New York Times reporter Emily Weinstein writes about MIT graduate J. Kenji López-Alt’s new cookbook, “The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science.” Weinstein writes that López-Alt is “a gifted explainer, making difficult concepts easy to grasp for those of us with a lifelong lack of aptitude for the sciences.”
Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Goodwin reviews “Einstein’s Dreams,” a play adapted from Prof. Alan Lightman’s 1993 novel. “The conceit behind Lightman’s deeply imaginative source material is that it presents a journal of Einstein’s nocturnal musings as he developed his theories of general and special relativity,” writes Goodwin.
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with ABC News about the impact of constant connectivity on how people relate to one another in the digital age. “Before we had our phones, conversation was the way we satisfied our need for stimulation,” explains Turkle. Face-to-face conversation “lays the groundwork for empathy.”
Matt McFarland writes for The Washington Post about Prof. David Mindell’s new book, in which he argues that automation can take away from the enjoyment of working. “The most advanced (and difficult) technologies are not those that stand apart from people, but those that are most deeply embedded in, and responsive to, human and social networks,” Mindell explains.
Prof. Junot Diaz speaks with Carolyn Kellogg of The Los Angeles Times about reading, writing, and racism. “Being around other readers and talking about reading and talking about the love of books is very natural,” says Diaz. “I sometimes think I became a writer as a pretext of being a full-time reader.”
In an Atlantic article about how Zappos has implemented a system of self-governance, Jerry Useem speaks with Prof. Thomas Malone about how falling information costs allow for different organizational structures. “There comes a time when it’s economically feasible to bring information to all points, so in some sense, everyone can know everything,” says Malone.
Marcelo Gleiser of The Chronicle of Higher Education reviews “A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design” by Prof. Frank Wilczek, which examines the mathematical symmetry of the physical world. “The book is an ode to Nature’s beauty, as seen by a physicist’s mathematical eye: beauty equated with symmetry and symmetry with truth,” writes Gleiser.
John Farrell writes for Forbes about Prof. Frank Wilczek’s new book, “A Beautiful Question.” In his book, Wilczek argues that, “the world was created to embody beautiful ideas, and if there is a Creator, he’s an artist above all.”
A. T. Oxford of the Economist reviews “Why Information Grows” by Prof. César Hidalgo, in which he argues that economic growth is tied to the growth of information. “In his research, Mr Hidalgo’s used nifty techniques in statistical physics and network theory to shine a light on the diversity of production across countries,” Oxford explains.
Kim Yi Dionne writes for The Washington Post about Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga’s book ‘Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe’: In it, Mavhunga “paints a vivid picture of hunting in Zimbabwe from the pre-colonial period to the present as he demonstrates how innovation is driven by ordinary people.”
The Economist highlights Prof. César Hidalgo’s new book, which examines how economies grow. “His aim is nothing less than to lay out a universal theory of information—one that applies to everything, from the lifeless to the living, and to all scales, from atoms to economies.”
Professor César Hidalgo discusses his new book “Why Information Grows” with James Ball of The Guardian. “Most people think of information as messages that communicate the state of a system,” says Hidalgo. “Information actually is physical and it is not only involved in messages but is also involved in objects.”
Washington Post reporter Dominic Basulto features Professor César Hidalgo’s book, “Why Information Grows” on his recommended summer reading list for “innovation junkies.” Basulto writes that in his book Hidalgo explains that, “there’s an important correlation between information growth and economic growth, and between economic complexity and national competitiveness.”
Professor César Hidalgo writes for The Huffington Post about his new book “Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies.” Hidalgo explains his view that, “by understanding economies as computers we get much more than a predictive theory of future economic growth.”
In an article for The New York Times Magazine, Prof. Junot Díaz writes about how being attacked when he was in the seventh grade impacted him psychologically. “Before that attack, I had felt fear plenty of times — which poor immigrant kid hasn’t? — but after my beating, I became afraid. And at any age, that is a dismal place to be,” writes Díaz.