Books published by MIT Press Ltd

"A syntactic analysis of and solution to the semantic problem: how can speakers convey the same meaning using different speech acts?"--

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Harvard University, 2014, under the title: Group Material and the 1980s: a materialist postmodernism.

A diverse group of teenage friends learn how computing can be personally and politically empowering and why all students need access to computer science education.This lively graphic novel follows a diverse group of teenage friends as they discover that computing can be fun, creative, and empowering. Taylor, Christine, Antonio, and Jon seem like typical young teens-they communicate via endless texting, they share jokes, they worry about starting high school, and they have each other's backs. But when a racially-biased artificial intelligence system causes harm in their neighborhood, they suddenly realize that tech isn't as neutral as they thought it was. But can an algorithm be racist? And what is an algorithm, anyway? In school, they decide to explore computing classes, with mixed results. One class is only about typing. The class that Christine wants to join is full, and the school counselor suggests that she take a class in "Tourism and Hospitality" instead. (Really??) But Antonio's class seems legit, Christine finds an after-school program, and they decide to teach the others what they learn. By summer vacation, all four have discovered that computing is both personally and politically empowering. Interspersed through the narrative are text boxes with computer science explainers and inspirational profiles of people of color and women in the field (including Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures fame). Power On! is an essential read for young adults, general readers, educators, and anyone interested in the power of computing, how computing can do good or cause harm, and why addressing underrepresentation in computing needs to be a top priority.

"Breakthrough Prize recipient Joseph Polchinksi (now deceased) reveals details of his upbringing, his collaborations with major figures in physics, and his significant contributions to string theory and cosmology"--

How leaders can recast innovation's toughest trade-offs-efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose-as productive tensions.Why is leading innovation in today's dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don't reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve Jobs-level genius, shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility? consistency or change? product or purpose? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they've never imagined? When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway? How can you maintain stakeholders' trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation's thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

Anne Bradstreet, W.E.B. Du Bois, gene editing, and Junior Mints: cultural icons, influential ideas, and world-changing innovations from Cambridge, Massachusetts.Cambridge, Massachusetts is a city of "firsts": the first college in the English colonies, the first two-way long-distance call, the first legal same-sex marriage. In 1632, Anne Bradstreet, living in what is now Harvard Square, became the first published poet in British North America, and in 1959, Cambridge-based Carter's Ink marketed the first yellow Hi-liter. W.E.B. Du Bois, Julia Child, Yo-Yo Ma, and Noam Chomsky all lived in Cambridge at various points in their lives. Born in Cambridge tells these stories and many others, chronicling cultural icons, influential ideas, and world-changing innovations that all came from one city of modest size across the Charles River from Boston. Nearly 200 illustrations connect stories to Cambridge locations. Cambridge is famous for being home to MIT and Harvard, and these institutions play a leading role in many of these stories-the development of microwave radar, for example, the invention of napalm, and Robert Lowell's poetry workshop. But many have no academic connection, including Junior Mints, Mount Auburn Cemetery (the first garden cemetery), and the public radio show Car Talk. It's clear that Cambridge has not only a genius for invention but also a genius for reinvention, and authors Karen Weintraub and Michael Kuchta consider larger lessons from Cambridge's success stories-about urbanism, the roots of innovation, and nurturing the next generation of good ideas.

A history of the relationship between art and geometry in the early modern period.In The Polyhedrists, Noam Andrews unfolds a history of the relationship between art and geometry in early modern Europe, told largely through a collective of ground-breaking artisan-artists (among them, Luca Pacioli, Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, and Lorentz Stöer) and by detailed analysis of a rich visual panoply of their work, featuring paintings, prints, decorative arts, cabinetry, and lavishly illustrated treatises. But this is also an art history of the polyhedra themselves, emblems of an evolving artistic intelligence, which include a varied set of geometrical figures—both Platonic, or regular, like the simple tetrahedron, and Archimedean, or irregular, like the complex yet beguiling rhombicosidodecahedron.Moreover, The Polyhedrists argues that the geometrical depictions of Dürer, Jamnitzer et al. were far more than mere follies from the dawn of perspective, at odds with a contemporary view of the Renaissance, and destined to be superseded by later developments in higher level mathematics. In fact, the evolution of the solids into innumerable “irregular bodies” constituted a sustained moment in the formulation of Renaissance mathematical knowledge and its engagement with materiality. This intense field of experimentation would birth a new language of geometrical abstraction that would ignite a century of novel form-making strategies, ultimately paving the way for developments in geometry and topology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and even prefiguring the more recent digital turn. The book, in this sense, is not just an applied history of geometry, nor a particular geometric reading of early modern art through some of its more celebrated practitioners, but a manifesto of sorts into the hitherto unexplored wilds of art and science.

