Böcker i The MIT Press-serien

The daughter of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan tries to make sense of her relationship with her father."When I was born, my father was already no longer there.” Sibylle Lacan's memoir of her father, the influential French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, is told through fragmentary, elliptical episodes, and describes a figure who had defined himself to her as much by his absence as by his presence. Sibylle was the second daughter and unhappy last child of Lacan's first marriage: the fruit of despair ("some will say of desire, but I do not believe them”). Lacan abandoned his old family for a new one: a new partner, Sylvia Bataille (the wife of Georges Bataille), and another daughter, born a few months after Sibylle. For years, this daughter, Judith, was the only publicly recognized child of Lacan—even if, due to French law, she lacked his name. In one sense, then, A Father presents the voice of one who, while bearing his name, had been erased. If Jacques Lacan had described the word as a "presence made of absence,” Sibylle Lacan here turns to the language of the memoir as a means of piecing together the presence of a man who had entered her life in absence, and in his passing, finished in it. In its interplay of absence, naming, and the despair engendered by both, A Father ultimately poses an essential question: what is a father? This first-person account offers both a riposte and a complement to the concept (and the name) of the father as Lacan had defined him in his work, and raises difficult issues about the influence biography can have on theory—and vice versa—and the sometimes yawning divide that can open up between theory and the lives we lead.

A graduate-level, mathematically rigorous introduction to strategic behavior in a networked world.This introductory graduate-level text uses tools from game theory and graph theory to examine the role of network structures and network effects in economic and information markets. The goal is for students to develop an intuitive and mathematically rigorous understanding of how strategic agents interact in a connected world. The text synthesizes some of the central results in the field while also simplifying their treatment to make them more accessible to nonexperts. Thus, students at the introductory level will gain an understanding of key ideas in the field that are usually only taught at the advanced graduate level.The book introduces basic concepts from game theory and graph theory as well as some fundamental algorithms for exploring graphs. These tools are then applied to analyze strategic interactions over social networks, to explore different types of markets and mechanisms for networks, and to study the role of beliefs and higher-level beliefs (beliefs about beliefs). Specific topics discussed include coordination and contagion on social networks, traffic networks, matchings and matching markets, exchange networks, auctions, voting, web search, models of belief and knowledge, and how beliefs affect auctions and markets. An appendix offers a "Primer on Probability.” Mathematically rigorous, the text assumes a level of mathematical maturity (comfort with definitions and proofs) in the reader.

Writings, including articles, letters, and unpublished work, by one of the twentieth century's most influential figures in mathematical logic and philosophy.Alonzo Church's long and distinguished career in mathematics and philosophy can be traced through his influential and wide-ranging writings. Church published his first article as an undergraduate at Princeton in 1924 and his last shortly before his death in 1995. This volume collects all of his published articles, many of his reviews, his monograph The Calculi of Lambda-Conversion, the introduction to his important and authoritative textbook Introduction to Mathematical Logic, a substantial amount of previously unpublished work (including chapters for the unfinished second volume of Introduction to Mathematical Logic), and a selection of letters to such correspondents as Rudolf Carnap and W. V. O. Quine. With the exception of the reviews, letters, and unpublished work, these appear in chronological order, for the most part in the format in which they were originally published. Church's work in calculability, especially the monograph on the lambda-calculus, helped lay the foundation for theoretical computer science; it attracted the interest of Alan Turing, who later completed his PhD under Church's supervision. (Church coined the term "Turing machine” in a review.) Church's influential textbook, still in print, defined the field of mathematical logic for a generation of logicians. In addition, his close connection with the Association for Symbolic Logic and his many years as review editor for the Journal of Symbolic Logic are documented in the reviews included here.

Using our moral and technical imaginations to create responsible innovations: theory, method, and applications for value sensitive design.Implantable medical devices and human dignity. Private and secure access to information. Engineering projects that transform the Earth. Multigenerational information systems for international justice. How should designers, engineers, architects, policy makers, and others design such technology? Who should be involved and what values are implicated? In Value Sensitive Design, Batya Friedman and David Hendry describe how both moral and technical imagination can be brought to bear on the design of technology. With value sensitive design, under development for more than two decades, Friedman and Hendry bring together theory, methods, and applications for a design process that engages human values at every stage.After presenting the theoretical foundations of value sensitive design, which lead to a deep rethinking of technical design, Friedman and Hendry explain seventeen methods, including stakeholder analysis, value scenarios, and multilifespan timelines. Following this, experts from ten application domains report on value sensitive design practice. Finally, Friedman and Hendry explore such open questions as the need for deeper investigation of indirect stakeholders and further method development.This definitive account of the state of the art in value sensitive design is an essential resource for designers and researchers working in academia and industry, students in design and computer science, and anyone working at the intersection of technology and society.

