MITPressLog

Staying One Step Ahead of Trouble

In today's Wall Street Journal review of The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage George Anders explains why every company can benefit from contingency planning, whether they are located in a disaster prone area or not. But how can companies (especially small ones) afford to do this? Yossi Sheffi says that investments in resilience and flexibility—even small and fairly inexpensive ones—can not only reduce risk but create a competitive advantage in an increasingly volatile marketplace.   Anders says that:

"It's not just bad weather that businesses must prepare for. Catastrophe takes many forms....The Resilient Enterprise is more than a grab bag of stories about fires, thieves, and tornadoes.  It is the timely analysis of an important—and overlooked aspect of business strategy.  Mr. Sheffi argues that crisis control can be a competitive advantage for companies that get it right.  Wise planning at headquarters is part of the answer, but only part: Companies need a whole culture of flexibility.  It is impossible to know where trouble will hit next, but it is possible to create an atmosphere in which people at all levels respond to disruptions quickly and confidently.  Metaphorically, levees can break at any time."

Read the entire article at wsj.com (subscription required).

Ending Poverty: Some Hard Facts on Promising Too Much

William Easterly, whose works on rich-world attempts at poverty reduction include The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics discusses President Bush's attempts to end poverty and disease and to spread democracy throughout the world, finding that we are actually prolonging poverty by promising so much in "The Utopian Nightmare" in Foreign Policy magazine. 

"The past has prepared all the materials and means in superabundance to well-feed, clothe, lodge, train, educate, employ, amuse, and govern the human race in perpetual progressive prosperity--witout war, conflict, or competition between nations and individuals."

These words were not uttered by a hopeful world leader at the most recent Group of 8 (G-8) summit, or by Bono at a rock concert--but they certainly sound familiar.  They were written in 1857, when British reformer Robert Owen called upon rich countries, who could "easily induce all the other governments and people to unite with them in practical measures for the general good all through futurity."  Owen was laughed out of town as a utopian. 

How comforted Owen would be if he were alive in 2005, when some of the most powerful in influential people seem to believe that utopia is back.  American President George W. Bush has dispatched the U.S. military to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, G-8 leaders strive to end poverty and disease sometime soon, the World Bank promises development as the path to world peace, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is trying to save the environment.  In a world where billions of people still suffer, these are certainly appealing dreams.  But is this surprising new fondness for utopia just harmless, inspirational, rhetoric?  Are utopian ambitions the best way to help the poor-world majority? 

Unfortunately no.  In reality, they hurt efforts to help the world's poor.  What is utopianism?  It is promising more than you can deliver.  It is seeing an easy and sudden answer to long-standing, complex problems.  It is trying to solve everything at once throught an administrative apparatus headed by "world leaders."  It places too much faith in altruistic cooperation and underestimates self-seeking behavior and conflict.  It is expecting great things from schemes designed at the top, but doing nothing to solve the bigger problems at the bottom. 

Read the entire article at ForeignPolicy.com

Are There Science Books That Still Need to Be Written?

There are many books out there in every discipline.  Are there enough books or are there still books that we need to read and books that need to be written?   Discover Magazine asked ten scientists and researchers to share ideas for books that have not yet been published, but should be in an article by Sean B. Carroll called,  "What Remains to Be Written?"

"Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh," wrote the author of the book Ecclesiastes 2,300 years ago.  Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and two-time prime minister of Britain, was even more scathing: "Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense," he said, "and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."  As Discover celebrates its 25th anniversary, we ask: Are there any science books that remain to be written?  What uncharted territory would they cover?  And why?  Do we really need any more science books?  A group of eminent researchers share their vision of the must-reads of the future.

Sherry Turkle, author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit told Discover about the book she'd like to read:

My unwritten book would ask, "Why has psychoanalysis been declared dead? when so many of the best ideas that we use to think about our intimate lives are taken from the Freudian playbook, then melted down for popular consumption.  A 19th-century mind, Sigmund Freud had man notions that do not hold up to 21st century scrutiny, but a good number were so robust that we use them every day.  We argue ferociously with our spouse over things that remind of most of things in ourselves;  we recognize that our reaction to the death of our mother is to become more like her; we respond to our children and hear echos of our own childhood; we shape  disturbing mirror images in the personae we create on the Internet.  At all of these times we unconsciously turn to powerful ideas from the psychoanalytic culture that have become part of the culture at large.  Or we turn to counselors, self-help books, and TV talk gurus, many of whom put forth ideas that plumb the Freudian legacy.  They may debunk Freud or think him irrelevant, but in their own way, they're Freudian plagiarists.  It is time to pay our debts.  The culture has told itself a story that has turned psychoanalysis into history.  In fact, by sustaining its relevance into the digital age, it is psychoanalysis that has made history.

