http://mitworld.mit.edu/ MIT World media. en-us Thu, 2 Jul 2009 21:09:54 GMT Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/681 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/681 European archivists grapple with the legal obligations, civic responsibilities and future prospects of their collections, which, thanks to the Internet and other new technologies, are increasingly awash in image and sound. As William Urichhio notes, “tradition-bound institutions know what we should be gathering: feature films, books, newspapers, political documents, but it’s much harder to know what to do with things like social media…say, networks of interactions.” Different organizations are evolving diverse strategies.

At France’s National Institute of the Audiovisual (INA), Claude Mussou describes managing “memory and heritage policies in the information age.” In the 16th century, she recounts, Francois 1 mandated that any book published would be first deposited in the royal library. The national collection law broadened over centuries to include new forms of knowledge production: documents, film, radio and TV, and beginning in 2006, websites, because of the migration of so many activities online, and because of the fleeting life of many websites. Says Mussou, “Twenty, 50 or 100 years from now, when scholars or academics look for evidence and testimony for what the 21st century was,…web archives will be a necessary and valuable source.” She pointedly notes that we can’t rely on Google or other commercial interests to maintain web archives, and therefore governments must not “surrender their role as gatekeepers to collective memory.”

Sweden’s national library recently merged with the national media archive, says Pelle Snickars, which includes seven million hours of media material. The legal deposit law mandates anything put out on tape, radio or TV must find its way into the state’s collections. This imposes an enormous burden, both curatorial and budgetary. As it transitions to digital, the library must maintain its analog collection. Snickars says the larger problem involves rights: researchers would love access via the web to the material that’s being transferred, but the material belongs to others. Snickars worries about the best methods for digital preservation, and whether quality concerns should be sacrificed to quantity demands, as more and more people assume access to information online.

The BBC boasts 100 kilometers of shelves for its A/V collection, says Richard Wright, from 1920s radio to videotape from the 1960s onward -- all of which must be digitized to be preserved. The BBC is converting 200 terabytes per week of current broadcast material -- an enormous commitment to digital. As Wright points out, “We’re putting a very big egg in that basket, and the basket is not perfect.” The risk of loss of data is proportional to the data stored, and since so much is pouring from analog to digital, “the risk is growing by Moore’s Law.” One way to mitigate this loss: avoid compressing data, and seek redundancy. As we’ve moved from stone, to paper, and onto disc, storage capacity gets denser and cheaper, he notes -- almost overwhelming: “It’s why our grandchildren are swimming in a sea of digital photos.” If we can’t tag all this material appropriately, it will be “struggling to survive” for future generations. ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/682 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/682 While Barack Obama has rejected the Bush administration’s harsh stance toward Iran, panelists warn that we’re far from the start of fruitful relations, and that achieving real diplomacy will paradoxically require both patience and a sense of urgency.

Suzanna DiMaggio observes the U.S. seeking “areas of common interest and managing areas of profound differences” with Iran, moving “well beyond a change in language” to concrete and profound shifts in policy, such as recognizing Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program; curtailing support for Iranian opposition groups; and reaching out for Iran’s cooperation on Afghanistan. DiMaggio says Afghanistan may prove key to building the foundations of a relationship, since Iran is concerned about halting the spread of violent fundamentalism and curtailing drug trafficking. The way forward, she suggests, involves approaching Iran in a “direct and sustained way to clarify U.S. intentions in the region while building confidence and trust,” which “will require each side to exercise great restraint,” and an acceptance that there will be frequent setbacks.

Jim Walsh describes recent U.S. actions toward Iran as “scene setting,” with such moves as dropping preconditions for discussing Iran’s nuclear program, and discouraging Israel from contemplating a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But “Iran is cautious,” with its government demonstrating “a certain schizophrenia” -- hopefulness and curiosity about Barack Obama, but skepticism about the U.S. pursuing substantive change. Tactical cooperation with Iran around Afghanistan and the drug trade appears to Walsh a better starting point for discussions than Iran’s nuclear program. He says, “Barack Obama may speak with a nicer tone, offer greater incentives, but if at the end of the day, he insists on no centrifuges, we will end up at the same outcome as before.” Substantial movement will take months, and all the while, Iran will continue to build centrifuges. Walsh sees a dilemma for the president: he must attempt to build confidence by moving slowly, but the “best chance for success is if Obama acts early and boldly while he still has the power of public opinion behind him domestically and internationally…It won’t last forever.

Stephen Heintz points out that “Iran is in the center of a set of issues of direct national interest to the U.S.,” including Middle East peace, the war on terror, regional stability and oil. The problem is that in trying to find points of intersection with Iran, each nation “has very little knowledge of the other,” as well as bad memories (the hostage crisis of 1979, the U.S. support of the Shah). This “only reinforces a relationship based on suspicion.” While Barack Obama “has done a superb job at creating different atmospherics,” there is a huge debate underway within policy circles, as different groups jockey to shape Iran policy. Heintz doesn’t expect much movement until after the Iranian elections, but hopes that the restart of multilateral talks, and discussions about regional security and drug trade will help free both nations of the “paranoia and fear” that’s built up over time. ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 The situation facing our planet could hardly be more dire: There’s increasingly dangerous competition among nations for ever scarce energy resources, and climate change is racing ahead of predictions. Although Steven Chu believes “We are getting close to where it’s very nervous time,” he also sees “reason for hope.”

Just as science in the 1970s produced a “green revolution” in agricultural productivity, preventing mass starvation in a swelling global population, Chu is counting on transformative scientific and engineering ideas to achieve sustainable energy and cap climate change.

As chief architect of new policy, and with tens of billions of dollars to pump into his vision, Chu is targeting key areas. Number one on his list: energy efficiency and conservation. Since buildings use 40% of the nation’s total energy, designing more efficient homes and offices will make a big difference. There are “tune ups” possible for existing buildings, and software that can direct lighting, heating and cooling where it’s needed that can achieve 50% plus energy savings, and won’t break the bank. Says Chu, “This is truly low-hanging fruit, but we have to build the tools that allow architects and structural engineers to get on with it.”

On the supply side, Chu has his heart set on transformative technologies such as nanotech breakthroughs in solar power. He’s looking for ways to scale up biomass fuel production, now that synthetic biology can make microbes manufacture gas-like fuels. Noting in particular the work of MIT’s Dan Nocera, Chu says he “wants to use nature as an inspiration, but go beyond nature,” performing artificial photosynthesis to create new hydrocarbons. And as the U.S. and China continue dependence on coal, figuring out how to capture and sequester carbon from these plants figures “high on the list of things we must do.” He’s again hoping researchers will find some analog to nature’s ability to grab and neutralize CO₂.

The ideal environment for jumpstarting such urgent scientific efforts, believes Chu, is something like Bell Labs, where Chu himself worked. The Labs performed “mission-driven research” around communications and for U.S. war efforts, but along the way also developed the transistor, information theory, radio astronomy, and lasers, among many examples. These scientist-led labs emphasized exchange of ideas and rapid infusion of research funds to the most promising work. This led to inventions that in turn transformed the U.S. economy. Chu envisions energy lab equivalents that “deliver the goods” along with fundamental science, “so you can have the Nobel Prize and save the world at the same time.” ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/684 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/684 There are ample opportunities for new energy entrepreneurs, these panelists agree, but motivation and certain kinds of know-how play key roles in bringing new ventures to fruition.

Idealism led Christina Lampe-Onnerud to “go into the energy space” at 23, but “inertia” surrounding the energy business may intimidate today’s entrepreneurs. Her Boston-Power company, which makes “green” lithium-ion batteries, has forged good relations with policymakers, and now hopes that these politicians will be “brave enough” to “put frameworks out 20 years.” In addition to long-term policy changes, Lampe-Onnerud is counting on a continuous influx of good scientists and engineers to drive her company forward. She encourages everyone with new ideas or the capacity to provide leadership to respond “to the biggest opportunity and threat we have.”

