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Author : David Kaiser
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780262113236
The evolution of MIT, as seen in a series of crucial decisions over the years.
Author : David Kaiser
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-14
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780262518154
The evolution of MIT, as seen in a series of crucial decisions over the years. How did MIT become MIT? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology marks the 150th anniversary of its founding in 2011. Over the years, MIT has lived by its motto, “Mens et Manus” (“Mind and Hand”), dedicating itself to the pursuit of knowledge and its application to real-world problems. MIT has produced leading scholars in fields ranging from aeronautics to economics, invented entire academic disciplines, and transformed ideas into market-ready devices. This book examines a series of turning points, crucial decisions that helped define MIT. Many of these issues have relevance today: the moral implications of defense contracts, the optimal balance between government funding and private investment, and the right combination of basic science, engineering, and humanistic scholarship in the curriculum. Chapters describe the educational vison and fund-raising acumen of founder William Barton Rogers (MIT was among the earliest recipients of land grant funding); MIT's relationship with Harvard—its rival, doppelgänger, and, for a brief moment, degree-conferring partner; the battle between pure science and industrial sponsorship in the early twentieth century; MIT's rapid expansion during World War II because of defense work and military training courses; the conflict between Cold War gadgetry and the humanities; protests over defense contracts at the height of the Vietnam War; the uproar in the local community over the perceived riskiness of recombinant DNA research; and the measures taken to reverse years of institutionalized discrimination against women scientists.
Author : Thomas Metzinger
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 896 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2004-08-20
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780262263801
According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.
Author : Margaret Anne Marie Murray
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0262632462
Women mathematicians of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and how they built professional identities in the face of social and institutional obstacles.
Author : Richard Roberts,Roger Kreuz
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2017-02-03
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9780262529808
Forget everything you’ve heard about adult language learning: evidence from cognitive science and psychology prove we can learn foreign languages just as easily as children. An eye-opening study on how adult learners can master a foreign lanugage by drawing on skills and knowledge honed over a lifetime. Adults who want to learn a foreign language are often discouraged because they believe they cannot acquire a language as easily as children. Once they begin to learn a language, adults may be further discouraged when they find the methods used to teach children don't seem to work for them. What is an adult language learner to do? In this book, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults can master a foreign language if they bring to bear the skills and knowledge they have honed over a lifetime. Adults shouldn't try to learn as children do; they should learn like adults. Roberts and Kreuz report evidence that adults can learn new languages even more easily than children. Children appear to have only two advantages over adults in learning a language: they acquire a native accent more easily, and they do not suffer from self-defeating anxiety about learning a language. Adults, on the other hand, have the greater advantages—gained from experience—of an understanding of their own mental processes and knowing how to use language to do things. Adults have an especially advantageous grasp of pragmatics, the social use of language, and Roberts and Kreuz show how to leverage this metalinguistic ability in learning a new language. Learning a language takes effort. But if adult learners apply the tools acquired over a lifetime, it can be enjoyable and rewarding.
Author : Karen Lang,Selim Tezel,MIT App Inventor Project,MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Publisher : Candlewick Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2022-02-22
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781536226980
With a foreword by Gitanjali Rao, Time Magazine’s inaugural Kid of the Year, this engaging guide from MITeen Press teaches anyone to design and publish their own apps—no experience necessary!—and introduces young app creators from around the world. Have you ever wanted to build your own mobile apps? App Inventor, a free and revolutionary online program from MIT, lets you do just that. With the help of this companion guide chock-full of colorful graphics and easy-to-follow instructions, readers can learn how to create six different apps, including a working piano, a maze game, and even their own chat app to communicate with friends—then use what they’ve learned to build apps of their own imagination. User-friendly code blocks that snap together allow even beginners to quickly create working apps. Readers will also learn about young inventors already using their own apps to make a difference in their communities, such as the girls from Moldova whose app helps alert residents when local well water is contaminated. Or the boys from Malden, Massachusetts, whose app lets users geotag potholes to alert city hall when repairs are needed. With this inspiring guide, curious young dreamers can become real inventors with real-world impact.