Exploring common themes in modern art, mathematics, and science, including the concept of space, the notion of randomness, and the shape of the cosmos.This is a book about art—and a book about mathematics and physics. In Lumen Naturae (the title refers to a purely immanent, non-supernatural form of enlightenment), mathematical physicist Matilde Marcolli explores common themes in modern art and modern science—the concept of space, the notion of randomness, the shape of the cosmos, and other puzzles of the universe—while mapping convergences with the work of such artists as Paul Cezanne, Mark Rothko, Sol LeWitt, and Lee Krasner. Her account, focusing on questions she has investigated in her own scientific work, is illustrated by more than two hundred color images of artworks by modern and contemporary artists. Thus Marcolli finds in still life paintings broad and deep philosophical reflections on space and time, and connects notions of space in mathematics to works by Paul Klee, Salvador Dalí, and others. She considers the relation of entropy and art and how notions of entropy have been expressed by such artists as Hans Arp and Fernand Léger; and traces the evolution of randomness as a mode of artistic expression. She analyzes the relation between graphical illustration and scientific text, and offers her own watercolor-decorated mathematical notebooks. Throughout, she balances discussions of science with explorations of art, using one to inform the other. (She employs some formal notation, which can easily be skipped by general readers.) Marcolli is not simply explaining art to scientists and science to artists; she charts unexpected interdependencies that illuminate the universe.

A comprehensive text and reference that covers all aspects of computer music, including digital audio, synthesis techniques, signal processing, musical input devices, performance software, editing systems, algorithmic composition, MIDI, synthesizer architecture, system interconnection, and psychoacoustics. The Computer Music Tutorial is a comprehensive text and reference that covers all aspects of computer music, including digital audio, synthesis techniques, signal processing, musical input devices, performance software, editing systems, algorithmic composition, MIDI, synthesizer architecture, system interconnection, and psychoacoustics. A special effort has been made to impart an appreciation for the rich history behind current activities in the field. Profusely illustrated and exhaustively referenced and cross-referenced, The Computer Music Tutorial provides a step-by-step introduction to the entire field of computer music techniques. Written for nontechnical as well as technical readers, it uses hundreds of charts, diagrams, screen images, and photographs as well as clear explanations to present basic concepts and terms. Mathematical notation and program code examples are used only when absolutely necessary. Explanations are not tied to any specific software or hardware.The material in this book was compiled and refined over a period of several years of teaching in classes at Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Naples, IRCAM, Les Ateliers UPIC, and in seminars and workshops in North America, Europe, and Asia.

This second volume continues the study of the relationships of the ideals of design and the realities of construction in modern architecture, beginning in the late 1920s and extending to the present day.

The author's purpose is to set out as simply and vividly as possible the exact grammatical workings of an architectural language.Classical architecture is a visual "language" and like any other language has its own grammatical rules. Classical buildings as widely spaced in time as a Roman temple, an Italian Renaissance palace and a Regency house all show an awareness of these rules even if they vary them, break them or poetically contradict them. Sir Christopher Wren described them as the "Latin" of architecture and the analogy is almost exact. There is the difference, however, that whereas the learning of Latin is a slow and difficult business, the language of classical architecture is relatively simple. It is still, to a great extent, the mode of expression of our urban surroundings, since classical architecture was the common language of the western world till comparatively recent times. Anybody to whom architecture makes a strong appeal has probably already discovered something of its grammar for himself. In this book, the author's purpose is to set out as simply and vividly as possible the exact grammatical workings of this architectural language. He is less concerned with its development in Greece and Rome than with its expansion and use in the centuries since the Renaissance. He explains the vigorous discipline of "the orders" and the scope of "rustication"; the dramatic deviations of the Baroque and, in the last chapter, the relationship between the classical tradition and the "modern" architecture of today. The book is intended for anybody who cares for architecture but more specifically for students beginning a course in the history of architecture, to whom a guide to the classical rules will be an essential companion.

A comprehensive databook of technical and institutional facts about the Soviet and Russian nuclear arsenal.

A penetrating and insightful study of privacy and security in telecommunications for a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world.