Jacques Beaudry-Losique warns would-be energy entrepreneurs they’re up against a highly regulated environment. An offshore wind turbine might require 39 different permits, and it can take as long as 14 years to get approval for a transmission line. Beaudry-Losique promises that government is now working “to better align interests so we can move faster bringing these solutions to the table.” Energy entrepreneurs should arm themselves with experienced staff who can navigate regulatory channels. They should also build consortia and partnerships with foundations, government and university labs, other manufacturers and buyers. The administration “is making a huge commitment to energy efficiency and smart buildings” and views wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, as “all hot.”

Compared to entrepreneurial ventures in IT and life sciences, clean energy startups demand “more money, more time and more late stage risk,” says Matthew Nordan. Biomass or coal gasification technologies might require a billion dollars for a pilot plant, which “is a level of risk so high that …investors won’t sign that check.” Many technologies intended to solve one problem end up creating another, or encounter bottlenecks as they scale up, such as the limited supply of precious metals required for the magnets of wind turbines. Some entrepreneurs find success in unique niches, though, such as those seeking to recover waste metal byproducts of tar sand operations. But Nordan warns of a big shake up, as the recent discovery of a massive pocket of natural gas in the U.S. will make competition even steeper for new energy contenders like solar and wind.

Robert Metcalfe finds a lack of “human capital” in current energy ventures. The talented CEOs “who have started five companies” are in short supply in energy, which also haven’t widely adopted partnering as a useful model. To Metcalfe, the energy problem “looks more and more like a networking problem,” which demands a smart grid with lots of storage. This should present entrepreneurs with novel areas to explore. Large utilities may prove obstructive: “We must find ways to get around them, …either recruit them or destroy them.” He’s optimistic there will be breakthroughs in such technologies as fuel cells, and that “when we solve energy, it will be cheap and abundant, and we will use much more of it.” ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/685 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/685 Nostalgia, anxiety and optimism mix in this panel devoted to imagining what lies ahead for the book, as publishing professionals and others discuss the impact of digital technology on the business.

Small Beer Press, Gavin Grant’s boutique Massachusetts publishing company, “is still in the business of producing paper objects.” But new technologies are transforming his work in several ways: He licenses some books via Creative Commons; releases others as downloads in a variety of ebook formats (generating these can be an expensive “hassle”); and deploys social media, in the form of blogs and Facebook-enabled communication, to publicize and attract passionate readers to the firm’s website. Grant sees Amazon and its Kindle as a bully driving readers toward best sellers, and is interested in the “hyperlocal” possibilities of the web for publishing: finding readers for his one-of-a-kind publications, and inviting them to peruse his non-mainstream book lists.

Agent Jennifer Jackson describes some intriguing direct marketing activities made possible by the web, including author-produced book trailers on YouTube, and an online media project undertaken by clients and other authors: a website consisting of episodes for a fictional TV show. Jackson also maintains blogs that she hopes provide “transparency” about her end of the business, a way to bridge “the great divide” between agents and authors. Her authors are concerned with digital piracy but Jackson feels wide distribution of an author’s work ends up generating more sales over time.

Robert Miller’s frustration with the trade publishing model-- in particular, astronomical advances to authors, and book return rates of 40% -- led to HarperStudio (a Harper Collins offshoot). His notion of “starting something from scratch” involves making digital and physical books available simultaneously to the reader. His first offering is a collection of previously unpublished pieces by Mark Twain that are available as individual books, or in discounted bundles with audio books and downloadable books. He celebrates the reduction in production costs in moving to digital, but he’s wary of the small but rapidly expanding ebook market, which he anticipates will impose a “downward pressure on prices,” a loss of revenue that will negatively impact his business.

Bob Stein envisions a wholesale evolution of the essence of books, from objects to “a place where readers and sometimes authors congregate.” His Institute on the Future of the Book hosts experiments in publishing, such as one where an author essentially blogs and moderates responses around a particular subject. Readers could someday collaborate with dead authors, adding chapters to finished books, for instance. He sees ebooks as transitional: “The experiments which have to do with increasing sales of book are interesting, and will prolong publishing but won’t invent the future of how humans work together to increase our knowledge, which is what publishing used to do.” These new expressive forms won’t emerge quickly. It took 300 years after the invention of the printing before the first novel was written, he notes, but inexorably, “we’re shifting the ways humans communicate with each other.” ]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/680 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/680 Linda Mason was originally going to make a case study of Bright Horizons, her $1.3 billion, early childhood care business, but reconsidered in light of the current economic crisis -- to the benefit of her audience. Instead, she takes up her own story as a recession-era entrepreneur who built several hugely successful, socially oriented ventures, navigating very real pitfalls and challenges along the way. Her “nonlinear path” yielded important life lessons, which she shares in this talk. Some highlights from her story:

Mason took a major detour from a planned career in management consulting when she and Roger Brown, who was to become her husband, left Yale in 1979 with their MBAs to work in Cambodian refugee camps. After a year, they returned to corporate life. But some time later, she and Brown experienced a watershed moment at a New Year’s Eve party, realizing their years of accumulating money and frequent flyer miles left them “depressed.” They determined that night to make a change.

Soon after, Save the Children called, looking for help dealing with the terrible famine sweeping western Sudan. Mason and Brown had 24 hours to make up their minds: There was “no time to make a list of pros and cons. It was a fork in the road, and we knew it was the path we were to take,” says Mason. This experience taught her, “It’s sometimes important to leap before you look.”

Management skills came in handy as the team set up a complex food distribution operation, one that challenged relief organization orthodoxy. This experience, which at the time “seemed crazy and risky,” fueled Mason and Brown’s next move in 1986: addressing the shortage of high quality child care in the U.S. The couple turned their Cambridge home into a start up headquarters, and developed a business plan, which they sold to enthusiastic VCs. But corporations balked at buying in, viewing the fledgling Bright Horizons team as “flaky Peace Corps types.” Mason, reflecting on this period, counsels “do your homework extremely well, then be very, very stubborn.”

As New England sank into a recession, and their idea faced collapse, the duo transformed crisis into opportunity. They summoned all their energy for a final effort, marketing onsite childcare to real estate developers looking to attract businesses. In 1990, four years after starting, Bright Horizons was in the black. The two ran the business for 15 years, when they moved onto other interests. “Discover your passions,” Mason advises, and combine them with your skills “to give your life meaning.” ]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/679 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/679 Measured in human suffering, and by statistics, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) presents a formidable specter: with incidence approaching 30 million worldwide and growing rapidly, it is now the sixth leading cause of death in the US. As life expectancy lengthens, AD is anticipated to triple in prevalence over the next few decades. The disease is found in nearly 50% of people age 85 and older. Triply higher medical costs are incurred by seniors with AD. These daunting facts give urgency and weight to molecular neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai’s research.

Tsai begins her presentation with an historical perspective of Alzheimer’s, first documented in 1901 in Germany as “strange behavioral symptoms and loss of short-term memory.” Post-mortem examination of a patient’s brain showed “the hallmark pathological lesions: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.” Telltale manifestations include “forgetfulness, …confusion, disorganized thinking, impaired judgment,” difficulty expressing oneself, spatial and temporal disorientation, and incapacity in daily activities. Family members must often quit jobs to provide round-the-clock care. In the advanced disease, becoming bedridden engenders chronic infections, secondary conditions, and eventual demise.