If you have an idea about a science book that you would like to read that hasn't been written yet, we'd love to hear about it. 

"Scopes II" Trial

The Dover, PA trial over the teaching in public schools of alternatives to evolution, including intelligent design, began today. Some have dubbed the trial "Scopes II," indicating the high stakes that each side sees riding on its outcome.

Press author Robert T. Pennock will testify on Wednesday as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs. Pennock is the author of Tower of Babel (1999) and editor of Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (2001). Much of his work on the Evolution-ID debate is available here.

This story in the York (PA) Dispatch mentions Pennock's appearance, and also gives an outline of the what's expected during the trial's first week.

Copyrights, Patents, and the Information Age

The internet makes it easy to get ahold of other people's work. If you protect what you create, no one will see it, but if you put it out there, you risk it being stolen or ending up in places you don't want it to be. The information age has made it easier for us to create, communicate, and share  our work and our lives, but it is also more difficult to protect.  Copyright and patent laws are as old as the United States itself.  Times have changed but the laws and regulations have not.  How are advances in technology making it difficult to enforce copyright and patent law today?  And how do these laws protect new technologies like software programs and downloadable music and graphics? Bruce Abramson, author of Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again, helps us make sense of the information economy in an interview on Focus 580 on Illinois Public Radio (WILL-AM).  Abramson explains that we are moving from an industrial age to an information age, but outdated copyright regulations have hindered innovation and advancement.  Focus 580 host Jack Brighton noted that Abramson's explanation of how the patent and copyright law works and what problems and opportunities the future holds was probably the best he's ever heard.

Read more at Bruce Abramson's blog, The Informationist.
 

Privacy vs. Security

Philip B. Heymann, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Juliette N. Kayyem, a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, co-wrote an editorial on the importance of protecting privacy and freedom of speech while upholding the Patriot Act, which appeared in the Opinion Section of today’s Boston Globe.

Heymann and Kayyem, coauthors of the upcoming MIT Press book Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror, are co-chairs of the Long-Term Legal Strategy Project for Preserving Security and Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. Certain sections of the Patriot Act are due to expire and Congress is expected to vote on their renewal within the next week.

We studied the toughest questions in the post-9/11 era, including the conflicting demands of privacy and security. Particularly relevant for the debate over the Patriot Act are our findings on compelled government access to private, confidential records in terrorism investigations.

The Patriot Act gave expanded powers to the federal government to seize personal records (like those retained by hotels, libraries, and medical facilities) in special national security cases where court review is either diminished or nonexistent. The act allows the government to engage in a fishing expedition, demanding records without tying the request to a specific suspect or group (in other words, without ''individualized suspicion") so long as its stated purpose is to find out something about a terrorist threat. For example, Section 215, which applies to a wide array of personal records, merely requires that the records themselves be sought for an investigation whose purpose is, in some way, ''to protect against" terrorism or spying by a foreign power -- not necessarily an investigation focused on a specific event, person, or organization.

When there is no specific event or organization that the government is investigating, relevance or motivation simply doesn't work as any limit on gathering information. Investigations undertaken in order to somehow protect against international terrorism could, if nothing more specific is required, examine any of the lawful activities of any citizen, including citizens in no way suspected of any specific link to terrorism or crime, such as subscribers of particular magazines. This has potentially serious implications for privacy and freedom of speech. Our project recommended that the standards for obtaining private, personally identifiable information in such investigations -- for example, to obtain access to library records -- should be based on individualized reasonable suspicion.

We believe that compelled access to personal records should depend on whether there is a judicial finding of a link between the records and an individual or organization already reasonably suspected of being engaged in terrorism or a specific planned or executed act of terrorism — or of being in contact with such a suspect.

Read the full article at Bostonglobe.com.

Save the Biltmore

The fate of the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida is unclear.  Despite being on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel (which locals brag is the largest occupied wooden structure in the nation) could be torn down to make room for a condominium development.  Lynn Waddell reports in an article, A Harsh Fight Over the Fate of a Stately Old Hotel, in today's New York Times that:

A yearlong fight over the fate of the Biltmore has led to the resignation of a city attorney, divided perservationists, and created an even wider gulf between groups that advocate a new Florida and those who want to protect the old one.  City Commission meetings have drawn overflow crowds, and yard signs championing 'Save the Biltmore' dot the lush, tidy yards of Belleair.

