Who We Are
A think tank and experimental laboratory for the problems that sit at the intersection of technology, humanity, and creative intelligence.
Origin
MediaLab Midwest is founded by Ritsu Katsumata and Aaron Sundman.
Katsumata and Sundman have been building digital firsts together since 2011. At Amway, they launched live streaming and live social sharing before either was commonplace — experiences that feel obvious in retrospect and impossible at the time. That pattern of arriving early to the right idea has defined their collaboration.
In 2017 they started informally evangelizing blockchain under the tongue-in-cheek banner of “Bitcoin Church” — an attempt to explain decentralized trust in human terms before anyone had the vocabulary for it. They saw the technology not as a financial instrument but as a mechanism for something more fundamental: a permanent, decentralized record of what is true, who made what, and when.
The NFT market collapsed into speculation before that vision could take hold. They stepped back and waited.
They didn't abandon the questions. They kept building toward them.
MediaLab Midwest is where those questions live now. The through-line across everything they build:
They were early before. They're early again.
What We Believe
On Humanity
One of us leads with feeling. One of us leads with thinking. Between us: the same conclusion.
Ritsu moves through the world leading with empathy — shaped by the experience of being othered, and the deliberate choice to respond with belonging rather than bitterness. Aaron moves through the world leading with honesty — holding truth above any personal beliefs, and requiring others not to mistake opinion for truth.
What we agree on is this: We are more like each other than not. That truth, arrived at through empathy or through evidence, generates the same obligation — to create conditions for greater good, make technology accountable, and never let the promise of abundance excuse the abuse of power.
On Technology
Technology can be used for good. It will also be used for harm. We don't pretend otherwise.
The question we hold at every decision point is not just what does this make possible for people we trust — but what does this make possible for people we don't. That dual question is our ethical compass.
On AI
AI is the sharpest version of that question right now. It also carries a possibility worth protecting:
Personalization at scale is not a feature. It's a form of dignity.
AI has the power to deliver meaningful, customized experiences to individual human lives — and that potential deserves more rigor than the hype tends to give it.
How We Work
MediaLab Midwest operates on agreements rather than mandates. We are rigorous without being rigid. We hold ideas accountable to evidence. We build things we can defend — not just to people we trust, but to people we don't.
We are a small team. We move with intention.
Inspired By
Ruminations and thoughts composed while sitting with Wissner-Gross's intelligence-as-causal-entropy framework, Diamandis's abundance thinking, and Tristan Harris's conscience-of-the-industry warnings.
We are triangulating between possibility, responsibility, and power.
We build for everyone else.
If what we're building sounds like something you want to be part of — as a collaborator, a client, or a believer — we'd like to hear from you.
Get in Touch