Definitive clinical diagnosis can be elusive. Imaging techniques with radioactive tracers, using a compound that selectively binds with amyloid plaques, help to identify AD. Tsai describes several cognitive tests developed by fellow MIT researchers to aid in confirming the disease. One method assesses retention of verbal facts and geometric figures. Another diagnostic tool is functional MRI, pinpointing brain areas activated upon exposure to new versus repeated scenes, a challenge for memory. Both approaches reveal notable distinctions between AD patients and control subjects.

“Currently there is no treatment that can prevent, delay or reverse Alzheimer’s Disease,” says Tsai. FDA approved drugs that act upon neurotransmitters postpone cognitive deterioration by only a few months.

Using a transgenic mouse model, Tsai’s pioneering research seeks to target compounds that can preferentially manipulate proteins to assume a desired structure. Resulting cellular differentiation into neurons could help correct deficits of AD by augmenting brain volume in specific regions, thereby enhancing learning and memory.

Just as experimental mouse subjects perform better with “environmental enrichment…by keeping them very physically engaged,” Tsai recounts that “people with higher education, more active lifestyles” benefit cognitively as they age. As to the respective contributions of genetic and environmental factors, she believes “it’s really a combination.” Though treatment for Alzheimer’s will not be solely pharmaceutical, Tsai hopes to identify chemical compounds to ameliorate the characteristic brain atrophy that robs one of vitality and dignity. ]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/677 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/677 In their symposium introduction, Susan Hockfield and Mriganka Sur place MIT at the forefront of a revolution in neuroscience. Hockfield, a neuroscientist by training, recaps the evolution of the discipline at MIT, from its 1964 start in the Department of Psychology to the more recent establishment of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. These changes mirror the transformation of a field in which, says Hockfield, “at first you could do little more than make qualitative observations about behavior and only speculate about causes, to one that can examine brain function at the level of molecules and cell circuits; that can conduct quantitative experiments with genetically targeted model systems and can directly observe the living human brain in action.”

We are now poised “for the first time in human history to deliver scientifically designed, rational therapies for some crippling disorders of the brain.” Hockfield credits MIT’s progress to “meta-experiments,” specifically collaborations among scientists and engineers, and the generosity of patrons.

Mriganka Sur and his colleagues believe “the vast majority of brain disorders have their roots in brain wiring gone awry,” so a solution to such disorders lies in understanding the wiring, and its associated functions. MIT gets at these questions from many angles of research, including the genetic underpinnings of brain development, the architecture of synaptic pathways and networks, and the brain’s response to environmental stimuli. MIT addresses research problems through a “unique interdisciplinary effort” comprising molecular biology, neuron and cognitive science, and computation. What’s more, researchers have united behind a singular mission -- a “wish to make a difference in the world” -- which involves a specific focus on addressing such brain disorders and diseases as dyslexia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and autism. “There is not one other entity like this anywhere else,” says Sur, who believes MIT’s potential for future impact is “virtually limitless.” ]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/678 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/678 This self-described “basic neuroscientist” confesses he never thought he’d give a talk on autism, but as Mark Bear recounts, decades of research in the basics are now paying off with important insights into the etiology and treatment of brain disorders, including autism.

Bear provides a primer on this developmental disorder, noting that its roots are biological, it is highly heritable, and astonishingly prevalent: one in 150 people express some of the symptoms of autism. These fall on a spectrum, from severely reduced social behavior, abnormal language, repetitive movements, seizures and mental retardation, to the milder Asperger’s Syndrome, where individuals are often academically successful, but socially awkward. Particularly significant to Bear: Autism’s underlying genetic changes manifest themselves in problematic communication between neurons.

To unravel autism, researchers are examining its clinical heterogeneity, “genetic risk architecture,” and how it alters brain connections and function. One of the difficulties in approaching autism is that a variety of genetic mutations can result in autistic behaviors, and only a few of these mutations have been identified. Bear himself has been probing the single gene disorder, Fragile X syndrome (responsible for about 5% of the cases “of full-blown autism.”) In Fragile X, the FMR1 gene is silenced, leading to a missing protein that serves as a key regulator of brain proteins involved in neuron communication. Without FMR1, “the brakes are missing,” and there’s excessive protein synthesis leading to altered brain function.

Bear hypothesized that it might be possible to correct Fragile X by bringing the system back in balance. He created mice models of the disease, and found that by reducing the number of neurotransmitter receptors that respond to the excessive brain proteins, he could ameliorate or correct Fragile X defects. These receptors are “druggable targets,” and, says Bear, “if the treatment works in fly, fish or mouse, it better work in humans or Darwin was wrong.”

Based on this work, drug companies are devising compounds to test in human clinical trials of Fragile X syndrome. In addition, Bear notes, colleagues have discovered that other mutations connected with autism also involve protein regulation problems. “This gets us excited, because it looks like a common pathway that causes synaptic dysfunction in different diseases that may ultimately manifest as autism. If that’s the case, then treatment for the disorder may be efficacious in multiple disorders.” ]]> Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/676 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/676 As old media die, new forms are emerging, but it’s not clear they will serve such vital civic functions as “helping people form publics,” as Pat Aufderheide puts it. These panelists point to promising experiments in “Public Media 2.0,” but caution that new media are not guaranteed to shore up democracy or invigorate public culture.

After two years of research, Jessica Clark has reframed the notion of public media as “outlets that provide context/content that allows publics to form around shared issues without political or corporate interference.” Instead of a centralized producer (old media), user-producers collaborate, forming networks with the use of digital tools. Some novel ventures that “break out of the old zones:” cell phone reporting in forbidden areas of war-torn Gaza, and streaming iPhone feeds of local news from U.S. cities.

Ellen Hume faults traditional journalism to some degree for its own demise, because it did not “connect the dots between news and action.” It stirred up emotions with stories but didn’t give people “a place to go” with their passion. In contrast, new civic medium SeeClickFix.com enables the public to report a problem in a community (from potholes to graffiti), spurring government response. HeroReports.org encourages people to report instances of kindness. Says Hume, “These new media offer enormous opportunity for creativity, and unleash the ability to participate in public.” But we haven’t yet entered the era of full media literacy, where people become “part of the public, rather than cruising through.”

Persephone Miel has been searching for “all that democracy we were supposed to get.” In spite of the proliferation of new types of reporting media, including news aggregator, author- and audience-driven web sites, Miel believes the “old media model still does unique things for us.” As traditional journalism fades, there’s no new media replacement yet for its “editorial intelligence,” its persistent, watchdog functions. Miel sees no evidence that “the volunteer energy of the blogosphere” will step into these roles. She notes several attempts at hybrid journalism forms: websites Spot.us, a nonprofit project for community-funded reporting; Global Voices, where correspondents in developing nations send out web dispatches; and Town Meeting 2009, a New Hampshire public radio web venture that reported on local governments’ budget process.

On the technology front, Dean Jansen has developed a free open source HD video player, Miro, so people don’t have to go through proprietary gateways or load specialized software to access web video content. He hopes to swell the ranks of user-producers in a more inclusive, participatory webspace.

Jake Shapiro’s public radio exchange, PRX.org, invites independent radio producers to connect with local public radio stations through his aggregating site. Citing the “current collapse of traditional forms,” particularly public television, Shapiro hopes to reconfigure public broadcasting. He says his marketplace enables content creators to find an audience, receive royalties from interested public radio buyers, create social networks, and potentially find alternative channels of distribution via podcasting. ]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/675 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/675 According to Tonio Buonassisi, we’re “on the cusp” of achieving a competitive technology for capturing the limitless energy of the sun. Buonassisi, in conversation with an MIT Museum audience, describes how, with the work of MIT and other researchers, photovoltaics may finally be coming into its own.

