MITPressLog

It's All in a Buzzword

In a recent post on John Udell's blog on InfoWorld, he discusses an essay he wrote explaining why a particular industry buzzword particularly annoys him.  His term of choice -- "user-generated content." You can read more about his reasoning here.

But, in the spirit of constuctivism, after he explains the problems he sees with the term "user-generated content," Udell also offers a couple interesting alternatives.  One, "lead-user innovation," comes from Democratizing Innovation's Eric von Hippel:

In the publishing world, the prevailing notion of user-generated content is that you can get lots of people to blog, or comment, or annotate, or otherwise freely contribute "content" that you get to "monetize." The problem, though, is that lead users -- i.e., the most innovative and influential readers (and advertisers) -- are also the ones most willing and able to publish effectively on their own. Enlightened 21st-century publishers will create value by further empowering, and then collaborating with, those lead users.

The other is courtesy of John Willinsky, author of The Access Principle.   Udell coins the term "reader-created context" from Willinsky's ideas about re-imagining education.  Of this, he says:

To briefly summarize Willinsky's argument, there are two prerequisites for effective reading: motivation, and context. Life circumstances either do, or don't, provide the necessary motivation. When they do, it comes down to a question of context. Education either did, or didn't, supply the necessary context. If it didn't, that context can be acquired by means of what CJ Rayhill calls on-demand learning.

Much of own work -- in tagging, in intelligent search, in screencasting -- aims to empower readers, listeners, and viewers to create context and learn on demand. Enlightened 21st-century publishers will create value from that kind of empowerment too.

Enabling Aesthetic Science

Apple's products are far more than a cultish favorite of graphic designers and iPod-sporting trendsetters. They aid development, production, and execution in a number of industries and disciplines. Science is one such beneficiary, according to Felice Frankel, a researcher at MIT who specializes in science photography. Frankel employs Apple tools including hardware, Mac OS X, and visualization software to preserve and augment her award-winning visual representations of natural phenomena, captured in books including Envisioning Science. In a profile featured on the Apple homepage, she says, "There is no question that using a Mac is more intuitive. . . . It's just logical." The full article is available here.

Polarized America

In yesterday's New York Times, Paul Krugman discussed the current partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats, which seems to now resemble the political situation in America after the Eisenhower Administration.  Republicans, he warns, have focused the political debate not on economic issues, but on talk of terrorism and religion and seem to be returning to a pre-WWII focus on the interests of the wealthy that the middle class boom of the 1940s helped squash. 

Krugman warns his fellow journalists and reporters that, in the current climate, there really isn't a "center" in modern politics - which is something we really need to rebuild.  He goes on to praise Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, as:

Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening to America. What the book shows, using a sophisticated analysis of Congressional votes and other data, is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business - as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America's middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970's, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep
partisan divide re-emerged.

The rest of Krugman's argument can be found here (subscription). 

Governing Water

Ken Conca will speak at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars today at noon.  Conca, an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland (which is cosponsoring the event)  will discuss his new book Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building, which examines how social and economic globalization are yielding informal but increasingly embedded sets of global rules shaping the governance of water, rivers, watersheds, and freshwater ecosystems around the world.  He'll discuss specifics in South Africa and Brazil.  Ashok  Swain, an expert on transboundary water conflict and cooperation and water’s links to development fro Uppsala University will also participate in the program. 

The event begins at noon today. A live webcast of the meeting will start at 12:10 pm est.

Taxes for Non-Economists

Does even the thought of taxes have you feeling like this?  Well, you're not alone.  Over the past 20 years, tax issues have dominated both our minds and US economic policymaking.  Our tax system, though not fully understood by many, affects more people than any other government policy (and also garnered the most complaints).  Flat rates?  A single rate?  Aggressive rates?  It’s all very complicated and confusing—you almost need a degree in economics to figure it all out. 

Luckily, two economists, Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija, can help you sort it all out.  Taxing Ourselves: The Citizen's Guide to the Debate Over Taxes, their popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, is now in it's third edition.  Also, they  recently spoke with WILL Radio’s David Inge about taxes—who pays them and how the system is structured.  With easy to understand analysis and tips, Slemrod and Bakija really help to make sense of it all.  Listen to the interview here.  Joel Slemrod has even provided three ways to increase the fairness and simplicity of the tax system. 

The History of MIT, A Quiz

Along the banks of the Charles River, reaching back into the heart of Cambridge, rise the buildings of an impressive institution.  Today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more than five thousand students pursue interests that range from soil mechanics to meson physics, from industrial dynamics to existentialism, and include much in between.  A faculty of nearly a thousand is here to guide, to teach, and add some contribution large or small to our understanding of the world in which we live. 

The above quote is from Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT by Juilus A Stratton and Loretta H. Mannix and are fitting words for commencement week here at MIT.  In honor of graduation we thought a look back at the history of MIT might be in order. And what better way to test your knowlege of MIT and it's history than one final quiz before summer officially begins.  The questions below are all based on information from Mind and Hand.   Email us your answers for a chance to win a copy of the book and other fun MIT Press related prizes.