This begs the question: Should we sacrifice historic landmarks of the past for the sake of real estate development and to meet the housing demands of the future?  In an essay in The American Hotel, Bernard L. Jim looks at the demolition of beloved hotels of the past and shows that this debate between creativity and destruction has been going on for quite some time.

The demolition of the Weddell House and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel occurred amid the ongoing cultural debate about the ideology of creative destruction.  Developers like John D. Rockefeller and Empire State Inc. profited from the public's perception of demolition as a servant of modernization and progress.  If the old had to give way to the new, beloved landmarks like the Weddell House and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel would necessarily have to fall.  While developers worked to transfer the public's sentiment from the building to be demolished to the one to be constructed, the public had just begun to realize the fetishlike power that a building acquired over time. 

Software Development and Extreme Sports Really Do Have Something in Common

Richard Waters finds that the next big business idea may come from an unexpected source in an article called "How Open Source Gave Power to the People" which appeared in the Financial Times recently. The article references the ideas in Eric von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation.

As related by Eric von Hippel, professor of management and innovation at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, followers of extreme sports have become expert at adapting and refining the equipment they use. Sometimes, the way these informal communities work can look very similar to the way open source software developers create their elaborate products.

Kitesurfers, for instance - who stand on surf boards holding kites which whisk them over breaking waves, producing acrobatic leaps and twists - have taken to using sophisticated computer modelling software to design the most efficient kites. They then share their ideas over the internet, refining their concepts before sending them to a manufacturer.

Sophisticated tools that let individuals take part in the process of creation, the internet as a means to draw together communities of like-minded people, a willingness to share ideas for the common good - these are the basic ingredients of a new approach to innovation.

The information technology industry has not merely created the means for these practices to take root. In the form of the open source software movement, it has also provided one of the most powerful examples yet of distributed innovation. And, thanks to the experiments in software licensing behind Linux and other open source programs, it has created a new framework for defining intellectual property rights when the brain power comes from a broader community.

Even corporate giants are starting to learn from this. Microsoft, for instance, may take issue with many of the claims made for open source products but it does not dispute the power of some of the new working practices that are bringing them about.

Habermas and Religion

While Jürgen Habermas is traditionally considered a secular philosopher with a Kantian approach to moral philosophy, The latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review  includes an insightful piece by Richard Wolin called "Jürgen Habermas and Post-Secular Societies"  (subscription).  Wolin finds that Habermas,who he argues might be the world's leading living philosopher, has been writing more subtly on religious subjects and themes over the past few years and might be up to the great challenge of bridging religion with the secular world. Using both his writing and his life, Wolin takes a close look at the role Habermas is playing in our rapidly changing post-secular and moral universe.

Glance back at Habermas's philosophical chef d'oeuvre, the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action (1981), and you'll find that one of his key ideas is the "linguistification of the sacred" (Versprachlichung des Sakrals). By this admittedly cumbersome term, Habermas asserts that modern notions of equality and fairness are secular distillations of time-honored Judeo-Christian precepts. The "contract theory" of politics, from which our modern conception of "government by consent of the governed" derives, would be difficult to conceive apart from the Old Testament covenants. Similarly, our idea of the intrinsic worth of all persons, which underlies human rights, stems directly from the Christian ideal of the equality of all men and women in the eyes of God. Were these invaluable religious sources of morality and justice to atrophy entirely, it is doubtful whether modern societies would be able to sustain this ideal on their own.

In a recent interview Habermas aptly summarized those insights: "For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love."

Three years ago the MIT Press published Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, an illuminating collection of Habermas's writings on religious themes. Edited and introduced by the philosopher Eduardo Mendieta, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the anthology concludes with a fascinating interview in which the philosopher systematically clarifies his views on a variety of religious areas. (A companion volume, The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers, also edited by Mendieta, was published in 2004 by Routledge.)

A Genius on Our List

Of course, we like to think that all of our authors are geniuses. But we're immensely pleased to learn that Emily Thompson, a historian at the University of California, San Diego, author of The Soundscape of Modernity (2002) is the one of this year's recipients of a MacArthur fellowship. Popularly known as a "genius grant," it provides $500,000 of "no strings attached" support for future scholarship. Brava, Emily!