Buonassisi describes solar cells as his “life’s passion” since age 16, but scientists have been laboring somewhat longer to figure out how to convert sunlight to useful power on Earth. In 1954, Bell Labs pioneered the first solar cell. It took 12 thousand dollars’ worth of these “to run an ordinary household toaster,” says Buonassisi. In spite of a great leap forward in the 1990s, with breakthroughs around the purification of silicon crystals and large subsidies for national industries in Japan and Germany, solar energy today constitutes just 1% of total electric generation worldwide.

The process behind solar cells appears straightforward, involving the sun’s light energy (photons) exciting electrons inside some substrate; the separation of positive and negative charges; and then the collection of those charges into an external circuit. Yet scaling up this industry to compete with coal and other fossil fuels has proven daunting. Buonassisi sees several hurdles to overcome: lower materials and processing costs, improved conversion efficiencies of cells, and better manufacturing yields. He says that it takes half a square meter-sized solar panel to power a 100-watt bulb, for instance, and it would require a land area equivalent to 1/3rd the size of Nevada to convert enough sunlight to electricity for the whole U.S. In some parts of the world with intense, year-round sun, solar makes sense already, but in the cloudy, wintry northeastern U.S., huge subsidies are still required to make a go of it.

Buonassisi is still optimistic: His own group removes impurities from materials that serve as wafers for solar cells, so cells can convert photons to electrons more effectively. While technological advances in photovoltaics research have not followed Moore’s Law, Buonassisi believes that research can “kick off the constraint” on efficiency and performance. By the end of the next decade, photovoltaics may be “hitting some big potential markets, hundreds of millions of people.” ]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/673 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/673 John Ochsendorf, a structural engineer, “fell in love with archaeology” during college. His senior thesis at Cornell involved a 600-year-old Incan suspension bridge made entirely out of grass. Ochsendorf learned that this apparently primitive structure owed its astonishing longevity to regular rebuilds by the locals (during a community festival), and the use of renewable, biodegradable resources. While Cornell’s engineering faculty couldn’t see the point of this research -- “grass bridges over highway overpasses”? -- Ochsendorf realized that historical structures held important lessons for modern building technology.

The grass bridge raised several problems that now consume Ochsendorf’s academic and professional life. First, how to consider the whole life of a product when designing it, of particular import since “the 21st century is going to be a wild ride in terms of natural resources,” says Ochsendorf. Some building costs increase over time, consuming material and labor while deteriorating (nb: New York’s 1903 Williamsburg Bridge, with $1 billion in repairs, and still unsafe at any speed).

Ochsendorf suggests alternatives: making permanent structures with high quality construction and reusable materials (such as Roman stone arch bridges); very temporary structures, such as the grass bridge, or a Japanese pavilion made out of recycleable paper; or modular structures designed to change over time. Ochsendorf created “a medieval building for the 21st century,” a sustainable home made out of waste clay tiles, rammed earth from local chalk, and a heavy green roof on which sheep graze.

Ochsendorf also studies the integrity of existing historical structures: how to guarantee the safety of a medieval cathedral, or a 19th-century train station. The Pantheon’s stood for 2000 years, a brittle structure that inevitably develops cracks. Engineers today can’t say for sure “if something will fall down.” Ochsendorf is creating engineering tools to vouch for the masonry, steel and concrete holding up both historical treasures and more commonplace infrastructure. He is also working on high tech tools so engineers can examine building designs before construction to ensure “safe results,” and to create structures that will consume less energy and emit fewer greenhouse gases during their lifetimes. As composers know Mozart, and philosophers know the works of Plato, concludes Ochsendorf, the next generation of engineers must review the works of their forebears, if they’re to maintain existing infrastructure, and create better designs for the future. ]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/674 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/674 Scholars of “dead tree technologies” feel increasingly uneasy in a culture overwhelmingly consumed with innovation. Although we may “live in a condition of perpetual flux,” David Thorburn hopes that “we won’t allow utopians and futurists to intimidate us.” Moderator Peter Walsh poses a series of questions to the archivists and historians on this panel, who reflect the anxiety and exhilaration of a digital age that is constantly transforming their disciplines.

After a thousand years and the extinction of many written literatures, John Miles Foley views the oral tradition (OT) as “alive and well in highly literate societies, even in the wired West, and multifunctional: it does many more things for societies than literature is able to do.” It has survived through its “ability to morph in support of morphing societies,” such as in South Africa as it dissolved apartheid. And OT and IT (Internet technology) are quite alike: both performer driven, involved in emergent activities, partaking in distributed authorship. Indeed, OT may find robust expression on the Internet, with new journals and multimedia e-companions encouraging wider audiences and interactive users for performances and events.

A switch from physical to digital archives “will change historical knowledge,” Lisa Gitelman says, because it means a change in the systems governing those archives. Whenever you open a Gmail account, says Gitelman, you’re urged not to delete: “new media have always prompted new archival sensibilities.” But, she warns, the emerging archive system “depends almost wholly on the alphanumeric character of objects and the metadata that describe them.” A historian searching through archives is like a miner whose helmet light can only illuminate narrowly defined areas.

Rick Prelinger views archives as “culturally emergent. …They’re going retail.” Once used mainly by specialists to produce books, TV shows, and exhibits, archives now attract ordinary users with home-based projects. YouTube -- which only resembles an archive -- has created unrealistic expectations of 24/7 archival access. But if archives rebuff users, “the social-cultural consensus that supports us and keeps archives open may fail.” Prelinger sees possibilities for changing the perception of archives “as the place where documents go to molder and die.” Archives could be “a point of departure … for historical intervention,” generating “opportunities for mainstreaming history and re-anchoring in the public sphere.”

“Stewardship responsibility in a digital environment is essential,” says Ann Wolpert, who believes “the odds that bits will survive in a shoebox in the attic are pretty small.” She also points to a “yawning gap emerging between institutional archives and records … and those archives (that are) a byproduct of normal human activities.” She shows an MIT photo of a 1935 drama club performance, where the “winsome damsel” would one day become the president’s wife. It’s the “incidental archives that create the flavor, richness and texture of life at a point in time.” What scrapbook items will people hold onto for future generations, as we record more and more “in media so ephemeral that we run the serious risk of losing …these experiences”? ]]> Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/672 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/672 Susan Hockfield states that science journalism “is now, and in the decades ahead, absolutely indispensable.” As we confront global warming and health pandemics, science reporting must be sustained, Hockfield says, “in its rightful place, at the top of the profession and in the thick of the national conversation.” But dismal economic times throw doubt on this aspiration, as these journalists attest.

At the nation’s flagship newspaper, The New York Times, there’s a relentless commitment to high-quality journalism, whether print or digital, Jill Abramson maintains. “The fact that people have come to expect news on the web to be free has certainly challenged journalism’s business model,” she acknowledges, but The Times is better positioned than other publications to weather the changes. Indeed, “decades from now, the quality newspapers left may not be on paper, but journalism will continue to thrive,” Abramson asserts. In particular, this means ramping up science coverage, whether examining climate science or common medical treatments and health policy.

Abramson draws a clear distinction between science blogs, which are “often for the deeply engaged,” and “coverage pitched to the intelligent general reader.” Penetrating reporting with great breadth comes at a steep price: the paper must support reporters who dig deep into protected government files, are on perilous assignments, or must take a year to glean all dimensions of a complex story. She asks, “How do we prevent the collective muscle of investigative journalism from being gutted?” Whatever the answer (and one solution may involve nonprofit funding), Abramson sees a robust, continuing appetite for “trustworthy information on the world we live in.”