1. William Barton Rogers incorporated MIT in 1861.  Before this, what two other universities did he teach at?

2. The initial concept of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was not a school, but a three-part educational institution patterned after British and European models of education.  What were the three original components?

3. Where was MIT’s first permanent home?  What is on the site today?

4. In 1862, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew proposed a plan to merge MIT’s not yet organized School of Industrial Science with what other Institution (which was also not officially organized)?

5. The first graduating class in 1868 had 18 students.  Name three of them.

6. The original plans promised a “schedule of studies” to design a four year academic program combining basic scientific and technical subjects with professional studies, emphasizing laboratory and field work, and including an element of “general culture.”  What were the six course areas designated in the First Annual Catalogue in 1865?

7. Even as MIT’s educational mission remained well defined and increasingly focused, there were efforts to broaden its reach beyond Boston and New England.  By 1867, it was clear that MIT would not be a provincial center for long and was competing with other institutions with a geographic reach accelerating rapidly in the first five years.  How many students came to MIT from outside of Massachusetts for the 1865-66 school year?  How many for the 1869-1870 year? 

8. In 1865, William Rogers recommended eleven professorships for the faculty—which were all approved.  The professor who was nominated to teach Analytical Chemistry and Metallury was a very significant appointment.  He had taught at Harvard then traveled to Europe for a firsthand study of its educational practices.   What is his name?

9. The above-mentioned professor coauthored two influential textbooks (one in 1867 and the other in 1869) on the conduct of laboratory experimentation, which were used for many years as standard texts in the teaching of college chemistry.  What were they called?

10. Who was the first woman to receive an Institute Degree?  In what year did she receive it?

Extra Credit:
11. William Barton Rogers died after he collapsed while giving a speech at MIT’s commencement in 1882.  What were his last words?

Remember, email us your answers for a chance to win a copy of Mind and Hand and other prizes. Winners will be announced next week. 

AIDS—25 Years Later

Twenty-five years ago, the first official medical report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of a mysterious sickness afflicting gay men—AIDS—was published.    While we certainly know more about the virus now than we did in 1986, the search for a vaccine for this deadly disease has been disappointing and researchers say that many of the vaccines that are currently being tested are unlikely to protect fully from infection.  Today, an estimated 38.6 million people are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, around the world. Gregg Bordowitz, an artist, writer, and activist, has spent much of his time trying to capture the AIDS crisis, both globally and in his own life, through video, art, and writing.  Here, Bordowitz looks at the early days of the AIDS crisis and how he first came to understand it:

None of my friends knew much about AIDS in 1986.  I was still living in a mostly straight-identified scene, and AIDS was a remote concern.  But then the reports about the AIDS crisis that began to dominate the news captured my attention, probably because I realized that I could have become exposed to HIV from sex with any number of men—some friends, some acquaintances, some strangers.  Even among my few homosexual friends there was much confusion, misinformation, and denial when it came to safe sex.  The public sex culture of gay life that had achieved visibility and legitimacy through the sexual revolution was being driven underground by homophobia.  In the mid-eighties, mandatory testing and quarantine were discussed at very high levels of the Reagan administration.

Underlying all this confusion was the fear that one could test positive and die a horrible death very quickly.  This fear, magnified by all the attention AIDS was getting in the news, drove me to seek advise and information.  The only hospitable place to go was the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center on Thirteenth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.  I became acquainted with the center through my work protesting the 1986 Supreme Court ruling (Bowers v. Hardwick) that upheld state sodomy laws.  Harwick reinvigorated the gay-rights movement, as hundreds of people turned out for marches and demonstrations in New York.  I videotaped these protests—my fledgling efforts as an activist documentarian.  This activity led me to form more friendships with gay men and lesbians. 

The community center was a somewhat run-down old building four or five stories high.  In the warm weather, there were always people hanging out outside, smoking and talking.  The inside badly needed a paint job.  The stained surfaces of the walls were peeling.  It was a labyrinth of different-sized rooms, rooms within rooms, a couple of staircases.  For me, it all added to the allure of the place.  Clearly the imperative to provide shelter for gay men and lesbians, to foster an affirming culture, was more important that appearances.  A sign on an easel just inside the main entrance listed dozens of meetings, consciousness-raising and discussion groups of all kinds concerning communities within the larger community—leather men, men of all colors together, the Salsa Soul Sisters, Alcoholics Anonymous, poetry readings, and so on. 

The Community Health Project was on the second floor.  Climbing the red staircase put me in mind of fire drills at my elementary school.  At the CHP, I was given a free examination and much-needed sex education, all dispensed without judgment.  The health care workers on staff didn’t know me, but I could tell they’d helped many people like me.  The experience was profound, a revelation: community is the space claimed and defended by people who need one another.  On the steps of the center that day, I decide to become a citizen of the gay community, and I vowed to make a contribution to it. 

