A well-balanced research portfolio ought to include long shots. Sometimes they come up big, big winners. But they spend a lot of time looking weird and pointless.
Unfortunately, funding long-shots is really hard. I was going to write "in the present environment", but then I realized that was too specific. It doesn't really matter where the money is coming from. Funding long shots is fundamentally hard, whether it's from private investment, government, commercial, or whatever else you can think of. But it's still a good idea to put a small portion of the research resources into those long shots.
(Now, it may be the case that the Media Lab is a bad place to fund your longshot, but I don't know enough to evaluate that.)
Unfortunately, funding long-shots is really hard. I was going to write "in the present environment", but then I realized that was too specific. It doesn't really matter where the money is coming from. Funding long shots is fundamentally hard, whether it's from private investment, government, commercial, or whatever else you can think of. But it's still a good idea to put a small portion of the research resources into those long shots.
(Now, it may be the case that the Media Lab is a bad place to fund your longshot, but I don't know enough to evaluate that.)