MIT Media Lab Founder On 30 Years Of Being Digital

In February, 1995, six months before the Netscape IPO kicked off the age of the commercial internet, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT’s Media Lab, pulled together some of the essays he’d been writing for a hot new magazine called Wired which aimed to chronicle the growing overlap between new digital technologies and the broader culture.

He called the resulting book being digital (no capitals intentional) a guidebook to a future that he predicted with remarkable accuracy, nailing the rise of everything from streaming entertainment to Substack to the dominance of the touchscreen as our go-to interface a decade—or two—before it happened. Millions of readers turned being digital into a hit—and Negroponte into a global celebrity—despite the feelings of some, like one New York Times reviewer, who called it “technically fascinating but psychologically somewhat sinister. Do we really want slave machines organizing our lives?”

It turned out, of course, that we did—and do. And over the last 30 years, the impact of Negroponte’s book, and the groundbreaking work he and his students and colleagues at MIT pioneered, profoundly changed not only our understanding of the world, but the world itself.

Having grown to know Negroponte, now 81, a bit from prior interviews over the years, I figured the 30th anniversary of being digital was a great reason to revisit his thinking, the book itself, and what he makes of what many—including myself—see as a new turning point in our relationship with digital technology. That is, of course, the unexpected explosion of generative AI.

Late last fall, he was game for a conversation from his apartment in Los Angeles, but, he cautioned, not all that eager to revisit the past. As for his take on ChatGPT? “I don’t use it at all,” he shrugged. “I’ve never opened it in my life.” What follows was edited for length and clarity.

Reflecting on being digital, you predicted so much in that book, the streaming video industry, something akin to YouTube, personalization of media, the rise of author-centric media like Substack, touchscreens being the dominant interface with computing, and a ton of other stuff. Why do you think you got so much right in that book?

That’s hard to say. Remember where I was. I was at MIT, a lot was crossing my desk, many people visiting, my best friends had created the field of artificial intelligence, the media lab was in the birth process, everything was sort of right there to be had.

I remember when I wrote being digital the president of MIT had read it and said to me, “It’s amazing how there is so little new in it,” in other words, we knew it all. It was part of daily life. And so I don’t think it was so much seeing the future as describing where I was living at the time.

It’s been 30 years since the book came out. What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from the digital era that we’ve ushered in?

Well, keep in mind that the digital revolution, if you want to call it that, was happening at the same time as wireless. Wireless emerged arguably in the ’60s, but really in the ’70s and ’80s and now constantly everywhere. So “being digital” now means being in your pocket, being with you all the time, whereas at the time I wrote it, you went to your laptop, you went to a place to do it. And that’s a very big change. That change is so fundamental and we take it completely for granted.

What do you make of what we’ve seen with technology in the last couple years and what do you think of it?

Well, maybe you’ve seen more than I. I haven’t seen anything astonishing in the sense that, “Oh my dear, you know, where did this come from?” I think what perhaps fascinates me the most is the degree to which this is happening all over the world. In other words, it’s not just limited to an industrial society or even to a society that uses the Latin alphabet. We’re seeing this all over the place.

And in some sense, you’re seeing it more in [places like] rural Afghanistan because when people go to an internet cafe…it’s part of reaching out that gives them hope, it gives them opportunity, a way of touching the rest of the world. That’s very new.

When you’ve tried ChatGPT, what do you use it for?

I don’t use it at all. I’ve never opened it in my life. It’s kind of funny. Maybe one of the results of this phone call is I’ll sit down and use it tonight, but I just haven’t done that.

Why not? I mean, this has been the most hyped and most talked about technology since the birth of the commercial internet. What is it that hasn’t put its claws in you?

I’ve just felt no need to do it. Maybe one should do it just to be current.

That’s interesting. One of the things I find is lots of experimentation, but people are still trying to figure out like, “What’s the real value here?”

Perhaps I’m in that same group and I’ve got to start using it myself.

One thing that you were looking at around 1995 was the idea of semi-autonomous electronic agents. We’re starting to see that start to potentially emerge. How would that change our relationship with machines and with each other?

Those are two very, very different questions. I think the dependence we have on these machines, particularly the cellphone because it does so many things and we carry it with us and so on is, on the one hand, astonishing, but on the other hand, we’re all very grateful. I mean, we’re grateful to have that connectivity.

I’m grateful to be able to see your message while I’m picking out my laundry and answer it and so on. Life is much more of an omelet than fried eggs. Some people don’t like that, they prefer to be in very compartmentalized situations. But most young people are much more willing to and much more fluid, if you will, to live what I call an omelet life and it’s all mixed up.

Our relationship with people gets better partly because we’re able to get rid of what used to be a high overhead of figuring out when we’ll meet, where we’ll meet, what we’ll do, this and that. I find when I meet people, like yesterday, and maybe again this afternoon, you have more prime time. You can use the time much more for content than logistics and figuring out what you’ll do and how you’ll do it. That’s a big change.

One thing that you talk about a lot in the book, and especially at the epilogue, is the emergence of privacy issues, cyber crime, economic displacement that could lead to some class resentment. Are you surprised by the extent to which digital technology has separated us and the way that’s grown up?