Author : Nato Thompson
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2005-06-17
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780262201612
Contemporary artists investigate the boundaries between animal and human in a world of transgenics and dissolving distinctions; with 65 color images of new works. In an age when scientists say they can no longer specify the exact difference between human and animal, living and dead, many contemporary artists have chosen to use animals in their work—as the ultimate "other," as metaphor, as reflection. The attempt to discover what is animal, not surprisingly, leads to a greater understanding of what it means to be human. In Becoming Animal, 12 internationally known artists investigate the shifting boundaries between animal and human. Their explorations may be a barometer of things to come. The works included in Becoming Animal—which accompanies an exhibit at MASS MoCA—range from the aviary and cabinet of curiosities of Mark Dion to the gun-toting bird collages of Michael Oatman. Nicolas Lampert's machine-animal collages and Jane Alexander's corpse-like humanoids suggest a new landscape of alienation. Rachel Berwick's investigation of the last Galapagos tortoise from the island of Pinto and Brian Conley's humanized mating call of the Tungara frog question the divide between human and animal communication. Patricia Piccinini imagines a bodyguard for a bird on the edge of extinction and Ann-Sofi Siden recreates the bedroom—and paranoia—of psychologist Alice Fabian. Natalie Jeremijenko presents another installment in her ongoing Ooz, reverse-engineering the zoo, and Kathy High's installation of "trans-animals" remembers lab rats who have given their lives for science. Sam Easterson's videos allow us to see from the viewpoint of an aardvark, a tarantula, a tumbleweed; Motohiko Odani's films show a surrealistic genetically modified bestiary. Becoming Animal documents these works with eye-popping full-color images, taking us on a visual journey through an unknown world.
Author : Michelle Drouin
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2023-06-06
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780262545990
A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex—although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, “desire discrepancy” in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates “infidelity-related behaviors.” Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships—our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.
Author : Roger Kreuz,Richard Roberts
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2018-08-28
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9780262536097
Understanding how culture affects the ways we communicate—how we tell jokes, greet, ask questions, hedge, apologize, compliment, and so much more. We can learn to speak other languages, but do we truly understand what we are saying? How much detail should we offer when someone asks how we are? How close should we stand to our conversational partners? Is an invitation genuine or just pro forma? So much of communication depends on culture and context. In Getting Through, Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts offer a guide to understanding and being understood in different cultures. Drawing on research from psychology, linguistics, sociology, and other fields, as well as personal experience, anecdotes, and popular culture, Kreuz and Roberts describe cross-cultural communication in terms of pragmatics—exploring how language is used and not just what words mean. Sometimes this is easy to figure out. If someone hisses “I'm fine!” though clenched teeth, we can assume that she's not really fine. But sometimes the context, cultural or otherwise, is more nuanced. For example, a visitor from another country might be taken aback when an American offers a complaint (“Cold out today!”) as a greeting. And should you apologize the same way in Tokyo as you would in Toledo? Kreuz and Roberts help us navigate such subtleties. It's a fascinating way to think about human interaction, but it's not purely academic: The more we understand one another, the better we can communicate, and the better we can communicate, the more we can avoid conflict.
Author : Timothy Morton
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-03-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780262038041
A book about ecology without information dumping, guilt inducing, or preaching to the choir. Don't care about ecology? You think you don't, but you might all the same. Don't read ecology books? This book is for you. Ecology books can be confusing information dumps that are out of date by the time they hit you. Slapping you upside the head to make you feel bad. Grabbing you by the lapels while yelling disturbing facts. Handwringing in agony about “What are we going to do?” This book has none of that. Being Ecological doesn't preach to the eco-choir. It's for you—even, Timothy Morton explains, if you're not in the choir, even if you have no idea what choirs are. You might already be ecological. After establishing the approach of the book (no facts allowed!), Morton draws on Kant and Heidegger to help us understand living in an age of mass extinction caused by global warming. He considers the object of ecological awareness and ecological thinking: the biosphere and its interconnections. He discusses what sorts of actions count as ecological—starting a revolution? going to the garden center to smell the plants? And finally, in “Not a Grand Tour of Ecological Thought,” he explores a variety of current styles of being ecological—a range of overlapping orientations rather than preformatted self-labeling. Caught up in the us-versus-them (or you-versus-everything else) urgency of ecological crisis, Morton suggests, it's easy to forget that you are a symbiotic being entangled with other symbiotic beings. Isn't that being ecological?