Cristine Russell sees a “best of times, worst of times” scenario for science journalism, with a glut of opportunities beyond print to chat and blog about science, or more frequently, health and fitness, and deep cutbacks in print science departments. Andrew Revkin admits the days when The Times could bring in $1 billion a year in ad revenue are gone forever, and hopes its staff “won’t be in a museum of recently extinct journalists.” But holes in science coverage mean “scientists have a greater responsibility to take the bull by the horns…and engage more fully in a conversation with society.” Ivan Oransky characterizes some online science sites as a kind of “curation,” with “a lot of people covering single events periodically.” He cites Twitter as a positive example of “democratizing coverage,” getting a new generation “to get back into science.” Evan Hadingham suggests we might be “in a golden age of popular science communication on TV.” Yet, in a 500-channel world, public TV science producers face “the ghettoization of science,” worried about how to mix serious science with entertainment. ]]> Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/671 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/671 Wielding numerous analogies for his audience of MIT students, Anant Agarwal makes the case that the next generation of computers, not to mention much of the technology in everyday life, will be built with smaller, simpler parts “combined in a clever way.”

Agarwal starts with Puerto Rico’s enormous Arecibo radio telescope, 400 meters in diameter, tuned to detect extraterrestrial life. Rather than being carved from a single gigantic material, the dish consists of “a whole bunch of tiles” adjusted to create a spherical surface. In the same way, CPU designers no longer make “one big honking processor,” says Agarwal, but lots of little processing elements called tiles or cores. This engineering movement, which MIT helped spark in the 1990s, has brought about multicore processors on chips, which overcome not just the number-crunching limitations of single processors, but their power drain as well.

Agarwal uses the example of eating ice cream: You really enjoy the first few spoonfuls, but by the 30th or 40th taste, “you’re tapped out.” By illustrating the marginal value of eating one more spoonful, Agarwal tries to get at the idea that once you’ve got a big processor, “making it bigger doesn’t give you much return.” In fact, as he shows with some math and graphs, having two or more processors works much better, including burning less power. He applies Moore’s law and predicts that beyond the four or more cores on chips we now have (he’s already developed a 64-core chip), we’ll be seeing 1000 tiles per chip in the next five years or so -- assuming we can overcome three big “P” challenges. There’s the performance hurdle of getting all those multicore chips to talk to each other and to the outside world without the gridlock found on a busy city street; power efficiency, which will require rethinking CPU architecture; and a very big programming obstacle, which may involve deploying an optical broadcast medium. Crack these, and “multicore could replace all hardware in the future,” claims Agarwal. ]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/670 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/670 Just as digital technology has expanded the means of producing media, so has it increased the geographic range new media may travel. Locally generated content can zip around the world in a heartbeat. But, says moderator Henry Jenkins, “as a society we’re in a contradictory state in terms of having greater access to global content than ever before, but not having developed a conceptual framework to think about it very well.” These panelists attest to an unsettled time for global media.

At a recent Bombay conference celebrating the globalization of Indian film, Aswin Punathambekar saw international heavy-hitters, including Warner, Fox Searchlight, and Disney, all attempting to shape the future of the industry. Part of Indian film is still defined by the families that started the industry in the 1930s, but the last decade or so has seen dramatic changes, including attempts at fusing with Hollywood, and perhaps more dramatic, the explosion of new distribution channels through media piracy and imitation. Bollywood now exists outside of Bombay, says Punathambekar, in Karachi, Dubai, Beirut and Nigeria. The “culture of the copy” has come to define production and circulation of film and TV programs in these outlying hubs.

Two billion people watch Latin America’s telenovelas, long serial dramas featuring outsize villains and heroes. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru provides a tour through a global business that produces 12 thousand hours every year. Different regions feature different flavors. While Mexican telenovelas are “moralistic and melodramatic,” Venezuela’s programs appear suffocated by the censorship of the Chavez regime. Multinational broadcasters compete to distribute their products (distinguishable by differently accented Spanish) all over the world. They also fail to prevent bloggers and YouTube aficionados from placing episodes on the Internet. She laments the missed opportunity of telenovelas to teach and present the world in constructive ways.

Instead of movie theaters, Malawi features “video shows,” where men only watch pirated films on DVD, says Jonathan Gray. This impoverished nation produces neither original films nor TV programs, but people flock to see video copies of 20-year-old American action movies. Village music sellers neglect native musicians to hawk Dolly Parton CDs (she’s “as big as it gets,” says Gray). Country music is huge in Malawi due to American missionaries who passed through in the ‘70s. Gray believes it’s worth studying how media circulates not just spatially, but temporally, throughout the world.

Filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako acknowledges the appetite in Africa for western media. “It is a sad situation for my country, and in a larger way for the continent, because if images are a mirror, imagine you go every night to your home bathroom, and see somebody else in front of you.” He mourns the overwhelming “reculturization” of his countrymen via telenovelas and Bollywood, which prevent an actual appreciation of other cultures, and also obstruct an interest in authentic African life, including his own films. Sissako works out of France, and when he tries getting his native Mauritanian television to show one of his films, “they ask me to pay for it.” ]]> Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/669 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/669 Sometime around 100 million years ago, when the continents of Africa and South America were still in touch, a female primate -- one of our ancestors -- was born with the capacity to see in vivid color. Jeremy Nathans describes the fortuitous genetic event that gave rise to this evolutionary leap, and links an ancient biological timeline to his very current research in human color vision.

Nathan’s talk, spanning eons and disciplines, starts with Isaac Newton’s astonishing 17th century experiments into the physics of colored light, and his prescient guess that the human brain could somehow translate colors the way it interpreted sound vibrations. The physiology behind vision didn’t coalesce until the 19th century, when a picture emerged of photoreceptor cells, with rods for night vision and cones for color. 20th century science finally cracked the photochemical mechanism behind light sensing.

In the 1980s, Nathans became interested in “making a dent in the area of identifying (genetic) sequences of the visual pigments.” He describes how he isolated the DNA behind the light sensors responsible for human color vision -- the short(S), medium (M) and long (L) wavelength receptors. He also discovered a diversity of genetic variations in normal, trichromatic vision. Indeed, he says the sequences lend themselves to all sorts of “mischief,” which can result in what’s commonly described as color blindness. When genes for the M or L pigments are not expressed, humans lose various degrees of color discrimination. When Nathans shows a picture of fruit from the perspectives of those with normal and abnormal color vision, it’s clear how “trichromats” enjoy an advantage in detecting ripe foods, or just enjoying scenery.

From his genetic research, Nathans became interested in how some mammals made the leap from dichromatic to trichromatic vision. Simple creatures such as honey bees and tropical fish are blessed with better color vision than humans, but among mammals, only a subset of primates have moved to trichromatic vision. Lower mammals lack one of the three dimensions for color vision. Nathans conjectured a “happy accident” on the X chromosome in primates likely resulted in the genes for the additional dimension. In a groundbreaking experiment to “recreate in a mouse the first step in the evolution of trichromatic color vision,” Nathans knocked into the mouse genome a human L pigment gene in place of its M pigment gene, resulting in an animal with the capacity for distinguishing colors a normal mouse could not. “This argues,” concludes Nathans, “that acquisition of a new dimension of color vision is not so difficult after all.” ]]> Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/668 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/668 William Gerstenmaier knows the U.S. space program inside out -- both literally and figuratively. As a 30-plus year veteran of NASA, Gerstenmaier has managed the operational dimensions of the space shuttle, international space station, and other space flight missions. For this talk, he dissects a problem that recently grounded the shuttle, coming at it from the perspective of both an engineer, and a top-level manager with responsibility to the highest levels of government.

