Visions - MIT Interviews

VISIONS - MIT Interviews

VISIONS MIT INTERVIEWS Andrea Frank edited by Jerry Adler From top left to bottom right: Alice Ting, Edward Farhi, Suzanne Berger, Eric Lander, Larissa Harris, Erik Demaine, Rosalind Williams, Jan Wampler, Paula Hammond, John Sterman, Ute Meta Bauer, Noam Chomsky Excerpts from the interviews:
Daniel Nocera "Let me explain what I mean when I say sunlight + water = oil. In order to create energy from water, you must split the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. You’ve got to rearrange the bonds. Now, if you just shine sunlight on water nothing happens. So what’s my research? My research is to make the thing in between, the thing that catches the sunlight and then acts on the water to rearrange its low-energy bonds into high-energy bonds of hydrogen and oxygen. Oil already has the high-energy bonds, put there millions of years ago by the compression of fossils and plant matter. It’s essentially stored solar energy. The bonds of water are low-energy. Therefore we must use sunlight to rearrange them into high-energy H2 and O2 bonds. Once that is done, we can––exactly as we do with oil––rearrange them again to create low-energy bonds of water, and the excess energy is what you use. Bond rearrangement is the essence of the energy problem. It is going to be the science that delivers the gift of the sun as our power source."
Eric S. Lander "Getting to the root of disease is such powerful information. To solve disease, we have to understand the mechanism of disease. Otherwise, we’re shooting in the dark. Occasionally we can come up with therapies without understanding the mechanism, but we can’t count on that. So, we’ve got to know what is wrong at the cellular and molecular level. But, in the process of understanding the mechanism, which is the essential tool for making therapeutics, we have to pass through this very uncomfortable phase of being able to describe what is wrong, and even being able to predict what might go wrong, without actually being able to do anything about it."
K. Daron Acemonglu "All human relations are complex, and they become much more complex when we think of them in the context of the socio-political arena. We really don’t know the implications of trying new things. Essentially, this work is all about changing institutions. But when that happens, there is always the danger that you are altering something that has evolved for very good reasons."
Edward Farhi "The main thing I work on at MIT is the theory of elementary particles, which is an attempt to get a mathematical description of the smallest constituents of matter. We’re trying to understand nature at distance scales that are infinitesimal. Now, a lot of people have trouble understanding why we would want to do that. Interestingly, those same people don’t seem to have much trouble understanding why someone would want to study the sky. If you ask most people if they think it is worthwhile to study the heavens, they say, “Yes. It’s interesting to know what makes stars burn, it’s interesting to know what galaxies are made of, it’s interesting to know what the universe looked like after the big bang, and it’s interesting to know how big the universe is.” Well, elementary particle physics is an investigation of nature, but instead of looking out, we look in. We try to understand things on the smallest scales. And it turns out that when you start to look at things on a very, very tiny scale, you start to see phenomena you never would have anticipated."
Larissa Harris "People accuse art of being useless. I suppose that’s a downside. But there’s a place for uselessness in the world, for sure. If I had to, I would say that the use of art is to shift one’s perceptions of the world, even for a second. I won’t deny that it’s too often a practice and experience reserved only for the elite, or for certain people who know certain codes and have access to certain places. But one of the things about this program I am so proud of is that we’re ignoring those assumptions about art and we are saying that this experience is available for anybody who is interested. We are demonstrating here, by our very existence, that art has a fundamental place everywhere in life––as a companion to science and technology, as a companion to architecture, and as a vital part of the human experience."
Henry S. Marcus "You get up in the morning, the alarm clock or clock radio goes off, you put on your clothes, you turn on the coffee machine, you drink your coffee, you eat a banana, you use the microwave, you turn on the TV to see what the news is—everything you’ve touched has been on a ship. Our standard of living, and the standard of living in all the advanced nations, depends on efficient marine transportation systems and efficient overall logistical systems. Improvements in these systems are necessary. Having said that, if you speak to everyday people, you’ll see that there is absolutely no appreciation of how much each one of us depends on marine transportation. Unfortunately, if people don’t understand and embrace this issue soon, our ports will become so clogged that we will be unable to efficiently transport the cargo. Then it will be much too late. I’ve been on the Marine Transportation Systems National Advisory Council and other advisory groups that have tried to address this issue and, believe me, it’s an incredible challenge to alter people’s thinking and awareness."
Lawrence J. Vale "For many years, my basic interest has been what I call design politics. This means trying to understand the relationship between two ideas that people often keep separate: a sense that the world, specifically an urban environment, is designed, and the concurrent reality that it is shaped by social, political, and cultural processes. At the confluence of these areas, there is much to learn about relationships of power and questions of identity. By examining the meaning of the built environment, we have access to this knowledge. This investigation is my way of understanding something about what makes the world the way it is."