I don’t know if it has separated us. In fact, I think it’s brought lots of people closer together rather than separating. I think that the digital world and the physical world are now, I won’t say seamless, but they cohabitate very well for most people.

I’ve always been an optimist. I should have gone back and read the book. Remember the book was a collage of essays from Wired magazine, so some of them even go back further. But I don’t remember ever being much of a pessimist.

Your final thought in there is very optimistic. You said that despite all of these things, the fact that this was now being handed over to a younger generation who would make of it what they will made you optimistic. So are you still as optimistic in 2025 as you were in 1995 about where we’re going?

I’m pretty optimistic, yes. You also have to remember with age, you get a little bit more jaded. I’m healthy so I’m not sitting around worrying about me. I’m still looking out at the rest of the world and what I see doesn’t depress me. I don’t sit around saying, “Oh my God, what have I created, why was I part of this?” Not at all. I’m still very proud to have been there in the early days and participated in the way I did.

What excites you about the technologies that are emerging now and where we’re going over the next period, whatever that period is? Do you see where we are now as a bit of an inflection point or is this just the continuation along the way?

I guess the current election is pretty much of an inflection point and pretty terrifying. If you look at it and you say, “How did we get here and why is this happening?” That, at the moment at least, dominates my thought and dominates, I suspect, a lot of people’s thought. But otherwise we’re in pretty good shape, I think.

A lot of folks are talking these days about artificial general intelligence, and this is something that your friends were talking about 40, 50 years ago. Do you think we’re creeping towards that? And if we get there what do you think the impact will be?

The quick answer is yes, we’re certainly getting there. The part that interests me about artificial intelligence was the part that nobody really worried about—things like humor but has nothing to do with the kinds of things that today are referred to as artificially intelligent.

On the other hand, when you look at the combination of stuff, just walking to the store and looking at your iPhone as to where you are, did you take the right turn and so on, and you’re in a place you don’t know, which happens to be my situation right now. So I really use the phone to figure out where to pick up the laundry or what to do. And you realize, “Wow, there’s an awful lot in there, a lot of things are making that happen,” none of which I would say was artificial intelligence.

But the combined effect, whether you call it intelligent or not, is so astonishing and so important and we take it, as I said, for granted, which is kind of proof. But that part is, yes, that’s very encouraging and, as I said, I’m very pleased to have been part of it.

When you developed the Media Lab, a lot of the promise was that the corporations that were part of it could come and steep themselves in that environment. Is that the magic mix for CEOs, for board members, that they really do need to go and steep themselves in a different environment if they really do want to get better at seeing what’s possible?

Yes, that’s true. And it’s particularly true that they go and see and participate in a place that is not beholden to them. In other words, when people came to the Media Lab, we didn’t do anything different. The students were very good at receiving visitors. They found the visitors interesting, and the visitors found them interesting because the visitors tended to be older, and these could have been their children.

The enthusiasm they saw in the students at the Media Lab and before that at the architecture machine group was, I won’t say life-changing, but had a really important impact. When I met people, let’s say 20 or 30 years later, they don’t remember a particular demo. What they remember was the enthusiasm and the drive and the commitment that people had to ideas and what they were doing.

When we met a few years ago, I asked you if the government was to do a single thing as a moonshot, what would it be? You surprised me when you said, fusion energy. Is there anything else you see right now anything out on the horizon like that, that you think we should be paying attention to that maybe isn’t getting enough attention?

Fusion is still the top of my list in the sense that I think it’s absolutely crucial, and I think nuclear energy in general is very important. I think people have caught on and that this is the real opportunity to be green and to really help the environment and to produce somewhat limitless energy. So I’m good with that. I thought I was pushing a rock uphill before, but I don’t feel that anymore. That’s a great relief.

Do I have a current one? No, I’m relatively satisfied in the direction that both computation and nuclear energy are going. When you asked me about ChatGPT, I haven’t even used it. So I will correct that and send you a note if it has a huge impact.

Even if it is a parlor trick, it’s the best parlor trick I’ve seen in a really long time.

Well, that’s good. Nothing wrong with parlor tricks.

Not to get all Ray Kurzweil and singularity on you, but we’ve really merged with our technology. How do you think this has changed us and how do you think it’s going to change us from here?

The next big change, which I don’t think I will see but that will certainly happen at some point, is where all of this starts getting embedded in us versus holding it in our hand. At the moment, that is more medically-oriented and, sort of, prosthetics if you need them. But what about prosthetics if you don’t need them? That’s going to be, I think, the next big step. I haven’t experimented with embedding anything in me, but I think that is the next one.

So if we all are embedded and we’re kind of wired to each other, and it’s an extension of the trends we’re seeing now, what do you think we will be when we are that connected?

You know, I used to try and answer that in the sense of where we would end up. But I think we’ll end up sort of where we are. Everything changes, but nothing changes. We still walk out the door and have a cup of coffee with friends and we do things more or less the way we did them before. The logistics part has changed. We arrange it differently. It happens more conveniently. We find the place we say we’re going to go to, which sometimes we didn’t before.

A note: I did not hear from Negroponte about ChatGPT—at least not yet.

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