Gerstenmaier presents his case “as it unfolded,” for a behind-the-scenes view of how NASA keeps its aging shuttles aloft. His account begins in 2008, after a shuttle flight revealed something wrong with flow control valves essential to the shuttle’s hydrogen system. These valves are connected in a closed loop to the main engines, via a 170-foot length of pipe, through all manner of twists and turns, and frequently subjected to very high pressures. Gerstenmaier describes the series of tests his engineering teams performed, over long days, weekends and holidays, to determine what precisely had gone wrong, and the risks posed by potentially faulty equipment.

NASA engineers ruled out wiring problems, but discovered during an “x-ray of the plumbing” a chunk missing from one of the valves. They examined the problem from a structural dynamics standpoint: could the “flow through the plumbing” have made the valves vibrate violently? The same valves had been in use since 1981, but perhaps a “failure associated with an extremely resonant condition that could occur periodically” was responsible.

Gerstenmaier’s team shot particles through a simulated piping system and then used a scanning electron microscope to detect valve damage. They also analyzed historical failure data, which suggested that valve cracks might be a “high cycle fatigue problem,” and could therefore possibly occur during any flight. Gerstenmaier felt bound to “ground the fleet,” until engineers figured out a way of screening for damage in the valves pre flight.

A flash of unorthodox thinking led engineers (unbeknownst to Gerstenmaier) to buy a common bolt tester, which permitted them to get a comprehensive picture of the valves in working shuttles without removing or damaging them. After running numbers around flight risk, and many discussions with his engineers, Gerstenmaier felt they’d arrived at a rationale to resume flying.

Says Gerstenmaier, “I can tell you, I wasn’t looking out the window in Florida. At the shuttle launch, I was looking at data of the flow control valves and watching the pressures … I knew what I needed to look at in terms of the data. An engineer’s tendency comes through.” ]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video Climate change poses perhaps the premiere threat to coming generations, says Martin Madaus, but to avoid its worst impacts, we must confront the issue now. To that end, Madaus exhorts business leaders to focus immediately on building environmental sustainability into their operations, as he has begun to do at Millipore.

The challenge is figuring out how to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at safe levels while expanding economies worldwide. In practice, reconciling these objectives involves squeezing more productivity out of each ton of carbon by a factor of 10. “The good news,” says Madaus, is that “this is actually doable.” Reaching this level of “carbon productivity” entails major public/private spending, but, says Madaus, “This is certainly a good investment, particularly when you consider the mitigation cost of climate catastrophe, which would be unbelievably expensive for all of us.”

While government must play a role in establishing regulations and incentives -- especially by imposing an unpopular but essential higher carbon tax -- industries of all kinds must integrate sustainability as a business practice. Madaus offers Millipore as an example of how “being at the cutting edge of environmentalism is a good business idea.” His company has focused on changes in products and packaging, and reducing waste in energy, water and waste.

In its biotech tool research and production facilities, Millipore figured out how to upgrade boilers, generators, lighting systems, compressed air piping, and use wind energy to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 15% since 2006. “The amazing part of this, it was so doable, because there was so much inefficiency and waste of energy.” Millipore’s return on new infrastructure investment came in less than two years.

Millipore also developed compostable bio-plastic lab devices, recycling programs for customers, and paradoxically, a disposable product (replacing a large, stainless steel vessel), which ends up saving energy and water throughout its lifecycle. Beyond innovations in product lines and operational efficiency, Madaus says he wants “to make an impact on people’s lives so their habits change.” Millipore offers incentives for employee to use hybrid vehicles and to make their homes energy efficient, and encourages staff to come forward with ideas for sustainable living. “I wish we could make energy saving and eco-efficiency really cool and interesting; today it’s still viewed as a tool, a behavior change.”

These small steps are just the start, and Madaus sees a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases as entirely feasible -- and not just at Millipore. “If anyone tells you it can’t be done because they’re growing their company, they’re full of it.” ]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/667 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/667 “Just a sleep-deprived activist and organizer.” That’s how environmentalist Bill McKibben describes his current incarnation, with writing career in abeyance while he proselytizes about the danger of climate change. The plight he first wrote about as hypothesis in 1989 has evolved into “deeply rooted consensus.” By 1995, world climatologists agreed: “Human beings are heating up the planet.”

After the inflection point of the Industrial Revolution, McKibben reckons, “no surprise --stuff starts to happen!” That stuff is escalating atmospheric carbon. Fast forward to summer 2007, when “Arctic sea ice melted at an alarming pace.” Other deleterious effects he cites include permafrost reduction; growing release of greenhouse gas methane; paradoxical increase in both drought and deluge; rising sea level; wildfires and deforestation; agricultural jeopardy. These phenomena conspire in feedback loops to pose accelerating risks to civilization.

McKibben credits NASA climatologist Jim Hansen with deriving “the most important number in the world” – the tolerable carbon level allowing survival of life on earth, now recognized as 350 parts-per-million maximum. Trouble is, we’re already past that sustainability point, owing to rampant fossil fuel combustion. We face “not a problem for your grandchildren to solve…it’s a problem for your parents to have solved.”

Upon return to Vermont from a revelatory 2006 journey to Bangladesh, McKibben’s mission became activism in service to global warming awareness. He gathered 1,000 people on a five-day pilgrimage to spread the word. At the sight of this mass of humanity in a rural state, he says “cows were running in terror.” So began a populist movement demanding an 80% decrease in carbon emissions by 2050.

McKibben saw the way ahead as harnessing the Internet’s multiplicative power. In 2007, with the help of six students and email’s exponential impact, 1,400 simultaneous demonstrations took place countrywide. “The thing just went viral,” McKibben exclaims, “…the biggest day of grass-roots environmental activism since the first Earth Day in 1970.” Social networking and cell phones proved most effective tools for mobilization.

Organizers next turned their aims to the upcoming Copenhagen conference to form a treaty succeeding the Kyoto Protocol. The campaign is aptly titled 350.org. McKibben endorses the virtue of a simple number as a rallying point because “Arabic numerals are one of the very few things that translate easily around the world,” avoiding cross-cultural semantic mishaps.

From Martin Luther King, Jr., McKibben absorbed principles of righteous activism. The good fight must be “creative…determined…joyful.” In closing, McKibben cautions “nature does not grade on a curve.” Global warming “is the morally urgent question of our moment.” ]]> Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/665 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/665 In 1986, Hyundai’s first export to the U.S, the $4995 Excel, developed embarrassing quality problems, and the company found itself grist for late night talk shows. But John Krafcik recounts with pride Hyundai’s turnaround, from laughingstock of the American auto market back in the 1980s, to seventh best-selling brand in the U.S., and fifth largest car maker in the world.

By 1998, Hyundai’s name was so tainted in the U.S. that its market share fell to .4%, and the company was on the verge of pulling out altogether. But instead, says Krafcik, Hyundai determined to redeem itself, and win back car buyers with a focus on quality design and manufacturing, and with “America’s best warranty.” The 10 year, 100 thousand mile power train guarantee the company put in place, says Krafcik, was “an incredible clarifier for the engineering team,” forcing them to design systems for “infinite life.” Hyundai’s “top down, hierarchical management approach” proved critical, too. Chairman Chung Mong Koo combines “Bill Gates, Barack Obama and the Pope,” and “when he says we must do something, the company aligns well around that goal.” In 2001, Chung declared that Hyundai needed to beat Toyota’s quality standards in five years.

Unlike BMW’s approach of challenging the car owner, says Krafcik, the more “humble” Hyundai engineers focused on ergonomic engineering. An “obsessive customer focus” meant getting cars at early stages in the hands of real drivers, and using feedback to improve designs. Indeed, unlike Toyota, which imposes an engineering freeze at a certain point in development, Hyundai resolved to adapt to suggestions even late in the car development game: “If there’s an imperative for a late quality change, the system is adaptable to that change.” Also, Hyundai chose to design and build cars where it sells them. The result speaks for itself, say Krafcik: Hyundai’s achieved strong, consistent quality performance, rivaling the industry leaders globally.

