Böcker i The MIT Press-serien

An empirically supported proposal for synthesizing multiple approaches to the study of the mind in the past.

This book explores the technology of implementing musical processes such as segmentation, pattern processing, and interactive improvisation in computer music programs.

A groundbreaking framework for improving portfolio performance that goes beyond traditional analytics, offering new ways to understand investment skills, process, and behaviors.Portfolio management is a tough business. Each day, managers face the challenges of an ever-changing and unforgiving market, where strategies and processes that worked yesterday may not work today, or tomorrow. The usual advice for improving portfolio performance-refining your strategy, staying within your style, doing better research, trading more efficiently-is important, but doesn't seem to affect outcomes sufficiently. This book, by an experienced advisor to institutional money managers, goes beyond conventional thinking to offer a new analytic framework that enables investors to improve their performance confidently, deliberately, and simply, by applying the principles of behavioral finance.W. Edwards Deming observed that you can't improve what you don't measure. Active portfolio management lacks methods for measuring key inputs to management success like skills, process, and behavioral tendencies. Michael Ervolini offers a conceptually straightforward and well-tested framework that does just that, with evidence of how it helps managers enhance self-awareness and become better investors. In a series of short, accessible chapters, Ervolini investigates a range of topics from psychology and neuroscience, describing their relevance to the challenges of portfolio management. Finally, Ervolini offers seven ideas for improving. These range from maintaining an investment diary to performing rudimentary calculations that quantify basic skills; each idea, or "e;project,"e; helps managers gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and shortcomings and how to use this knowledge to improve investment performance.

The task of archiving was once entrusted only to museums, libraries, and other institutions that acted as repositories of culture in material form. But with the rise of digital networked media, a multitude of self-designated archivists -- fans, pirates, hackers -- have become practitioners of cultural preservation on the Internet. These nonprofessional archivists have democratized cultural memory, building freely accessible online archives of whatever content they consider suitable for digital preservation. In Rogue Archives, Abigail De Kosnik examines the practice of archiving in the transition from print to digital media, looking in particular at Internet fan fiction archives.De Kosnik explains that media users today regard all of mass culture as an archive, from which they can redeploy content for their own creations. Hence, "remix culture" and fan fiction are core genres of digital cultural production. De Kosnik explores, among other things, the anticanonical archiving styles of Internet preservationists; the volunteer labor of online archiving; how fan archives serve women and queer users as cultural resources; archivists' efforts to attract racially and sexually diverse content; and how digital archives adhere to the logics of performance more than the logics of print. She also considers the similarities and differences among free culture, free software, and fan communities, and uses digital humanities tools to quantify and visualize the size, user base, and rate of growth of several online fan archives.

Rationalists about the psychology of moral judgment argue that moral cognition has a rational foundation. Recent challenges to this account, based on findings in the empirical psychology of moral judgment, contend that moral thinking has no rational basis. In this book, Hanno Sauer argues that moral reasoning does play a role in moral judgment -- but not, as is commonly supposed, because conscious reasoning produces moral judgments directly. Moral reasoning figures in the acquisition, formation, maintenance, and reflective correction of moral intuitions. Sauer proposes that when we make moral judgments we draw on a stable repertoire of intuitions about what is morally acceptable, which we have acquired over the course of our moral education -- episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Moral judgments are educated and rationally amenable moral intuitions. Sauer engages extensively with the empirical evidence on the psychology of moral judgment and argues that it can be shown empirically that reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment. He offers detailed counterarguments to the anti-rationalist challenge (the claim that reason and reasoning play no significant part in morality and moral judgment) and the emotionist challenge (the argument for the emotional basis of moral judgment). Finally, he uses Joshua Greene's Dual Process model of moral cognition to test the empirical viability and normative persuasiveness of his account of educated intuitions. Sauer shows that moral judgments can be automatic, emotional, intuitive, and rational at the same time.

In this book, Michael Madary examines visual experience, drawing on both phenomenological and empirical methods of investigation. He finds that these two approaches -- careful, philosophical description of experience and the science of vision -- independently converge on the same result: Visual perception is an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. Madary first makes the case for the descriptive premise, arguing that the phenomenology of vision is best described as on ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment. He discusses visual experience as being perspectival, temporal, and indeterminate; considers the possibility of surprise when appearances do not change as we expect; and considers the content of visual anticipation. Madary then makes the case for the empirical premise, showing that there are strong empirical reasons to model vision using the general form of anticipation and fulfillment. He presents a range of evidence from perceptual psychology and neuroscience, and reinterprets evidence for the two-visual-systems hypothesis. Finally, he considers the relationship between visual perception and social cognition. An appendix discusses Husserlian phenomenology as it relates to the argument of the book.Madary argues that the fact that there is a convergence of historically distinct methodologies itself is an argument that supports his findings. With Visual Phenomenology, he creates an exchange between the humanities and the sciences that takes both methods of investigation seriously.

