Funding poured in and the MIT Media Lab opened its doors in 1985. Its mission was to create practical advances in new media technology while honoring both artistic imagination as well as the free and playful exchange of ideas.

The first project looked at the future of computer graphics as something more consumer oriented and driven by a much bigger market.

Negroponte and his colleagues also experimented with combining consumer-based display technology in ways that have become a familiar feature of today's laptop computers. "It was considered quite outrageous," says Negroponte, remembering the strident objections over using colors in displays.

In fashioning the intellectual culture at the Media Lab, Negroponte wanted its artists, scientists and educators to develop technologies that they themselves would use. "My point was that the innovation in computers would come from the creative users, not just from the science. For example, experimental musicians might naturally wish to push the envelope in audio signal processing," he says. "And people who were interested in new media could innovate in digital television technology."

Negroponte wanted the Media Lab to be "… a place you could come, and do research and advanced applications in the same place."

The recipe worked. Under Negroponte's direction, the MIT Media Lab became the leading computer science lab for new media, making computers more user-friendly and far more capable as tools for creativity and the expressive imagination.