Contemporary metamedia, such as at Stanford, has been expanded to describe, "a short circuit between the academy, the art studio and information science exploring media and their archaeological materiality.
"[2] Metamedia utilizes new media and focuses on collaboration across traditional fields of study, melding everything from improvisational theatre and performance art, to agile, adaptive software development and smart mobs.
[2][3] The MIT lab's mission is to provide a flexible online environment for creating and sharing rich media documents for learning on core humanities subjects.
[5] Stanford's lab is principally facilitated by Michael Shanks (archaeologist) with other collaborators, including Howard Rheingold, Fred Turner (academic), and Christopher Witmore.
In its mission statement, it describes itself as a "creative studio and laboratory space for experimenting and taking risks...a democratic and collaborative assembly of archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists, communications experts, new media practitioners, performance artists, sociologists, software engineers, technoscientists, and anyone else who wants to join.