ON "60 MINUTES," ONE OF THE WAYS MIT'S MEDIA LAB BECAME SUCH A "FUTURE FACTORY" IS ITS OPEN ATTITUDE ON IDEAS: "THE CRAZIER THE BETTER"

Thirty years ago, you might be called crazy if you wanted to get driving directions from a computer. But in 1989, the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did just that, developing turn-by-turn navigation that it called "Backseat Driver." One of the ways the Media Lab has been developing futuristic technology for more than 30 years is by recruiting people with the craziest ideas, a MIT professor tells Scott Pelley. Pelley visits the lab on Sunday's 60 MINUTES and finds a crystal ball full of technologies that may someday become a part of our everyday lives. The report will be broadcast Sunday, April 22 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Professor Pattie Maes ran the Media Lab's graduate program's student admissions for more than a decade. She tells Pelley they don't admit students based on whether their ideas seem feasible. "Actually, the crazier the better," says Maes. "We really select for people who have a passion. We don't have to tell them to work hard. We have to tell them to work less hard and to get sleep, occasionally."

Today, the lab is developing pacemaker batteries recharged by the beating of the heart; self-driving taxi tricycles that you summon with your phone; phones that do retinal eye exams; and teaching robots.

MIT's Nicholas Negroponte co-founded the Media Lab in 1985. In a proposal, he wrote "computers are media" that will lead to "personalized and interactive systems." He predicted the rise of flat panel displays, high-definition television, and news "whenever you want it." Negroponte became the Media Lab's director for 20 years. "When we were demonstrating these things in, let's say, '85, '86, '87 - it was really considered new... indistinguishable from magic," he says.

Also currently under development at the Media Lab are advanced prosthetics whose users are not only able to move their high-tech limbs, but feel them, too. Hugh Herr is a professor who leads a prosthetics lab at the Media Lab. He agrees that crazy ideas, as well as collaboration can be the key to creativity. "You get this craziness. When you put, like, a toy designer next to a person that's thinking about what instruments will look like in the future next to someone like me, that's interfacing machines to the nervous system, you get really weird technologies," he tells Pelley. "You get things that no one could've have conceived of."

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