Kerry A. Emanuel "Although not often talked about, hurricanes themselves may have a profound effect on climate. It is a two-way problem, not just a one-way problem. Hurricanes churn up the uppermost few hundred meters of the ocean, and this turns out to be very important to the climate system. Thermodynamically, the surface of the tropical oceans is cooled, but, paradoxically, the depths become warmer. Ocean currents then carry the warm water poleward, making it warmer at higher latitudes, and a bit cooler at lower latitudes, than the Earth might otherwise be. "
John Sterman "The biggest and most obvious change is that computing power continues to grow exponentially and this makes it possible to build models and simulations that are not only more complex, but also analyzed more richly than ever before. Your cell phone now has thousands and thousands of times more computing power than the biggest mainframe available when I started working in this field. We can do things today in simulation––such as agent-based modeling, spatial modeling, and sensitivity analysis––that we could only dream of thirty years ago. That has been absolutely wonderful. But it’s very far from sufficient because if you only do that, you’ve built bigger models but your cognitive constraints haven’t changed. So you understand less and less until the models are just as complex and difficult to understand as the real world."
Ernest J. Moniz "We view ourselves as supporters of resolving environmental, security, and supply issues. The greenhouse gas problem is so difficult. Frankly, the challenge of meeting greenhouse gas emissions stabilization is severely underestimated in the public debate. Consequently, we do not favor any specific technology. Our view is that if a technology might make a significant contribution to resolving the climate change problem, then we cannot afford to take it off the table, and we should do serious, hard analysis about what would enable it to be part of the solution. That is the spirit. We are just trying to contribute to a responsible solution to this great challenge of our time. "
Meg Jacobs "The message I peddle around campus when I speak is that change is hard, but not impossible. If you look at the environmental movement, it’s a pretty amazing grass-roots story. A major level of public awareness was built up in a rather short period of time. You have the early, seminal consciousness-raising moments, like the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, and a mere eight years later, 20 million people turn out for the first Earth Day. This created such a high level of public awareness that Richard Nixon, a Republican, signed into being both the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act. That is substantial. So, history provides volumes of cautionary tales, but they are interspersed with moments of true hope. In history, there is no such thing as linear progress. Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, yet rejected the Clean Water Act. It’s a push and pull. I don’t know if we should necessarily consider that a downside, but it does temper one’s optimism regarding the prospects for change."
Dan Cohn "Leslie Bromberg, John Heywood, and I have been working for some time, in different ways, to make engines more efficient. Lately, we’ve been working on a concept we call the Ethanol Turbo Boosted Gasoline Engine. The idea here is to use a very small amount of ethanol to enable a very significant increase in fuel efficiency of a gasoline engine at very low cost. Injecting the ethanol directly into the cylinder enables much higher performance. It allows you to get a lot more power out of a small, high-efficiency engine and therefore replace a larger engine. Through this replacement, we believe that the fuel efficiency gain will be close to that obtained by a hybrid vehicle, but at a far lower cost."
John G. Kassakian "Energy storage is a huge problem today. It is unlike almost anything else. It is unlike oil. It is unlike grain. In fact, it’s the big problem that we face with deregulated electricity markets. You can’t store energy. You can buy futures in it, but unlike futures in oranges or wheat, or bacon, or hog bellies, you can’t store it. This has created a big challenge for those who are dealing with it."
Mujid Kazimi "The growing concern about the environmental effects of fossil fuels has been a big change. Obviously, the U.S. and the world use mostly fossil fuels for electricity, as well as for transportation, and people are much more concerned today about CO2 emissions than in times past. That has paved the way for nuclear energy to reemerge as a more environmentally acceptable alternative. Based on everything I have read, I think there is a definite correlation between CO2 emissions and the warming of the earth. The exact amount and rate may be uncertain, but the trend is not uncertain. We must do something about it now because it will soon be too late."
Noam Chomsky "The technologies that have most influenced activism are computers and the Internet. These happen to be, largely, MIT products. There is a common myth that the United States is a free market, free enterprise society. That is very far from true. The economy depends very extensively on the dynamic state sector of the economy, of which MIT is a core part. Research and development, in the difficult stages, are typically carried out at public expense. For a long time it was under the pretext of defense. So up until the 1970's, I suppose, MIT was funded mostly by the Pentagon––something like 90%. Well, it wasn't producing arms. It was producing the economy of the future. It was developing computers, the Internet, information technology, telecommunications, and so on. That continued for a long period of time. Computers were being developed from the early 50’s under government contracts, at MIT mainly, and at Harvard and other places. It wasn't until about 1980 that companies could start selling them for money."
