An Irish university lecturer, Sean O Nuallain has launched an attack on Irish government policy with respect to the software industry at a lecture in UC Berkeley. He is a visiting lecturer at Stanford University. According to ENN UC Irvine plans to invite him to repeat the same lecture.
Apparently Sean reckons that the Media Lab Europe project was a bit of a waste of money and that the Digital Media Hub hasn’t been very successful. I don’t know where he could have gotten those ideas.
Sean O Nuallain lectures computer science in DCU as his day job. He also has an MSc in psychology and has written a book called The Search for Mind, which as I recall from my psychology and philosophy days is pretty well regarded. He’s also written a book called Being Human: the search for order. He also works with a research group called Nous Research. Sounds like an interesting guy.
Antoin — got a link for that ENN story? I can’t find any sign of O’Nuallain coming to UCI, which is a pity as it would be interesting.
oops, check the link again. It’s near the bottom of the item it links to.
The Irvine talk took place at their CRITO
institute and went well. John Sheil of
IBEC/ISA (the Irish software association)
shares my concerns.
The dispute mentioned with DCU is one
where the DCU union (SIPTU) has
won rulings against management in
the labour court and rights commission;
we are being confronted with frivolous
and vexatious appeals. The attempt by
management to destroy academic tenure
has failed; the consequences are
state-wide
Le meas
Sean
http://www.medialabeurope.org/news/release.php?id=76
Board of Directors announces closure of Media Lab Europe
Also – From the Irish Times Jan 15th 2005
“But MIT and the Government failed to agree the terms of a restructuring of its operations which would have given the State a greater say in its decision-making.”
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2005/0115/2805544423HM1MEDIALAB.html
(May require subscription)
Enough said.
A cháirde,
I notice this article is getting a lot of hits and it’s appropriate to do a follow-up. First of all, there is little pleasure in being correct about Medialab; I first went public about it in “The Wall Street journal” and “Der Spiegel” in 2001, at great cost to my career in Ireland, and my worst fears were all confirmed. Any of the putative “out there” research they engaged in – at a cost that would have allowed installation of a cancer treatment centre in southeast Ireland – was already taking place in Ireland, or was about to. It is, I believe, fair to say that MediaLab has retarded cutting-edge Irish research by a decade. Almost to the last person, my students dropped out of academia and/or left Ireland.
In the meantime, I got offered a lecturing job at Stanford, and divide my time between that and running a music company with my partner, Melanie O’Reilly (www.mistletoemusic.com). I am interested in hearing about any other experiences with the government’s attempt to use their traditional techniques, applied so effectively in farming and the building industry (shaft any competitors and create your own taxpayer-subsidised alternatives) to high tech
Is mise, le meas,
Seán