MediaLab Europe, or MLE, was established in 1999 after extensive negotiations between the Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's famed MediaLab.
On the MediaLab side, discussions were led by the Professor of Media Technology at MIT, Dr Nicholas Negroponte, who founded MediaLab in 1985 and is a well-known author and international digital pundit.
The MediaLab in Massachusetts is unlike other research labs in the US, as it does not do pure research towards products. Instead, it operates at the intersection of technology, creativity and the bizarre, a kind of haute couture of technology where people, many of them artists in their own right, experiment. MediaLab describes itself as the place where "bits meet atoms".
Such whimsy annoys many traditional researchers. A New York Times article on MediaLab noted that it had produced few products or direct contributions to technological developments compared to "serious" labs like those at Carnegie-Mellon University, IBM or Stanford.
On the other hand, those labs receive a tiny fraction of the publicity regularly showered on MediaLab, whose sometimes bizarre applications of technology make for perfect television, radio and print coverage.
Supporters of the MediaLab concept argue that numerous well-funded pure research labs exist, but there's only one MediaLab, where researchers are allowed to delve into the ways technology might weave together with other areas of human endeavour, like the arts.
Whatever its detractors say, MediaLab has nonetheless had the support of up to 170 corporate sponsors. But in recent years, following the industry downturn in 2000 and a consequent withering of corporate support, MediaLab has struggled to find other forms of funding, a challenge that also has faced MLE.
MLE was the first spin-off of what turned into a badly timed attempt to franchise MediaLab; labs in Japan and India followed. The Indian project did not go well - in 2003 MIT and Media Lab Asia severed ties. The Indian government continues to operate the lab, perhaps an option the Irish Government could pursue.