The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway.As the number, complexity, and scope of large engineering projects (LEPs) increase worldwide, the huge stakes may endanger the survival of corporations and threaten the stability of countries that approach these projects unprepared. According to the authors, the "e;front-end"e; engineering of institutional arrangements and strategic systems is a far greater determinant of an LEP's success than are the more tangible aspects of project engineering and management. The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway. The authors use the research results to develop an experience-based theoretical framework that will allow managers to understand and respond to the complexity and uncertainty inherent in all LEPs. In addition to managers and scholars of large-scale projects, the book will be of interest to those studying the relationship between institutions and strategy, risk management, and corporate governance in general.Contributors Bjorn Andersen, Richard Brealey, Ian Cooper, Serghei Floricel, Michel Habib, Brian Hobbs, Donald R. Lessard, Pascale Michaud, Roger Miller, Xavier Olleros

Case studies and pedagogical strategies to help science and engineering students improve their writing and speaking skills while developing professional identities.To many science and engineering students, the task of writing may seem irrelevant to their future professional careers. At MIT, however, students discover that writing about their technical work is important not only in solving real-world problems but also in developing their professional identities. MIT puts into practice the belief that "e;engineers who don't write well end up working for engineers who do write well,"e; requiring all students to take "e;communications-intensive"e; classes in which they learn from MIT faculty and writing instructors how to express their ideas in writing and in presentations. Students are challenged not only to think like professional scientists and engineers but also to communicate like them.This book offers in-depth case studies and pedagogical strategies from a range of science and engineering communication-intensive classes at MIT. It traces the progress of seventeen students from diverse backgrounds in seven classes that span five departments. Undergraduates in biology attempt to turn scientific findings into a research article; graduate students learn to define their research for scientific grant writing; undergraduates in biomedical engineering learn to use data as evidence; and students in aeronautic and astronautic engineering learn to communicate collaboratively. Each case study is introduced by a description of its theoretical and curricular context and an outline of the objectives for the students' activities. The studies describe the on-the-ground realities of working with faculty, staff, and students to achieve communication and course goals, offering lessons that can be easily applied to a wide variety of settings and institutions.

How to use data as a tool for empowerment rather than oppression.Big data can be used for good, from tracking disease to exposing human rights violations, and for bad, implementing surveillance and control. Data inevitably represents the ideologies of those who control its use; data analytics and algorithms too often exclude women, the poor, and ethnic groups. In Data Action, Sarah Williams provides a guide for working with data in more ethical and responsible ways. Williams outlines a method that emphasizes collaboration among data scientists, policy experts, data designers, and the public. The approach generates policy debates, influences civic decisions, and informs design to help ensure that the voices of people represented in the data are neither marginalized nor left unheard.

How we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork, and why we must do better.We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge--filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up--and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it. Because of sludge, Sunstein, explains, too many people don't receive benefits to which they are entitled. Sludge even prevents many people from exercising their constitutional rights--when, for example, barriers to voting in an election are too high. (A Sludge Reduction Act would be a Voting Rights Act.) Sunstein takes readers on a tour of the not-so-wonderful world of sludge, describes justifications for certain kinds of sludge, and proposes "Sludge Audits" as a way to measure the effects of sludge. On balance, Sunstein argues, sludge infringes on human dignity, making people feel that their time and even their lives don't matter. We must do better.

How politicians' digital strategies appeal to the same fantasies of digital connection, access, and participation peddled by Silicon Valley.Smartphones and other digital devices seem to give us a direct line to politicians. But is interacting with presidential tweets really a manifestation of digital democracy? In Selfie Democracy, Elizabeth Losh examines the unintended consequences of politicians' digital strategies, from the Obama campaign's pioneering construction of an online community to Trump's Twitter dominance. She finds that politicians who use digital media appeal to the same fantasies of digital connection, access, and participation peddled by Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, smartphones and social media don't enable participatory democracy so much as they incentivize citizens to perform attention-getting acts of political expression. Losh explores presidential rhetoric casting digital media as tools of democracy, describes the conflation of gender and technology that contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016, chronicles the Biden campaign's early digital stumbles in 2020, and recounts the TikTok campaign that may have spoiled a Trump rally. She shows that although Obama and Trump may seem diametrically opposed in both style and substance, they both used mobile digital media in ways that reshaped the presidency and promised a new kind of digital democracy. Obama used data and digital media to connect to citizens without intermediaries; Trump followed this strategy to its most extreme conclusion. What were the January 6 insurrectionists doing, as they livestreamed themselves and their cohorts attacking the Capitol, but practicing their own brand of selfie democracy?

The exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness experienced under digital capitalism, explored through works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers.Sometimes, interacting with digital platforms, we want to be passive-in those moments of dissociation when we scroll mindlessly rather than connecting with anyone, for example, or when our only response is a shrugging "e;lol."e; Despite encouragement by these platforms to "e;be yourself,"e; we want to be anyone but ourselves. Tung-Hui Hu calls this state of exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness digital lethargy. This condition permeates our lives under digital capitalism, whether we are "e;users,"e; who are what they click, or racialized workers in Asia and the Global South. Far from being a state of apathy, however, lethargy may hold the potential for social change.Hu explores digital lethargy through a series of works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers. These dispatches from the bleeding edge of digital culture include a fictional dystopia where low-wage Mexican workers laugh and emote for white audiences; a group that invites lazy viewers to strap their Fitbits to a swinging metronome, faking fitness and earning a discount on their health insurance premiums; and a memoir of burnout in an Amazon warehouse. These works dwell within the ordinariness and even banality of digital life, redirecting our attention toward moments of thwarted agency. Lethargy, writes Hu, is a drag: it weighs down our ability to rush to solutions and forces us to talk about the unresolved present.

An alternative history of art in Berlin, detaching artistic innovation from art world narratives and connecting it instead to collective creativity and social solidarity.In pre- and post-reunification Berlin, socially engaged artists championed collective art making and creativity over individual advancement, transforming urban space and civic life in the process. During the Cold War, the city's state of exception invited artists on both sides of the Wall to detour from artistic tradition; post-Wall, art became a tool of resistance against the orthodoxy of economic growth. In Free Berlin, Briana Smith explores the everyday peculiarities, collective joys, and grassroots provocations of experimental artists in late Cold War Berlin and their legacy in today's city. These artists worked intentionally outside the art market, believing that art should be everywhere, freed from its confinement in museums and galleries. They used art as a way to imagine new forms of social and creative life. Smith introduces little-known artists including West Berlin feminist collective Black Chocolate, the artist duo paint the town red (p.t.t.r), and the Office for Unusual Events, creators of satirical urban political theater, as well as East Berlin action art and urban interventionists Erhard Monden, Kurt Buchwald, and others. Artists and artist-led urban coalitions in 1990s Berlin carried on the participatory spirit of the late Cold War, with more overt forms of protest and collaboration at the neighborhood level. The temperament lives on in twenty-first century Berlin, animating artists' resolve to work outside the market and citizens' spirited defenses of green spaces, affordable housing, and collectivist projects. With Free Berlin, Smith offers an alternative history of art in Berlin, detaching artistic innovation from art world narratives and connecting it instead to Berliners' historic embrace of care, solidarity, and cooperation.

The rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can "e;vote with their feet"e; and find another platform because in most cases there isn't one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create-or resist-the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto-as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are-institutions as powerful as the state-can we begin the work of democratizing them.

Stories from the future of intelligent machines-from rescue drones to robot spouses-and accounts of cutting-edge research that could make it all possible.Tech prognosticators promised us robots-autonomous humanoids that could carry out any number of tasks. Instead, we have robot vacuum cleaners. But, as Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo report, advances in robotics could bring those rosy predictions closer to reality. A new generation of robots, directly inspired by the intelligence and bodies of living organisms, will be able not only to process data but to interact physically with humans and the environment. In this book, Floreano, a roboticist, and Nosengo, a science writer, bring us tales from the future of intelligent machines-from rescue drones to robot spouses-along with accounts of the cutting-edge research that could make it all possible. These stories from the not-so-distant future show us robots that can be used for mitigating effects of climate change, providing healthcare, working with humans on the factory floor, and more. Floreano and Nosengo tell us how an application of swarm robotics could protect Venice from flooding, how drones could reduce traffic on the congested streets of mega-cities like Hong Kong, and how a "e;long-term relationship model"e; robot could supply sex, love, and companionship. After each fictional scenario, they explain the technologies that underlie it, describing advances in such areas as soft robotics, swarm robotics, aerial and mobile robotics, humanoid robots, wearable robots, and even biohybrid robots based on living cells. Robotics technology is no silver bullet for all the world's problems-but it can help us tackle some of the most pressing challenges we face.