This essay, "My Postmodernism," was first published in Artforum in 2003.  To read more of this essay and Bordowitz's other writings, check out The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous. 

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” opens around the country today. This movie promises to be a very intense and educational experience. While many of us are already aware that pollution can cause many problems like air and water contamination as well as global warming, it does not hurt to learn more.

Another source of detailed information regarding the state of our environment is America’s Environmental Report Card by Harvey Blatt. This book is full of scientific facts and historical data that illustrate how the seemingly small things that we do as part of our daily lives, like taking showers, are effecting our environment:

In 1900 Americans bathed or showered only once or twice a week (or less!). Most women washed their hair only once a month (and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo). Only 14 percent of our homes had bathtubs. As late as 1950 only 20 percent of Americans bathed daily in the winter; in 1999 it was 75 percent. In many parts of rural America, bathing in the early 1900s was often more a seasonal than a daily affair. The notion of being wet all over at once, indoors, was little short of revolutionary and workingmen might prefer to walk to a river for the privilege of cleanliness. Nowadays, most of us shower daily, a water drain of at least 5 gallons for every minute the water is running. The feel of a massaging hot shower for 10 minutes may be invigorating, but when 295 million people do it everyday the water use is staggering.

Prof. Blatt also addresses issues like air pollution:

Each of us takes a breath every 4 seconds, about 8.5 million breaths per year. When resting, you and I inhale about 2,500 gallons of air per day, 7 quarts per minute. That’s 1,500 trillion gallons per day for the world’s population of 6 billion. The molecules of air we breathe were at one time in the lungs of Beethoven, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, Jesus and Moses. When doing heavy work–that is, huffing and puffing–the daily amount for each person rises from 2,500 to 15, 00 gallons. An average American breathes 3,400 gallons. We use a lot of air. It would be nice if it were clean… The noxious gases in our air that are monitored by urban air-quality authorities are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, ozone, and carbon monoxide. In 2004, more than half of all Americans lived in counties that did not meet the EPA standard for at least one of these pollutants….

Biological Theory

We are pleased to announce the publication of the first issue of our newest journal, Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition.  The journal is devoted to theoretical advances in the biological and cognitive sciences with an emphasis on the conceptual integration afforded by evolutionary and developmental approaches. Edited by Werner Callebaut, Biological Theory grew out of the Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology and is published in partnership with the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI). 

Take a look at the whole inagural issue. 

The Globalization of Biotechnology

frontwheeldrive (the name connotes a pulling, forward motion) is a fantastic website that brings intelligent reporting and critical commentary to the fringes of emerging sciences and culture. Recently, frontwheeldrive editor Roy Christopher talked with Georgia Tech’s Eugene Thacker about his recent book, The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics and Culture and his unique research which focuses on the intersection of technology and biology—specifically the human genome and the digital computer.   Here’s a bit from the interview.

I wonder if you could expound on your closing thoughts in The Global Genome regarding pop culture being the site in which to understand biotechnology.

Well part of that is due to may background in cultural theory, and, I’ll admit, my affinity for SF and horror. But in all my writing on biotech and the life sciences I’ve always tried to refuse any hard and fast distinction between science and science fiction as a way of understanding the different ways in which futures are extrapolated from a given present situation.

It’s pretty obvious, if one looks around, that the life sciences and biotechnology have pervaded popular culture. A great way of demonstrating this is to look at all of the re-makes of Cold War-era science fiction and comics: Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc. It seems to now be a requirement to somehow put genetics in the stories, even if it really doesn’t make any sense (which is often). I’m less interested in what the director ‘intended’ to mean by this than what it means culturally that genetics, biotech, and even nanotech are always found in SF. One thing it means is that these sciences and technologies are normalized in a way that the general public going to a film will ‘accept’ their inclusion as a matter of course. Certainly there are always SF-geeks who dispute the technical accuracy of how the genetic mutation actually creates the superhero or villain, but on a general level these technosciences have become a part of a certain cultural imaginary. So the question is ‘what conditions had to be in place such that these particular technosciences could become normalized as a part of a certain world-view?’ Perhaps this process is somewhat parallel to the normalization of medicine and public health practices themselves.

So I think that popular culture is relevant, not because I believe that films should educate and moralize, but because there is actually a great deal of ambivalence in pop culture’s treatment of technoscience. We can’t live without it, and yet it seems to be our downfall. The movies that moralize about the ineradicable human spirit do so using the most advanced computer graphics and special effects. There’s also a sense in many of these films, books, and comics, that we as a culture are not quite sure what to do with all of this information and all these gadgets. It’s almost as if the greatest challenge posed to SF now is finding something interesting to do with all the technology that exists.

Read the rest of the interview here.  And, for frontwheeldrive’s take on another aspect of humans merging with machines,  check out their review of Bruce Sterling’s Shaping Things.