Every day, innovators are pushing the limits of what we think is possible. From sleek exoskeletons helping paralyzed people walk to in-home robotic companions that help you understand and reach health goals, the ways in which technology can enrich and prolong our lives seems nearly endless. For Frank Moss, director of the MIT Media Lab, the joy is doubly compounded. He gets to watch as new researchers intermingle with people from disparate fields to create these amazing technologies from nothing. The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices is his attempt to document the magic of that process.

The MIT Media Lab is a foundation that allows researchers and candidates for doctoral degrees to come together and innovate as fast as ideas can sprout. The turnaround times for projects are fast, and the improvements made to their projects are even faster. By getting people from many types of backgrounds together, each person on a team can inform a project better than a single inventor could. Moss takes the readers through the history of the lab and how the current crop of technologies are planning to help people all around the world. Some of the more fun projects are the plans for a three-wheeled, electric folding car that can help to alleviate congestion and pollution; a customizable set of body gear to help people with disabilities compose music; and a comprehensive suite of monitors and analytics where a doctor and patient can sit side-by-side and make health decisions together in real time

Let’s be fair, this book is no piece of great literature, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a window into the workings of a fast-paced technology laboratory that helps the reader see what is possible if the right people get together to solve complex problems. I hope Moss comes out with a follow-up to this book to say how the different inventions were integrated into society, or how new problems were discovered and mitigated. Overall, it’s an interesting and insightful read. ( )

This serves as a nice companion piece to The Department of Mad Scientists, an excellent showcase of what's up our government's technological sleeve. Whereas here, the showcase is the MIT Media Lab. The book is certainly filled with its wonders, much inspiring, but it also has its flaws. The author is a bit rambly, and could have used help with his sentence structure. Most glaring for me is that he failed to discuss what exactly his job was on a daily basis. That would have been some key information to know. From the looks of it, he just shows people around the place. I'm certain there must be more to it. ( )

A wonderfully interesting book briefly outlining the type of creativity and ingenuity and one of the world's most famous labs. Remarkable achievements in artificial intelligence, robotics, biomechanics, etc. Inspiring - one of the few books nowadays that can assure you that the future will be brighter. ( )

Frank Moss can write about the Media Labs of MIT where he is the director, but he has a lot to learn about telling a compelling story. Their are far too many errors of English that the man should not have found a literature major in all the colleges of the Boston area to correct his work.

Added to that, as a story, the Media Labs are done a disservice for someone who is not drinking the cool-aid should have taken a look at the work. 8 chapters to tell the tale of what should be one of the greatest places for innovation in the USA. What we get are many examples of great technology that because the author wants to make the book sound current, are for projects that are going on now, or six months ago, and are not finished and so you don't know if the technology that he spouts is going to bear fruit. A year from now, or two, when someone picks up the book, you will get an even worse sense of the Media Lab not being able to complete a project.

I am sure that the PHds of the media lab will appreciate this. Too much time is spent dropping names and double dropping them, instead of showcasing that the technology at the Media Lab should be blowing all of our socks off. The book thus reads as the Freshman introduction to the lab. Not something that those who think that Tech is fantastic and want to know about the history of it, as well as how we will use it in the next ten years will find of use.

If Moss had given us a better ratio of recent wins, showing how we are now using what the Lab has thought of. How the labs partnerships really work, instead of a paragraph saying how it was started. We might see how this really is a great think tank. Or even as Moss wants us to believe, where America's Sorcerers are.

In the end, Moss fails. How do I know that this is a better place then where the brains of Google are, or Apple, or IBM. Why do I want to believe that the Media Lab, and there are apparently other labs at MIT that he does not really talk of that develop Tech as well, is the best of them. With Moss writing in the way he has, I do not.

Shame, because the potential is really there for a much better book. Moss should consider Sorcery 2.0 and talk to someone like Garrison Kellior. We may find that all the Sorcerers are Intelligent, Handsome, and really making magic real. ( )