Author : Carrie Lambert-Beatty
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2011-02-25
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780262516075
How Yvonne Rainer's art shaped new ways of watching as well as performing; how it connected 1960s avant-garde art to politics and activism. In her dance and performances of the 1960s, Yvonne Rainer famously transformed the performing body—stripped it of special techniques and star status, traded its costumes and leotards for T-shirts and sneakers, asked it to haul mattresses or recite texts rather than leap or spin. Without discounting these innovations, Carrie Lambert-Beatty argues in Being Watched that the crucial site of Rainer's interventions in the 1960s was less the body of the performer than the eye of the viewer—or rather, the body as offered to the eye. Rainer's art, Lambert-Beatty writes, is structured by a peculiar tension between the body and its display. Through close readings of Rainer's works of the 1960s—from the often-discussed dance Trio A to lesser-known Vietnam war-era protest dances—Lambert-Beatty explores how these performances embodied what Rainer called “the seeing difficulty.” (As Rainer said: “Dance is hard to see.”) Viewed from this perspective, Rainer's work becomes a bridge between key episodes in postwar art. Lambert-Beatty shows how Rainer's art (and related performance work in Happenings, Fluxus, and Judson Dance Theater) connects with the transformation of the subject-object relation in minimalism and with emerging feminist discourse on the political implications of the objectifying gaze. In a spectacle-soaked era, moreover—when images of war played nightly on the television news—Rainer's work engaged the habits of viewing formed in mass-media America, linking avant-garde art and the wider culture of the 1960s. Rainer is significant, argues Lambert-Beatty, not only as a choreographer, but as a sculptor of spectatorship.
Author : Bernadette Wegenstein
Publisher : Mit Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Computers
ISBN : UOM:39015063245073
Tracing the evolution of contemporary body discourse, this book analyses the tension between a fragmented and holistic body concept in performance art, popular culture, media arts, and architecture. It covers contemporary body discourse in philosophy and cultural studies to its roots in twentieth-century thought.
Author : Julius Adams Stratton,Loretta H. Mannix
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 830 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Education
ISBN : 0262195240
The intellectual heritage of MIT: an account of "the flow of ideas" about science and education that shaped the Institute as it emerged and that inspires it today. The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens et Manus" -- "mind and hand" -- signals the Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called "the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits." Mind and Hand traces the ideas about science and education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission -- from the new science of the Enlightenment era and the ideals of representative democracy spurred by the Industrial Revolution to new theories on the nature and role of higher education in nineteenth-century America. MIT emerged in mid-century as an experiment in scientific and technical education, with its origins in the tension between these old and new ideas. Mind and Hand was undertaken by Julius Stratton after his retirement from the presidency of MIT and continued by Loretta Mannix after his death; Philip N. Alexander, of the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, stepped in to complete the project. The combined efforts of these three authors have given us what Julius Stratton envisioned -- "a coherent account of the flow of ideas" from which MIT emerged.
Author : Ben Barres
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2018-10-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780262039116
A leading scientist describes his life, his gender transition, his scientific work, and his advocacy for gender equality in science. Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017, Barres (born in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments—from his childhood as a precocious math and science whiz to his experiences as a female student at MIT in the 1970s to his female-to-male transition in his forties, to his scientific work and role as teacher and mentor at Stanford. Barres recounts his early life—his interest in science, first manifested as a fascination with the mad scientist in Superman; his academic successes; and his gender confusion. Barres felt even as a very young child that he was assigned the wrong gender. After years of being acutely uncomfortable in his own skin, Barres transitioned from female to male. He reports he felt nothing but relief on becoming his true self. He was proud to be a role model for transgender scientists. As an undergraduate at MIT, Barres experienced discrimination, but it was after transitioning that he realized how differently male and female scientists are treated. He became an advocate for gender equality in science, and later in life responded pointedly to Larry Summers's speculation that women were innately unsuited to be scientists. Privileged white men, Barres writes, “miss the basic point that in the face of negative stereotyping, talented women will not be recognized.” At Stanford, Barres made important discoveries about glia, the most numerous cells in the brain, and he describes some of his work. “The most rewarding part of his job,” however, was mentoring young scientists. That, and his advocacy for women and transgender scientists, ensures his legacy.
Author : Douglass Shand-Tucci
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2016-05-24
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781616894993
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in 1861 as the cornerstone of Copley Square in Boston's Back Bay, then the center of a progressive, proto-globalist Brahmin culture committed to intellectual modernism and educational innovation. MIT founder William Barton Rogers's radical vision to teach by "mind and hand" was immediately successful. In 1916 MIT, growing by leaps and bounds, moved its campus to the nearby Charles River Basin in Cambridge, where it now stretches along the shore overlooking the Back Bay. MIT: The Campus Guide presents the history of the Institute's founding and its two campuses. Today, the campus is studded with buildings designed by noted architects such as William Welles Bosworth, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Steven Holl, Charles Correa, J. Meejin Yoon, Frank Gehry, and Fumihiko Maki, among others. Alongside the architecture is a distinguished array of public art including works by Picasso, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt, and Jaume Plensa.