"Argues that what makes AI socially relevant and useful is not intelligence at all but something even more human: communication. If machines are going to improve their ability to address ever more important human issues, it will not be because they have learned to think like people, but because we have learned to communicate with them"--

A bold, groundbreaking argument by a world-renowned expert that unless we treat free speech as the fundamental human right, there can be no others. What are human rights? Are they laid out definitively in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the US Bill of Rights? Are they items on a checklist-dignity, justice, progress, standard of living, health care, housing? In The Most Human Right, Eric Heinze explains why global human rights systems have failed. International organizations constantly report on how governments manage human goods, such as fair trials, humane conditions of detention, healthcare, or housing. But to appease autocratic regimes, experts have ignored the primacy of free speech. Heinze argues that goods become rights only when citizens can claim them publicly and fearlessly: free speech is the fundamental right, without which the very concept of a "right" makes no sense. Heinze argues that throughout history countless systems of justice have promised human goods. What, then, makes human rights different? What must human rights have that other systems have lacked? Heinze revisits the origins of the concept, exploring what it means for a nation to protect human rights, and what a citizen needs in order to pursue them. He explains how free speech distinguishes human rights from other ideas about justice, past and present.

"The rise of the English couture industry, and the transatlantic network that supported it during a turbulent period of depression, war, and post-war reconstruction"--

An exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics.In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. She looks for imagined languages that are autonomous systems, complete unto themselves and meant for communal use; imaginary, and therefore unlike both natural languages and historically attested languages; and products of an individual effort to lay hold of language. Inventors of languages, Yaguello writes, are madly in love: they love an object that belongs to them only to the extent that they also share it with a community. Yaguello investigates the sources of imaginary languages, in myths, dreams, and utopias. She takes readers on a tour of languages invented in literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including that in More’s Utopia, Leibniz’s “algebra of thought,” and Bulwer-Lytton’s linguistic fiction. She examines the linguistic fantasies (or madness) of Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr and Swiss medium Hélène Smith; and considers the quest for the true philosophical language. Yaguello finds two abiding (and somewhat contradictory) forces: the diversity of linguistic experience, which stands opposed to unifying endeavors, and, on the other hand, features shared by all languages (natural or not) and their users, which justifies the universalist hypothesis. Recent years have seen something of a boom in invented languages, whether artificial languages meant to facilitate international communication or imagined languages constructed as part of science fiction worlds. In Imaginary Languages (an updated and expanded version of the earlier Les Fous du langage, published in English as Lunatic Lovers of Language), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.

A complete overview of quantum mechanics, covering essential concepts and results, theoretical foundations, and applications.This undergraduate textbook offers a comprehensive overview of quantum mechanics, beginning with essential concepts and results, proceeding through the theoretical foundations that provide the field's conceptual framework, and concluding with the tools and applications students will need for advanced studies and for research. Drawn from lectures created for MIT undergraduates and for the popular MITx online course, "Mastering Quantum Mechanics," the text presents the material in a modern and approachable manner while still including the traditional topics necessary for a well-rounded understanding of the subject. As the book progresses, the treatment gradually increases in difficulty, matching students' increasingly sophisticated understanding of the material. • Part 1 covers states and probability amplitudes, the Schrödinger equation, energy eigenstates of particles in potentials, the hydrogen atom, and spin one-half particles• Part 2 covers mathematical tools, the pictures of quantum mechanics and the axioms of quantum mechanics, entanglement and tensor products, angular momentum, and identical particles.• Part 3 introduces tools and techniques that help students master the theoretical concepts with a focus on approximation methods.• 236 exercises and 286 end-of-chapter problems• 248 figures

"A historical and critical study of the great Italian Renaissance architect Donato Bramante, but also a polemic, even manifesto, about contemporary architectural practice"--

An examination of a series of diverse, radical, and experimental international works from the 1950s to the present.What is a literary work? In Literature’s Elsewheres, Annette Gilbert tackles this question by deploying an extended concept of literature, examining a series of diverse, radical, experimental works from the 1950s to the present that occupy the liminal zone between art and literature. These works—by American Artist, Allison Parrish, Natalie Czech, Stephanie Syjuco, Fiona Banner, Elfriede Jelinek, Dan Graham, Robert Barry, George Brecht, and others—represent a pluralized literary practice that imagines a different literature emerging from its elsewheres.  Investigating a work’s coming into being—its transition from “text” to “work” as a social object and pragmatic category of literary communication—Gilbert probes the assumptions and foundations that underpin literature, including the ideologies and power structures that prop it up. She offers a snapshot from a period of recent literary and art history when such central concepts as originality and authorship were questioned and experimental literary practices ranged from concrete poetry and Oulipo to conceptual writing and appropriation literature. She examines works that are dematerialized, site-specific, unique copies of other works, and institutional critiques. Considering the inequalities, exclusions, and privileges inscribed in literature, she documents the power of experimental literature to attack these norms and challenges the field’s canonical geographic boundaries by examining artists with roots in North and South America, East Asia, and Western and Eastern Europe. The cross-pollination of literary and art criticism enriches both fields. With Literature’s Elsewheres, Gilbert explores what art can’t see about the literary and what literature has overlooked in the arts.

"Bers argues that coding should be taught in early childhood and beyond STEM fields, where it is currently isolated from ethical, cultural, and language skills"--

Artists and writers go beyond disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to address the fight for environmental justice, uniting the Asia-Pacific vantage point with international discourse.Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, Climates. Habitats. Environments. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking. Experimental in form as well as in method, Climates. Habitats. Environments. features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid's Metamorphoses to discuss human-plant interpenetration; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes-and is consumed-in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes "Water Sense" as a geontological approach to "the question of our connected and differentiated existence," informed by the "ancestral catastrophe of colonialism." Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore "The Posthuman City"; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. Copublished with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore