You all don’t mind if I geek out for a bit, do you? Good.

By day I work as a computer graphics researcher. Needless to say, the MIT Media Lab is a pretty important fixture in (and out) of this world. The big news recently has been the hiring of a new director, Joi Ito. The hubbub has been around Ito’s background; he is a giant in the tech world, having association with Creative Commons, Mozilla, Twitter, and many other famous brands, but he has little formal education. The big question then, is how he will gel in this academic environment where everybody has or is pursuing advanced education, at MIT no less.

But that’s not why I’m bringing this up. It’s always exciting to have world’s collide, so imagine my delight when I read in a recent interview that Joi Ito has recently been certified as a PADI scuba instructor! Like myself, he seems to have done it purely for his own enjoyment. Scuba diving, like photography, tends to be an activity with fundamental geek appeal. There’s lots of gear and gadgets, which geeks love, and it requires disposable income, which many geeks have. It’s cool to see a fellow geek take it to the next level, though.

Here’s what Ito has to say when asked “What is it that you love about diving?”,

It requires a lot of focus, so it serves both as a focused thing to do, but also something where I’m not thinking of anything else. It’s like a reset. I also learn so much–physics, physiology, ecology, etc. And, many, many of the divers I meet are really cool people. And I can do it everywhere, sort of.

Good answer that I think encompasses a lot of our thinking.

It is unlikely that I’ll run into Ito at a conference or anything, but if so, I know what we can talk about.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 11th, 2011 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.