A computer scientist and a performance and new media theorist define and document the emerging field of mixed reality performance.Working at the cutting edge of live performance, an emerging generation of artists is employing digital technologies to create distinctive forms of interactive, distributed, and often deeply subjective theatrical performance. The work of these artists is not only fundamentally transforming the experience of theater, it is also reshaping the nature of human interaction with computers. In this book, Steve Benford and Gabriella Giannachi offer a new theoretical framework for understanding these experiences—which they term mixed reality performances—and document a series of landmark performances and installations that mix the real and the virtual, live performance and interactivity. Benford and Giannachi draw on a number of works that have been developed at the University of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Laboratory, describing collaborations with artists (most notably the group Blast Theory) that have gradually evolved a distinctive interdisciplinary approach to combining practice with research. They offer detailed and extended accounts of these works from different perspectives, including interviews with the artists and Mixed Reality Laboratory researchers. The authors develop an overarching theory to guide the study and design of mixed reality performances based on the approach of interleaved trajectories through hybrid structures of space, time, interfaces, and roles. Combinations of canonical, participant, and historic trajectories show how such performances establish complex configurations of real and virtual, local and global, factual and fictional, and personal and social.

An integrated overview of hearing and the interplay of physical, biological, and psychological processes underlying it.Every time we listen—to speech, to music, to footsteps approaching or retreating—our auditory perception is the result of a long chain of diverse and intricate processes that unfold within the source of the sound itself, in the air, in our ears, and, most of all, in our brains. Hearing is an "everyday miracle" that, despite its staggering complexity, seems effortless. This book offers an integrated account of hearing in terms of the neural processes that take place in different parts of the auditory system.Because hearing results from the interplay of so many physical, biological, and psychological processes, the book pulls together the different aspects of hearing—including acoustics, the mathematics of signal processing, the physiology of the ear and central auditory pathways, psychoacoustics, speech, and music—into a coherent whole.

In a world where politics is conducted through images, the tools of art history can be used to challenge the privatized antidemocratic sphere of American television.

The triumphant return of a book that gave us permission to throw out the rulebook, in activities ranging from play to architecture to revolution.When this book first appeared in 1972, it was part of the spirit that would define a new architecture and design era—a new way of thinking ready to move beyond the purist doctrines and formal models of modernism. Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver's book was a manifesto for a generation that took pleasure in doing things ad hoc, using materials at hand to solve real-world problems. The implications were subversive. Turned-off citizens of the 1970s immediately adopted the book as a DIY guide. The word "adhocism” entered the vocabulary, the concept of adhocism became part of the designer's toolkit, and Adhocism became a cult classic. Now Adhocism is available again, with new texts by Jencks and Silver reflecting on the past forty years of adhocism and new illustrations demonstrating adhocism's continuing relevance.Adhocism has always been around. (Think Robinson Crusoe, making a raft and then a shelter from the wreck of his ship.) As a design principle, adhocism starts with everyday improvisations: a bottle as a candleholder, a dictionary as a doorstop, a tractor seat on wheels as a dining room chair. But it is also an undeveloped force within the way we approach almost every activity, from play to architecture to city planning to political revolution.Engagingly written, filled with pictures and examples from areas as diverse as auto mechanics and biology, Adhocism urges us to pay less attention to the rulebook and more to the real principle of how we actually do things. It declares that problems are not necessarily solved in a genius's "eureka!” moment but by trial and error, adjustment and readjustment.

An introductory textbook (requiring no previous knowledge of probability and statistics) that offers students a solid foundation in regression analysis.

A new approach for defining causality and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degrees of blame, and causal explanation.

Analysis of Latin America's economy focusing on development, covering the colonial roots of inequality, boom and bust cycles, labor markets, and fiscal and monetary policy.Latin America is richly endowed with natural resources, fertile land, and vibrant cultures. Yet the region remains much poorer than its neighbors to the north. Most Latin American countries have not achieved standards of living and stable institutions comparable to those found in developed countries, have experienced repeated boom-bust cycles, and remain heavily reliant on primary commodities. This book studies the historical roots of Latin America's contemporary economic and social development, focusing on poverty and income inequality dating back to colonial times. It addresses today's legacies of the market-friendly reforms that took hold in the 1980s and 1990s by examining successful stabilizations and homemade monetary and fiscal institutional reforms. It offers a detailed analysis of trade and financial liberalization, twenty-first century-growth, and the decline in poverty and income inequality. Finally, the book offers an overall analysis of inclusive growth policies for development—including gender issues and the informal sector—and the challenges that lie ahead for the region, with special attention to pressing demands by the vibrant and vocal middle class, youth unemployment, and indigenous populations.

