Ito said he is undertaking a bit of a rebranding for the 25-year-old institution to better reflect the Internet age. Sponsors will now be called “members,” as part of a larger “Media Lab Network.” The idea is to open discussion and collaboration between researchers and entrepreneurs.

Ito said that both parties have a lot to offer each other, on everything from discussions about online privacy to prototyping new hardware products.

“All the standards come from MIT,” he said. “All the people who use the standards and make shitloads of money are on the West Coast — but they don’t like standards.” He’d like to help bring the two sides together.

The Media Lab has a $35 million annual budget, 350 ongoing projects and a team of 400 people. Ito said he is looking to bring in “antidisciplinary” people, who “work in fields we don’t yet know about.”

Ito and researchers from the Lab showed off some examples of things they’re working on:

• Luminoso (pictured) creates word maps based on concepts
• The concept of “light and the unexplored communications frontier“
• Funf is an open sensing framework for Android
• Idcubed is a platform for exchanging personal information in a secure manner
• Formlabs is a stealth 3-D printing start-up
• Affectiva measures emotional arousal with a wristband
• Sourcemap traces product supply chains

RELATED POSTS:

• The Homeless Defend Becoming Hotspots
• Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann’s Lesson for Start-Ups: Go Your Own Way
• The Best and Weirdest Requests and Errands at SXSW From Zaarly, TaskRabbit and Others
• Al Gore and Sean Parker Blame TV and Money for Ruining Politics, and Say Social Media Ought to Fix It
• Letters From SXSW: How to Be “Disruptive”
• SXSW News: Jerry Levin’s StartUp Health Academy for Entrepreneurs Announces First Class
• The Best (And Worst) Marketing Gimmick in Austin
• Forget Cleantech — It’s Cleanweb at SXSW
• Houston Comes to Austin as Kara Swisher Talks Lessons Learned with Dropbox CEO
• After Nearly Doubling Its Userbase in Three Months, Instagram Will Finally Come to Android
• The Power of Power at South By Southwest
• How Jimmy Fallon Uses the Nike FuelBand (It’s Naughty, Of Course)
• Gawker Will Deputize Commenters, Says Sheriff Nick Denton
• Microsoft’s Danah Boyd: Social Media Makes the World More Fearful
• Etsy CEO on Building a Lean Start-Up: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy
• South By Southwest Parties On, Despite the Rain
• At SXSW, Joi Ito Invites Tech Entrepreneurs Into the MIT Media Lab
• Texas Gov. Rick Perry Drops In on South By Southwest
• Can Playing More Games Make Your Life “SuperBetter”? Jane McGonigal Thinks So.
• Google’s Vic Gundotra on Why Plus Isn’t a Minus
• Rain Douses Austin as Crowds Flood Into SXSW
• Checking In and Checking Out South by Southwest
• SXSW Serendipity Gets Yet Another Helper: Kismet
• The Essential SXSW Tech Tool Kit
• Geek in the Heart of Texas: AllThingsD at SXSW 2012

Read the rest of this post on the original site