Suzanne Berger "If we look at what is driving globalization, we could probably all agree on the big drivers. There has been a significant liberalization of trade and financial markets. We’ve seen the rise of major new competitors in China and India, and new technologies in communication and transportation. The result has been a tremendous increase in the flow of capital, goods, and services across borders. As a result, with the rise of these new competitors, people in our own society worry about what China, India, and the emergence of yet other countries means for our jobs and our children. But how could we really desire the alternative, which is a world where billions of people remain stuck on the bottom of the ladder?"
Muntadas "Especially with projects in a public space, you have to deal with the idea that seeing is not necessarily perceiving. The desire of artists to work in the public space has to do with the notion that more people can access the work. But do they really perceive it? It’s a risk that the artist takes. How do people encounter the work in the public sphere? How do they navigate around it? This idea that greater accessibility can often correlate to greater ambivalence is an interesting and profound paradox."
Leon Robert Glicksman "Primarily, we are working on issues related to environmental sustainability within the urban construction environment. A key feature of that is energy efficiency, particularly as it relates to buildings, indoor air quality, and quality of life for people within buildings. We teach people about sustainable building concepts, try to persuade them to employ these concepts, and hopefully reach the point where those in and around construction recognize the pursuit of these goals as vital and necessary."
Rosalind Williams "I think a sober awareness of the limits of our ability to control this world we’ve built is a significant realization and an important first step. If people are educated to simply consider this idea, we will have come a long way. As a historian, my observation is that history works differently now because of this environment we’ve created for ourselves. The stage on which the historical drama takes place is no longer a stable one. Our actions have changed it. We have atomic processes which create waste that has a half-life of 20,000 years. This is out of proportion with all human historical time scales. What kind of society will we have in 20,000 years? What are the consequences of global warming or genetic modifications? These issues are unprecedented, as is our capacity to change the world we live in. There is a range of consequences to our behavior and it is not possible for anyone to say whether they’re all good or all bad. It is necessary for people to recognize what powers and forces are at work, and that the capacity to control them is something that we cannot necessarily achieve."
Krzysztof Wodiczko "Of course, I have a problem with the fact that in our society and education system, art is not considered a necessary and indispensable part of our experience in the world. But when you consider our philosophical tradition––that is, ideas about how we should perfect ourselves, make sense of our lives, and what type of life we should have a right to live––art has always been a vital dimension. Aesthetics, ethics, and politics are three fields that have been addressed by philosophers from antiquity until today."
Rodney Brooks "If you look back 25 or 30 years, computers were in backrooms. Regular people didn’t interact with them. The people who oversaw these machines functioned as mysterious and mandatory go-betweens, akin to the way the priesthood has served as the medium between the congregation and the divine. Then came a tremendous liberation that allowed everyday people to use computers for all sorts of things––like e-mail and the Web––that even the original designers had never envisioned. I would like to empower people with mechanized physical action in the same way that we’re currently being empowered with new actions for communication and computation."
Erik D. Demaine "That’s one of the great things about mathematics. You always have an ultimate truth. Assuming you do mathematics correctly, and you write a proof carefully, you really can produce the answer to a question. It can never be refuted. Whereas in any other field, let’s say in physics, you can have a hypothesis, and you can build evidence for that hypothesis, but you never really know for sure. Even if you did all the experiments correctly, it still doesn’t prove the hypothesis. It only says that those experiments are consistent with that hypothesis. In math, you can actually prove something and know you have the answer."
H. Sebastian Seung "I work on the theory of neural networks. In my field, we are trying to understand how all mental phenomena arise from the brain. Specifically, we want to understand this in terms of interactions between single neurons. It is basically a reductionist approach. We are trying to explain brain function, from a microscopic point of view, as an outcome of interactions among a very large group of neurons inside the brain. It’s analogous to physicists understanding properties of a piece of matter in terms of its atoms."
Angela Belcher "We try to understand how organisms make materials, and expand those processes to materials that those organisms haven’t had the opportunity to work with yet. We’ve been borrowing ideas from how abalone grow shells. About 500 million years ago in the ocean, abalone encountered changes in their environment such as increased calcium and other kinds of atoms. They had to learn how to process those changes and, in so doing, they built shells. They built calcium carbonate and silica. We want to do the same thing, but we want to self-assemble devices. So, we’ve been working with benign microorganisms to get them to display random peptide sequences on their surface. Instead of the 50 million years it took for these organisms to learn how to make shells, we want to have them learn how to make things in a really short period of time, such as days or weeks."