How sharing the mundane details of daily life did not start with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube but with pocket diaries, photo albums, and baby books.

An introduction to the quantitative modeling of biological processes, presenting modeling approaches, methodology, practical algorithms, software tools, and examples of current research.The quantitative modeling of biological processes promises to expand biological research from a science of observation and discovery to one of rigorous prediction and quantitative analysis. The rapidly growing field of quantitative biology seeks to use biology's emerging technological and computational capabilities to model biological processes. This textbook offers an introduction to the theory, methods, and tools of quantitative biology. The book first introduces the foundations of biological modeling, focusing on some of the most widely used formalisms. It then presents essential methodology for model-guided analyses of biological data, covering such methods as network reconstruction, uncertainty quantification, and experimental design; practical algorithms and software packages for modeling biological systems; and specific examples of current quantitative biology research and related specialized methods. Most chapters offer problems, progressing from simple to complex, that test the reader's mastery of such key techniques as deterministic and stochastic simulations and data analysis. Many chapters include snippets of code that can be used to recreate analyses and generate figures related to the text. Examples are presented in the three popular computing languages: Matlab, R, and Python. A variety of online resources supplement the the text.The editors are long-time organizers of the Annual q-bio Summer School, which was founded in 2007. Through the school, the editors have helped to train more than 400 visiting students in Los Alamos, NM, Santa Fe, NM, San Diego, CA, Albuquerque, NM, and Fort Collins, CO. This book is inspired by the school's curricula, and most of the contributors have participated in the school as students, lecturers, or both.ContributorsJohn H. Abel, Roberto Bertolusso, Daniela Besozzi, Michael L. Blinov, Clive G. Bowsher, Fiona A. Chandra, Paolo Cazzaniga, Bryan C. Daniels, Bernie J. Daigle, Jr., Maciej Dobrzynski, Jonathan P. Doye, Brian Drawert, Sean Fancer, Gareth W. Fearnley, Dirk Fey, Zachary Fox, Ramon Grima, Andreas Hellander, Stefan Hellander, David Hofmann, Damian Hernandez, William S. Hlavacek, Jianjun Huang, Tomasz Jetka, Dongya Jia, Mohit Kumar Jolly, Boris N. Kholodenko, Markek Kimmel, Michal Komorowski, Ganhui Lan, Heeseob Lee, Herbert Levine, Leslie M Loew, Jason G. Lomnitz, Ard A. Louis, Grant Lythe, Carmen Molina-París, Ion I. Moraru, Andrew Mugler, Brian Munsky, Joe Natale, Ilya Nemenman, Karol Nienaltowski, Marco S. Nobile, Maria Nowicka, Sarah Olson, Alan S. Perelson, Linda R. Petzold, Sreenivasan Ponnambalam, Arya Pourzanjani, Ruy M. Ribeiro, William Raymond, William Raymond, Herbert M. Sauro, Michael A. Savageau, Abhyudai Singh, James C. Schaff, Boris M. Slepchenko, Thomas R. Sokolowski, Petr Sulc, Andrea Tangherloni, Pieter Rein ten Wolde, Philipp Thomas, Karen Tkach Tuzman, Lev S. Tsimring, Dan Vasilescu, Margaritis Voliotis, Lisa Weber

An industry insider explains why there is so much bad software—and why academia doesn't teach programmers what industry wants them to know.Why is software so prone to bugs? So vulnerable to viruses? Why are software products so often delayed, or even canceled? Is software development really hard, or are software developers just not that good at it? In The Problem with Software, Adam Barr examines the proliferation of bad software, explains what causes it, and offers some suggestions on how to improve the situation.For one thing, Barr points out, academia doesn't teach programmers what they actually need to know to do their jobs: how to work in a team to create code that works reliably and can be maintained by somebody other than the original authors. As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience. Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."

The first English translation of a classic and groundbreaking work in historical phonology.This is the first English translation of a groundbreaking 1929 work in historical phonology by the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson, considered the founder of modern structural linguistics. A revolutionary treatment of Russian and Slavic linguistics, the book introduced a new type of historical linguistics that focused on the systematic reasons behind phonological change. Rather than treating such changes as haphazard, Jakobson here presents a "teleological,” purposeful approach to language evolution. He concludes by placing his book in the context of the exciting structural developments of the era, including Einstein's theories, Cezanne's art, and Lev Berg's nomogenesis.The original Russian version of the book was lost during the 1939 German invasion of Brno, Czechoslovakia, and the only edition available until now has been the French translation by Louis Brun. Thus this first English translation offers many linguists their first opportunity to read a major early work of Jakobson. Ronald Feldstein, a leading Slavicist and phonologist in his own right, has not only translated the text from French to English, he has also worked to reconstruct something as close to the missing original as possible. Feldstein's end-of-chapter annotations provide explanatory context for particularly difficult passages.

