Jump for Joi

There's no such thing as an average hall of famer – they're all outstanding and impressive in ways we mere mortals could never dream.

But Joi Ito really takes the cake.

These days, Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab – the institution that has contributed to such inventions as the Amazon Kindle, Guitar Hero, the XO Laptop, and 3-D holographic printing. But he also serves on the boards of Creative Commons, The New York Times Company, The MacArthur Foundation (yeah, the guys behind the genius grants), and Sony. He's invested in every social platform from Twitter and Flickr to Kickstarter and Path, and he's even an emergency first responder instructor.

For all this and more, he's been named one of Businessweek's most influential people on the Web and Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers. And now, South by Southwest gets in on the action, making him the third inductee to the SXSW Interactive Festival Hall of Fame. He joins Web design guru Jeffrey Zeldman and social media scholar danah boyd, who were inducted in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

Ito will be recognized at a March 12, 2014, ceremony at the Downtown Austin Hilton.

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SXSW Interactive runs March 7-11, 2014. Follow along with all our ongoing coverage of the Festival at austinchronicle.com/sxsw.