Joichi
"Joi" Ito has been recognized for his work as an activist,
entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate of emergent democracy,
privacy, and internet freedom. As director of the MIT Media Lab, he is
currently exploring how radical new approaches to science and technology can
transform society in substantial and positive ways.
Soon after coming to MIT, Ito introduced mindfulness meditation training to
the Media Lab. Together with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, founding
director of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at
MIT, Ito is promoting the contribution that awareness and focus can bring to
the creativity process.
Ito is Chairman of the Board of PureTech and as served as both board chair
and CEO of Creative Commons. He sits on the boards of Sony Corporation, the
Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The
New York Times Company. In Japan, he is executive researcher of KEIO SFC, and
he was a founder of Digital Garage, and helped establish and later became CEO
of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. Ito was an early
investor in numerous companies, including Flickr, Six Apart, Last.fm,
littleBits, Formlabs, Kickstarter, and Twitter.
Ito’s honors include TIME magazine’s "Cyber-Elite” listing in 1997 and
selection as one of the "Global Leaders for Tomorrow" by the World
Economic Forum (2001). In 2008, BusinessWeek named him one of the "25
Most Influential People on the Web." In 2011, he received the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute. He also received an
honorary D.Litt from The New School in New York City, and an honorary Doctor
of Humane Letters degree from Tufts University. In 2014, Ito was inducted
into the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame and was one of the recipients of the
Golden Plate award from the Academy of Achievement. He is co-author with Jeff
Howe of Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future (Grand Central Publishing,
December, 2016). |
