A Thank-You Note to Megan Smith
From Students of the MIT Media Lab
There are many magical days here at the MIT Media Lab, but none recently so much so as Friday, October 30 — marking the celebration of the Lab’s 30th anniversary. Dubbed Mind, Magic & Mischief, it was a celebration in true Media Lab fashion: Penn & Teller as emcees, talks and appearances by Lab alums, faculty, and friends such as Alan Kay and Marvin Minsky, and even a guest appearance by Martha Stewart.
But for us, and many other Media Lab students, there was an extra special shine to a particular part of the day: the talk by US CTO Megan Smith, rounding out the afternoon session.
Megan is nothing short of awesome. She is a Media Lab alum who was a member of the MIT student team that designed, built, and raced a solar car 2,000 miles across the Australian outback; she started her career at Apple, founded her own company, and went on to join Google’s executive team as VP of Google[x] — among a bunch of other great achievements too long to list here. But what’s most notable about Megan is her sharp wit and articulation of critical issues, all delivered with incredible humility and a powerful smile.
Megan could have used the stage to talk about anything — and did start her talk by reflecting on the impact of her time at the Media Lab on her own life. But she chose to use most of her 10 minutes to talk about how even in environments as amazing as MIT, we still struggle with diversity and inclusion — and why we need to change that.
Megan’s talk looks at the history of MIT, and our collective history in recognizing the participation of women in science and tech, which she summarizes nicely with a quote by Gloria Steinem:“Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just haven’t been a part of history.”
Throughout the talk, Megan gives examples of mismatches in history and inclusion:
Katherine Johnson, African American woman who computed trajectories for Alan Shepard, John Glen, and the Apollo Mission.
“I have never seen an African American woman included in Apollo movies. I want to see her, celebrate her, and know of her amazing work.”
She talks about the early Mac team, which had seven men and four women.
“Most of the men in this picture, who are incredible, are in all of the Jobs’ movies with speaking parts; and all of the women in this picture are not even in the cast even though they’re in the core of the team. We have to change that.”
In those brief 10 minutes Megan sent us away with a powerful message about where we’ve been and why we must all engage in redefining where we are going.
For us, her talk was particularly poignant because of the context in which it was delivered. Many of the day’s speakers represented a narrow demographic — an issue called out and addressed just before the event and discussed in a blog post by Media Lab director Joi Ito. But Megan was addressing a far-reaching problem, in our Lab and many labs around the world. Her brief talk hit home with us because it gets at the heart of an issue that affects so many of us deeply, every day.
What’s most inspiring about Megan and her talk is that her focus is not on looking to the past with finger-pointing, but rather looking to the future, with a collective call to do better.
“It’s not that this is anyone’s fault, but we can’t live under the regime of our barbarous ancestors once we know things. We need to debug it.”
We wrote this as a thank-you to Megan for her talk, but even more, as a public rallying cry to engage with her request. She rightly points out that we have the tools and the data, but more critically, the ability and the obligation to stand on this awareness and our skills to debug this — the exclusion of women and people of color in the tech industry, as well as at MIT and the MIT Media Lab — and create a better future that both includes and celebrates everyone.
“And so my challenge to all of us in the Media Lab and others, is to take this on as a research area.”
Here at the Media Lab, we’ve begun this work by engaging in a collective discussion and momentum in addressing our own challenges and shortcomings with diversity in both gender and race — which can be attributed to Joi’s leadership and the dedication to this issue by many of the Lab’s leadership team. The MIT Media Lab actually has a long history of research that incorporates issues of gender and equity that’s been behind the scenes for too long. We still fall well-short of the challenge Megan has posed to us. We can, and should, do more.
The MIT Media Lab is about the future, and if we’re the leading futurists in robotic limbs, neural optogenetics, and so many other things, then we should be leading in debugging the diversity and inclusion issue too.
So thank you Megan, and we agree, we need to change that.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Groff
Madeleine Abromowitz
Yadid Ayzenberg
Honey Bajaj
Ben Bloomberg
Jonathan Bobrow
Bianca Datta
Nick dePalma
Amanda Ghassaei
Jason Haas
Caroline Jaffe
Kristy Johnson
Rebecca Kleinberger
Julian Leland
Ani Liu
J. Nathan Matias
Laura Perovich
Sarah Platte
Edwina Portocarrero
Jie Qi
Ricarose Roque
Jasmin Rubinovitz
Spencer Russell
Guy Satat
~ students of the MIT Media Lab
Jen Groff is a designer and researcher of learning technologies and environments, and a PhD student at MIT Media Lab and Education Arcade. She has a master’s in educational technology from the University of Delaware, a master’s in Mind, Brain, Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is a former Fulbright Scholar to the UK. She is also the Co-founder for the international NGO, Center for Curriculum Redesign.
