Research Notes

I have been hanging out at the Berkman Center for a few years now but this was my first week as a fellow. Meeting all the new people at the lunch event on Tuesday made me realize how Berkman is some sort of intellectual hub of the Internet. Also, I am often surprised  by how many know about Berkman and how many influential digerati are or have passed  by Berkman at some point.

Photo by Greenery

The diversity of backgrounds among the Berkmanites is also very telling of the type of people who are attracted to building and understanding the on-line world. Nicholas Negroponte once described the Media Lab as a place for misfits and I think Berkman is another one of those places. We need more places like these, places willing to host people unbounded by specific disciplines.

But Berkman, like the Media Lab, is a transitional spaces for a lot of people. Where can these misfits go afterwards? I would like to know the answer to that. In the meanwhile, as I was trying to find a photo to accompany this post, I searched for  “misfit” on Flickr and I got a lot of pictures of cats!  Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Photo by ClintJCL

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2011 at 1:07 am and is filed under meta.