Current challenges for the company involve developing a proprietary hybrid solution (with a novel lithium polymer battery) to achieve 35 mpg by 2015; and confronting “residual brand issues.” The economic crisis, which has reduced the world’s appetite for cars, could prove advantageous for “agile” Hyundai, believes Krafcik, which has been positioning itself prominently in the downturn, by, for instance, saturating the Super Bowl and Academy Awards with ads. Huge recent gains in “brand perception” have “Hyundai on a roll”, and Krafcik expects that the company’s persistence and passion will pay off, despite the grim times. ]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/663 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/663 In a panel that at times resembles a late-night ramble and conversation, three film music professionals discuss changes in their industry, with some no-holds-barred dishing and kvetching.

Martin Marks sets the scene historically, starting with the revolutionary introduction of sound to film. He plays a clip from the original 1933 film King Kong, which he describes as both a technological and aesthetic landmark of soundtrack production. Paul Chihara continues the story, explaining that the score’s creator, Max Steiner, was part of the first wave of film composers, classically trained musicians, fleeing Hitler’s Germany. Steiner drew on the music he knew best, the kind performed by the Vienna Staatsoper, for his King Kong score, so we get a movie that’s “wall to wall music, filled with leitmotifs,” played by a giant orchestra.

Cut to 2005, and the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong. In what he describes as “an electro-acoustic seminar on how digitally sound is enhanced,” Chihara plays several clips of the same scene that demonstrate the evolutionary leap in soundtrack scoring since 1933. The process involves the demo track, a score with digital sampling and no acoustic instruments intended to help the filmmaker imagine how music will work with the film; next an acoustic score; and the final dub version, where acoustic and digital music sources combine, and the rest of the sound elements are added in post production (dialogue and sound effects).

The new scoring process can prove dangerous to composers, as Dan Carlin reveals. “We have a term called ‘demo love,’ describing how the director gets attached to the very first track offered by the composer.” This is a digitally sampled score often drawn from other composers’ work. The editor and director become accustomed to it, and test audiences watch films with demo tracks. “So the composer comes in with a new approach, and often gets fired at this point.” This has led to composers fearful of originality. Carlin says starting in the ‘90s, generic romantic and action scores began to emerge: “Everything starts to sound alike.” He also describes how composer Georges Delerue went to see Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, and heard one of his own themes, which had started as a temporary music cue but then was essentially plagiarized. This led to a very lucrative law suit. Marks notes that “one of America’s film music geniuses,” Elmer Bernstein, essentially dropped out of the business because of the insistence on demo tracks over original music.

Panelists also bemoan the demise of orchestral recording sessions at production studios, as digital audio tools put the composer’s work in the hands of directors and editors, who play with increasingly authentic sounding software-based instruments. Companies are buying up the rights to the sounds of famous symphony orchestras, down to the staccato and legato notes of strings and horns in different keys and pitches. The craft involved in composing music, then conducting an orchestra through a movie scene, has become obsolete. Chihara concludes sadly, “It’s an unnecessary art.” ]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/664 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/664 A West Point start, army career, and a disciplined approach to distilling key life experiences has guided Robert McDonald through his 20 years at Procter & Gamble. McDonald recommends a deliberate system of self-examination that results in an articulation of beliefs, which he sees as essential to strong leadership.

McDonald describes an ongoing process of “getting in touch with my culture, experiences, education, family” to discover his values, which he writes down, and revises over time. He believes that “people in an organization like to work for a leader who’s predictable,” and whose expectations they understand. Some of McDonald’s key beliefs, drawn from such early experiences as the Boy Scouts, and the military academy, continue to hold true to this day. He feels that “leading a life driven by purpose leads to a more meaningful and rewarding life than meandering without direction.” This has meshed nicely, he says, with P&G’s statement of purpose: to improve the lives of the world’s consumers. Says McDonald, “I think my purpose in life is to help other people.”

Some other key beliefs: “Everybody wants to succeed, and success is contagious.” Nobody wants to fail, and a good leader puts people in the right jobs, doing work they are good at. This also means that leaders “take responsibility for things even when they’re beyond our control,” when plans go awry or collapse. McDonald also believes that “organizations have to renew themselves,” which means leaders must provide development opportunities, and recognize that success comes not just from being strong but being adaptable, prepared for change. The final belief he offers is that a true test of a leader’s character “isn’t what happens in an organization when you’re there, but when you’re not there.” Good leaders build sufficient capability around them, so the organization “can withstand your leaving.” Charismatic is fine, but “we don’t like heroic leaders.”

For those searching for purpose, McDonald recommends this practical written exercise: list organizations to which you belong, and their dominant values; note lessons learned from your family, memorable life and educational experiences; then turn this into a set of beliefs. ]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/662 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/662 The Obama campaign owes its victory not to a single charismatic candidate, but to the efforts of a disciplined and motivated organization whose roots go back to landmark movements of the 1960s. Marshall Ganz, who cut his teeth on civil rights work and with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, describes how the principles and practices he learned around organizing and leadership played out in the most recent presidential election.

For Ganz, our time represents the end of “40 years of wandering in the desert,” the end of “the politics of disappointment.” We’ve arrived at an extraordinary moment of rapid change -- a time of both possibility and uncertainty -- with commensurate challenges to political leaders. But Ganz’s take, after years with progressive movements, is that leadership involves “taking responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.” Leaders recruit, motivate and develop others, constructing a community around common interests, and building capacity from within the community. And unlike businesses, which tend to rely on rigid hierarchies, and systems and procedures, effective volunteer-based organizations must engage and enable lots of people to become innovators, adaptive in the face of uncertainty.

This kind of “civic capital” is precisely what the Obama campaign cultivated and invested in, says Ganz. Thousands of people acquired the skills and practiced “the arts of leadership necessary to self govern in democracy.” Some unique conditions made this campaign so successful, including Obama’s story of hope, which drew on a persuasive personal narrative. There was also the campaign’s strategy of developing grassroots capacity to win caucuses and close primaries; its use of the Internet to attract an army of small-scale, repeat contributors; and its capacity for “continual learning” about what was and was not working.

In the summer of 2007, Ganz served as counselor in LA’s “Camp Obama,” teaching key state organizers to share personal narratives and create compelling politics around human experience and emotion, rather than around issues. He led workshops on motivating from “a place of hopefulness,” rather than of fear, and on how to build from common ground to shared political values and commitments. Obama staffers and volunteers learned how to create mutually reliant leadership teams that could act independent of the campaign HQ; and how to amass and utilize voter information both to get out the vote, and to tap additional volunteers. A “cascade of training and leadership development” led to a massive field organization that built upon itself, where volunteers continually joined and moved up the ranks, and everyone felt “they owned a piece of it.” ]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/661 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/661 The same institutional tenets guiding innovative management during good times needn’t waver during a downturn, even the present one, says Emmanuel Maceda. After two decades at Bain, one of the world’s premiere management consulting businesses, Maceda feels confident in his company’s practices and principles, which have guided both Bain and its clients through earlier economic booms and busts.

Bain constructs innovative leadership around three pillars: customers (clients), people and products, Maceda says. His company seeks a winning edge by establishing warm and lasting client relationships. At Bain, this means even top executives commit to working directly with clients, and assigning teams to the “client interface.” Clients are solicited for feedback through surveys and interviews, and come back to Bain for repeat business, finding satisfaction in its “collaborative culture,” says Maceda.