The first textbook to present a comprehensive and detailed economic analysis of electricity markets, analyzing the tensions between microeconomics and political economy.The power industry is essential in our fight against climate change. This book is the first to examine in detail the microeconomics underlying power markets, stemming from peak-load pricing, by which prices are low when the installed generation capacity exceeds demand but can rise a hundred times higher when demand is equal to installed capacity. The outcome of peak-load pricing is often difficult to accept politically, and the book explores the tensions between microeconomics and political economy. Understanding peak-load pricing and its implications is essential for designing robust policies and making sound investment decisions. Thomas-Olivier Léautier presents the model in its simplest form, and introduces additional features as different issues are presented. The book covers all segments of electricity markets: electricity generation, under perfect and imperfect competition; retail competition and demand response; transmission pricing, transmission congestion management, and transmission constraints; and the current policy issues arising from the entry of renewables into the market and capacity mechanisms. Combining anecdotes and analysis of real situations with rigorous analytical modeling, each chapter analyzes one specific issue, first presenting findings in nontechnical terms accessible to policy practitioners and graduate students in management or public policy and then presenting a more mathematical analytical exposition for students and researchers specializing in the economics of electricity markets and for those who want to understand and apply the underlying models.

A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right.

An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.

Case studies, personal accounts, and analysis show how to recognize and combat pseudoscience in a post-truth world.In a post-truth, fake news world, we are particularly susceptible to the claims of pseudoscience. When emotions and opinions are more widely disseminated than scientific findings, and self-proclaimed experts get their expertise from Google, how can the average person distinguish real science from fake? This book examines pseudoscience from a variety of perspectives, through case studies, analysis, and personal accounts that show how to recognize pseudoscience, why it is so widely accepted, and how to advocate for real science. Contributors examine the basics of pseudoscience, including issues of cognitive bias; the costs of pseudoscience, with accounts of naturopathy and logical fallacies in the anti-vaccination movement; perceptions of scientific soundness; the mainstream presence of "integrative medicine,” hypnosis, and parapsychology; and the use of case studies and new media in science advocacy.ContributorsDavid Ball, Paul Joseph Barnett, Jeffrey Beall, Mark Benisz, Fernando Blanco, Ron Dumont, Stacy Ellenberg, Kevin M. Folta, Christopher French, Ashwin Gautam, Dennis M. Gorman, David H. Gorski, David K. Hecht, Britt Marie Hermes, Clyde F. Herreid, Jonathan Howard, Seth C. Kalichman, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, Arnold Kozak, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Emilio Lobato, Steven Lynn, Adam Marcus, Helena Matute, Ivan Oransky, Chad Orzel, Dorit Reiss, Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, Kavin Senapathy, Dean Keith Simonton, Indre Viskontas, John O. Willis, Corrine Zimmerman

A provocative and probing argument showing how human beings can for the first time in history take charge of their moral fate.Is tribalism—the political and cultural divisions between Us and Them—an inherent part of our basic moral psychology? Many scientists link tribalism and morality, arguing that the evolved "moral mind” is tribalistic. Any escape from tribalism, according to this thinking, would be partial and fragile, because it goes against the grain of our nature. In this book, Allen Buchanan offers a counterargument: the moral mind is highly flexible, capable of both tribalism and deeply inclusive moralities, depending on the social environment in which the moral mind operates.We can't be morally tribalistic by nature, Buchanan explains, because quite recently there has been a remarkable shift away from tribalism and toward inclusiveness, as growing numbers of people acknowledge that all human beings have equal moral status, and that at least some nonhumans also have moral standing. These are what Buchanan terms the Two Great Expansions of moral regard. And yet, he argues, moral progress is not inevitable but depends partly on whether we have the good fortune to develop as moral agents in a society that provides the right conditions for realizing our moral potential. But morality need not depend on luck. We can take charge of our moral fate by deliberately shaping our social environment—by engaging in scientifically informed "moral institutional design.” For the first time in human history, human beings can determine what sort of morality is predominant in their societies and what kinds of moral agents they are.