the advent of home theater 20 years ago. The retail theatrical experience was displaced by the home theater, just as traditional TV studios are about to be displaced by the home studio.
• Monitoring the home is refined. Just as security companies monitor the perimeter of a home, more-vertical monitoring systems will track most aspects of daily life. The home (and the rest of daily life, ala Minority Report) will become a series of soundstages. So the desktop will expand to the countertop, the fridge top and the bath top.
• The bath top as a theatrical venue. Featuring just-in-time tooth-brushing (ergo video chat with other people who are brushing their teeth at the exact same moment). If Cindy Crawford and/or Johnny Depp were brushing at 8:32 a.m. on Monday morning, you'd be there.
• The Crest Oral Hygiene Monitor will watch your mouth. In the future of toothpaste, we can count on an "oral hygiene monitoring system" run by Procter & Gamble, Colgate or Google. If your child misses a tooth-brushing session, you can be sure that the Crest equivalent of social services will let you know you are a bad parent.
• Crest (or more likely its ad agency) will build Crest Net Studios in order to accommodate the above. The key to success will be to connect people in space and time. Or, in other words, just-in-time chat video brushing that assembles the most engaging and entertaining people at the moment you start brushing.
• The world that we live in will become a series of net studio soundstages that will elevate even the most mundane of daily rituals into engaging and entertaining "micro dayparts."
• When the human condition reaches a critical mass of micro dayparts, a psychic fracture (the singularities effect) will occur: The brain will convert from monotasking to multitasking mode. Thus the hive mind is born.
• After the singularities effect becomes real, the human will no longer operate as an individual.
If I were elected director, the mission of the Media Lab would be to build an advanced singularities factory (aka Borg, Matrix or Hive). The idea is to build a highly advanced human chicken factory -- imagine the Perdue chicken people building a singularities factory for humans -- faster than the one that is naturally occurring in the marketplace.
The mission milestones of the MIT Media Lab would include:
• Create a state-of-the-future singularities effect manufacturing facility called The Wired City.
• Build a Singularities Operations Center -- a trusted monitoring station for the current and future (human?) race.
• Develop a concomitant MIT Media Lab Singularities Studies academic discipline and curriculum.
• Launch corporate and entrepreneurial enterprises within and beyond the Media Lab.
The Wired City
Mission: The Wired City's mission is to "push and package advanced technologies" that are often not yet ready for mainstream commercial adoption to form a working technological ecosystem. In other words, build a state-of-the-art facility for generating the singularities effect in present time in a controlled atmosphere that enables the existing human condition to viscerally experience the future human chicken factory in present day.
Key production elements: Here's what's needed to create the Wired City.
• Orchestrate millions of hours of audience "self-surveillance" into a hierarchical system that generates compelling broadcast- and netcast-quality programming.
• Real-time chat video-switching (next-generation social graph).
• 24/7 netcasting studios that efficiently process mass data signals generated by the audience.
• Massive multiplayer online gaming element (worthy audience members get to live on set and receive special powers and privileges). Hollywood-style production values produced by and for netcasting audiences.
• Hearts and minds. Audience members are letting each other into their homes and lives (the camera is turned on them).
• Bonification. Audience members get their 15 minutes of fame every day.
• 1 million hours of net-generated programming is distilled into one hour of prime-time broadcast programming, every day.
Key commerce elements: Here's how the Wired City will revolutionize commerce.
• Micro-aggregation of mass audiences returning broadcast-quality CPM revenues.
• A more direct relationship/bond between audience and sponsors.
• Coordination of mass audiences as tastemakers and influencers generates traction with sponsors.
If I become director of the MIT Media Lab, the institution's primary focus will be to build a working singularities effect of the future, now, in order to understand how it all works.
What do you think of Harris' platform: prankster musings or visionary thinking? Comment below. You can vote for Harris or other Media Lab director candidates at MIT's website.
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