Washington Post contributor Anna Leahy spotlights Prof. Sasha Costanza-Chock’s book, “Design Justice.” Leahy notes that in the book, Costanza-Chock, “encourages a bolder approach that calls for the world to be redesigned based on an expansive view of people’s bodies and cognitive abilities.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Sherry Turkle examines how the Covid-19 pandemic could offer an opportunity for positive change. “When the government no longer plays by the rules, people want more than a return to order,” writes Turkle. “We are offered the chance of something genuinely new coming out of the crucible of our current disorder.”
Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with Richard Webb at New Scientist about shifting his focus from cosmology to “intelligence, both human and artificial.” “It was very natural for me to gravitate to the biggest unsolved mystery that’s sort of coming within range,” says Tegmark. “We are able to see things with telescopes that our ancestors could never see, and the same thing is happening now with the mind.”
Forbes contributor Jason Brett writes that Prof. Ron Rivest testified before Congress on the feasibility of Blockchain voting technology.
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Harvey Lodish emphasizes the importance of foreign workers and immigrants to the U.S. economy. “Without students and workers from outside the U.S., it’s difficult to see how the current successes of U.S. scientific research and innovation could continue,” writes Lodish.
Boston Magazine reporter Alyssa Vaughn spotlights Prof. Azra Aksamija’s design proposal for a piece of public art in Cambridge that would honor the passage of the 19th Amendment. Aksamija’s project “takes the form of a three dimensional palimpsest,” writes Vaughn, “that is visible through an arrangement of concrete elements. These elements are inscribed with names and quotes from notable activists.”
Dean Hashim Sarkis speaks with Washington Post reporter Philip Kennicott about his new book, “The World as an Architectural Project” and the role of architecture in a post-pandemic world. “As architects, we are condemned to optimism,” says Sarkis. “Our field is necessarily about proposing and imaging new things, what the world could be through making a part of it better.”
Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee, an architect and urban planner who served as the chief of planning and design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has died at age 88, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “At MIT, Mr. Lee was a mentor to scores of architects, teaching them to look beyond the creativity that went into designing buildings."
NPR’s Scott Simon remembers former MIT Professor Michael Hawley. Simon notes that Hawley’s “Things That Think and Toys of Tomorrow projects prophesied so much of the ways in which our world would become digitally connected.”
Writing for the New York Times, Prof. Yasheng Huang argues that Chinese policies favoring the state sector over the private sector have played a bigger role in the country’s economic slowdown than the current trade war. “That the Chinese economy is slowing down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least not in itself,” says Huang. “But a slowdown is a problem if it’s the result of poor policy.”
A new book co-authored by Prof. Daron Acemoglu examines how countries become “prosperous, stable, well-governed, law-abiding, democratic and free societies.” “Their simple answer is: it is hard,” writes Martin Wolf for the Financial Times. “Their deep answer is: ‘Liberty originates from a delicate balance of power between state and society.’”
ELLE reporter Molly Langmuir spotlights the work of Prof. Neri Oxman, who is known for “producing radically interdisciplinary work.” Oxman has produced everything from “a silk pavilion—a suspended dome of silk fibers spun by a robotic arm, completed by 6,500 live silkworms—to a design concept for a wearable digestive system incorporating photosynthetic bacteria that convert solar energy into sugar.”
Prof. Emeritus Daniel Freedman has been awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his work devising the theory of supergravity, reports Philip Ball for Scientific American. Freedman notes that the award, “takes the cake—it is the cap of my long career.”
Boston Globe reporter Martin Finucane reports that Prof. Emeritus Daniel Freedman has been named a recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his discovery of supergravity. “The discovery of supergravity was the beginning of including quantum variables in describing the dynamics of spacetime,” explains Edward Witten, chairman of the selection committee.
In a column for Wired, Media Lab Director Joi Ito argues that we must find a better way to measure the impact of charitable giving. After working with philanthropists and investors for years, Ito admits that, “all of us have struggled to measure the effectiveness of grants and investments that seek to benefit the community, the environment, and so forth.”