Paula T. Hammond "One of the most obvious changes, both with respect to government funding and priority in the public consciousness, is the interest in attacking specific biomedical problems. My background is originally in the electro-chemical, electro-optical work. I’d say my core is in designing materials, synthesis, and polymer processing. When I first started, my applications were directed towards displays and things of this nature. But the first obvious change was the interest in biomedical problems, the manipulations of cells, and the development and understanding of the fact that materials have a huge impact in the way cells function and grow. So I ended up in collaboration with colleagues in fields such as biology and biological engineering, and with some of my material science friends who were interested in these problems. But people were dealing more with cellular behavior, and the realization in the biomedical field that materials can do a lot more than just sit there and act as a structural component has triggered interest from my community. Now we are looking at how we can use our chemical and materials approaches to do things like manipulate cells and deliver drugs."
Darrell Irvine "We focus on the biology of how immune responses work. Then, by building on what we know about the cell and molecular biology of the immune system, we try to design rational, safe vaccines. For example, we’re putting a lot of effort into making materials that, when injected as a vaccine, can mimic the cascade of events that happen during a natural infection. Our immune systems are evolutionarily engineered to respond very rapidly and robustly. We’re creating vaccines that can do that, and are simultaneously safe and easy to manufacture."
Scott R. Manalis "We’re working on using silicon technology—that is, all of the techniques that are used to make integrated circuits––to make new measurement methods for biology. Essentially, we have expertise in microfluidics and we develop new ways to measure the parameters that are relevant to living systems. This can be used in diagnostics or to better understand biological processes. In many cases, we exploit the unique physical properties associated with micro and nanoscale dimensions to make measurements that are faster, better, and more sensitive than what is possible with existing methods."
Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli "I’m working on a way to control biomolecules by using nanoparticles as antennas. If you think of a cell, it is a big, wet bag of proteins all mixed up together. Controlling the individual proteins in there is quite difficult. Our technique will allow us to effectively and easily switch biomolecules on and off. This binary approach will allow us to pinpoint which particular gene is causing a sickness. This will enable new methods for disease diagnosis and therapy. There has never been anything like this. It is a new area."
Alice Y. Ting "Our type of science is fundamentally different from hypothesis-driven research that is focused on a specific problem. The traditional biologist says, “I’m interested in why a leaf grows towards the sun.” He comes up with hypotheses and then spends his life testing them to figure out the molecular mechanisms that cause the leaf to grow the way it does. That is important work, but it’s not the type of research we do. We come from the perspective of chemistry and engineering. We want to provide enabling technologies that will allow researchers around the world to address their problems with more efficiency and power, and to solve problems they previously could not begin to solve. We want to push the technological boundaries."
Bernhardt L. Trout "Everyone in the field of environmental research is addressing problems associated with technology. We are trying to solve manmade problems with manmade solutions. No one is working on understanding nature as nature. It is all about how humans interact with their environment via technology. It is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have terrific advances and a lot of energy to use as we so desire. On the other hand, by using so much of it, we are creating very significant problems. We are not even attempting to come to terms with the basic meaning of what we are trying to do with technology."
C. Adam Schlosser "I think it’s probably going to take a cataclysmic event for these issues to resonate with people to the extent that they would really be willing to do something. I am not sure that a warmer world, in and of itself, is a particular concern in modernized, industrial societies. People often say, “Well, if it’s four degrees warmer, I’ll just keep my air conditioner on.” I believe that, unfortunately, is the mindset of a typical person. They should also consider the possibility that they will have half as much water available to them. That is something I think will resonate with people. So, yes, I would say that people should be more attuned to the consequences of global warming. "
Jan Wampler "I think the field is in a state of chaos right now. There have been great changes in just the last ten years. For instance, digital technology didn’t exist, to a great extent, ten years ago. As architects, we don’t know what to do with it. We play with it and have a good time, but are we really utilizing it to its potential, or are we just kids playing with a new toy? I think most of the time it’s the latter. Nevertheless, this evolution has changed the way we work in the field. Interestingly, in my opinion, digital technology has not yet produced better architecture. I still believe in hands-on experiences. I don’t care what is being made or where it takes place, whether it is in the darkroom developing a print or outside building something. It is the idea of making that is important, the hands. In my opinion, the digital world is somewhat removed from this idea. This is something we’re struggling with. "
Ute Meta Bauer "What is the potential of input from the arts? DADA is a great historical example, or the Situationists, but there are also many activist practices today. I am interested in what kind of meaning or impulse art can give to people in other disciplines. This type of dialogue and exchange encourages situations where interests overlap and where people from different disciplines work together. Here at MIT, it is widely understood that exchange is necessary. This institution is well known for its problem solving potential. That is the big mandate. I feel that the artists teaching in the Visual Arts Program here at MIT are uniquely suited to make a significant contribution. The complexities of this task are so profound, I believe it is impossible for one single discipline to grasp and handle it all. Additionally, it is very interesting to understand a subject from different points of departure. I very much hope that the arts will become a stronger voice and player within the MIT orchestra."