Bain’s organization has evolved around unique recruits, tapped from just seven elite business schools (including MIT Sloan). New staff are carefully trained and begin team building, which they continue throughout their careers, at all levels of the company. This costs Bain a great deal, but it’s necessary, says Maceda. The firm encourages activities that build “esprit de corps,” and touts a compensation model tied to the profitability of the firm. Bain also rewards the development of client products, whether in strategy, organization, M&A, which can be tested elsewhere then scaled up to produce new revenue.

This type of innovative leadership, says Maceda, could “apply broadly to most service-based organizations who want to make people the heart of a sustainable, competitive advantage, and to translate better products that meet clients needs better.” Such an organizational model holds true even or especially during times of crisis. “If you believe you have a strong competitive advantage, usually during times of crisis you can harness that and win.” Clients’ needs change “a bit” under economic duress. They may require help figuring out new strategies (such as cost reduction vs. aggressive growth), and seek new products in areas like cash management, and “quick hit revenue tools.”

Maceda points out significantly that in recent economic downswings Bain kept hiring, and its leadership took lower dividends, as the firm sought to retain key client and supplier partnerships. It’s not easy, but try to “nurture those relationships, even if you have to cut back in other places,” counsels Maceda. He concludes, “The fundamentals of being innovative leaders around client, people and products don’t change in a crisis.” ]]> Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/660 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/660 Bill Viola dims the lights in MIT’s Room 10-250, and begins to talk of life, death and all that lies between, leaving the realm of classroom and entering a place of potential enlightenment. Weaving together his video art, personal anecdotes, poetry and other writings from religious traditions spanning the globe and the ages, Viola illuminates his own spiritual journey and search for meaning. With a light touch, he manages to tap into reservoirs of deep feeling.

Viola imparts the vital interplay between his life experience, and the evolution of his vision. After his mother’s death, for instance, he ‘recovered’ her after finding a bowl she’d given him years earlier. Objects outlive us, Viola realized, and contain their own “spark of life.” This is true of technologically enabled things including Viola’s own video art. He admits that this medium makes him nervous. One of the world’s most dangerous weapons is the camera, whose “narrow focus, which is its strength, allows me to see inside a soul.” It can also “intentionally obscure an entire class or race.” Technology may be used to enrich or to harm, but its goal must be knowledge.

Viola recalls Buddha, who told his followers to treat his teachings like a raft, which should just be used “to get to the other side. From that point on, only an idiot would carry a boat around.” This is a good time for Buddhist ideas, suggests Viola. The world “seems like it’s deconstructing before our eyes.” Yet Viola says he’s “excited about this age. People who’ve been making money, doing stuff, must suddenly start living like artists.” He tells students they should be “very happy graduating into this emptiness,” because collapse brings opportunities for regeneration.

Viola recounts various other experiences and insights: a visit to an exhibit of Bodhisattva sculptures, which he regarded merely as ancient art, until an old lady adorned them with scarves, revering them as sacred objects; a Flemish painting of Mary that left him weeping, and made him realize that he “was using art, mourning his mother who was leaving this world.”

Only after years of training, says Viola, “could I see how my personal and professional life was not at odds, that it holds the whole edifice of the self up.” One profound expression of that interdependence is played in this talk: his 1992 Nantes Triptych, whose three ‘panels’ consist of videos of the live birth of a baby, the last moments of Viola’s mother’s life, and a clothed man drifting in an underwater pool “in currents between the poles of life.” ]]> Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/659 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/659 There will be a time “beyond crisis,” asserts Robert C. Merton, who delves into the dense science of derivatives -- a field he has fundamentally shaped -- to explain how the vast global economic collapse has come about, and how financial innovations at the heart of the collapse could also be tools for reconstruction.

Merton uses deceptively simple graphs to show how risk propagated rapidly across financial networks, bringing down financial institutions. While he admits the crisis “is very big and complicated,” Merton boils a piece of it down to the use of put options, a derivative contract that’s been around since the 17th century. This asset-value insurance contract, a guarantee of debt, is the basis for the credit default swaps widely adopted by financial giants in the last few years -- now widely regarded as a primary cause of the meltdown. It turns out, says Merton, that the put “makes risky debt very complicated, and treacherous…”

In these puts, if the value of assets goes down, the guarantee value goes up, so the value of the written insurance is worth more. The value of this guarantee is very sensitive to the movement of the underlying asset. When dealing with puts on the local level, this movement can be tracked and managed more easily. But when financial institutions manipulate bundles of assets (for instance, mortgage-backed securities), the increase in risk proves non-linear. Add some volatility, like the jolts posed by widespread drops in housing prices, and the difference between the decline in asset value and the value of the guarantee becomes enormous -- leading to mountains of debt and felling behemoths like AIG (insurer to lenders).

Yet, Merton counsels not to blame the current crisis on put options, or too much complexity, but rather on incomplete understanding of the models of risk involved. It’s not “bad and incompetent people” who have brought this about (although he admits there are plenty of those) but “a structural issue between financial innovation and crisis.” We’ve essentially built a high speed train for which there’s not yet an appropriate track. We’ve created instruments for manipulating financial risk without a thorough understanding of the underlying engineering.

Derivatives are not going away, says Merton. We need regulators who understand these instruments, and perhaps a sovereign wealth fund intended to “maximize the expected return for risk for people of the U.S.” Merton concludes with “something positive” -- a model of how to “weaken the tradeoff between pursuing comparative advantage vs. efficient risk,” applied to the nation of Taiwan. ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video ]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/658 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/658 Rafael Bras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who pioneered the field of hydrologic science, is MIT's James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award winner for 2008-2009. If he doesn’t have the whole world in his hands, Rafael Bras certainly grasps more pieces of the gigantic puzzle than most of us. Often credited with launching the science of hydrology -- the study of water’s crucial role in Earth systems -- Bras has developed passions for pretty much the rest of the Earth sciences as well. In this fond, valedictory lecture to MIT (he’s recently taken the post of Dean of Engineering at UC Irvine), Bras describes some of the research problems that have long fascinated him.

Bras enjoys wrapping his mind around big things, such as the size of the world’s oceans, whose numbers are in the billions of cubic kilometers. What interests Bras even more are the ways huge amounts of water cycle from the atmosphere as rain, into the soil, as runoff to the sea, and back again. He says “a lot of what we depend on is the result of differences between large numbers. It is those differences between very large numbers that makes it so uncertain, variable and so sensitive to our intervention or changes.”

The physics behind the various water cycles involves vast and continuous transfers of energy: rain changes soil moisture, which changes the amount of radiation the earth reflects, which affects evaporation, which changes the convection potential energy, which impacts cloudiness, which leads again to rain. It’s a “very nonlinear, very interacting cycle,” says Bras, which is “elegant and quite pretty.” Bras helped lay out the models for these cycles. His studies describe how nature seems to prefer extremes like flood and drought, and how in river basins all over the world, nature favors fractal organization and minimal energy expenditure.

Other observation and modeling projects may have consequences for the future of the planet: A nine-year study of an Amazon region that sampled cloud cover from a satellite every three hours demonstrated that deforested regions produce shallow clouds less likely to produce rain, while deeply forested regions generate deep clouds. He has been captivated for the last 10 years by “the intertwined dance between vegetation, landscape hydrology and radiation,” how soil moisture accommodates certain kinds of plants, which then change the properties of soil, which changes the drainage capability of water, which over time alters entire landscapes. Concludes Bras, “This beautiful trip through hydrology has been made exciting by all these things I did not know, which came through the exercise of research, trying things and finding things. It is all a result of chance and necessity; things adjust themselves.” ]]>