How to Read 1,000,000 Manga Pages: Visualizing Patterns in Games, Comics, Art, Cinema, Animation, TV
In his introduction, moderator Ian Condry advocates utilizing the expertise and innovation of all disciplines in order to best explore new directions in the humanities. He suggests that the challenge of discovery may ultimately be useful as theoretical exploration, which incorporates the transformative power of art as well.
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Energy from sources other than fossil and nuclear fuels is to a large extent free of the concerns about environmental effects and renewability that characterise those two sources. Each alternative source supplies energy continually, whether or not we use it. This unit considers one of these alternative sources, geothermal energy derived from the interior heat of the Earth, and the potential for this alternative to supplant fossil and nuclear fuel use to power social needs fast enough to avoid t
New Media, Civic Media
As old media die, new forms are emerging, but it’s not clear they will serve such vital civic functions as “helping people form publics,” as Pat Aufderheide puts it. These panelists point to promising experiments in “Public Media 2.0,” but caution that new media are not guaranteed to shore up democracy or invigorate
Energy Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Today's Challenges, Tomorrow's Opportunities
There are ample opportunities for new energy entrepreneurs, these panelists agree, but motivation and certain kinds of know-how play key roles in bringing new ventures to fruition.
Idealism led Christina Lampe-Onnerud to “go into the energy space” at 23, but
“inertia” surrounding the energy business
Automotive Lightweighting as a Strategic Opportunity for India’s Automotive Industry
Suppose you could leapfrog 100 years of experience in the automotive industry and begin a new manufacturing epoch. The strategic change you would make is to lightweight the vehicle, observes Charles Fine. Although steel has been the material of choice for many automotive components since the dawn of the automotive age, th
Security, Privacy and Technology
New technologies allow individuals, corporations and government entities to monitor, track and identify employees, customers and the general public. This panel provides a forum to discuss security and privacy in today's global economy.
The Militarization of Science and Space
Chomsky launches a savage, two-pronged assault on national economic policies and efforts at “global domination….By now the stakes are so high that issues of survival arise,” says Chomsky.
The basic principle underlying our current economy is “to make rich people happy and make everybody else frightened.” Chom
Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
Joseph Cirincione delivers an energetic and at times impassioned primer on the standoff with Iran on its nuclear program, drawn in part from his latest book, The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (Columbia University Press, Spring 2007).
He offers a succinct ‘equation’ to describe what drives nat
The Future of Nuclear Energy
Nuclear energy will emerge either as a solution to the twin crises of global warming and a secure energy supply, or global catastrophe. Within this panel at least, there doesn’t seem to be a comfortable middle ground.
MIT’s Andrew Kadak, one of the two speakers arguing the necessity of nuclear energy, advance
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
It’s time to trade in the Department of Homeland Security for a Department of Homeland Vulnerabilities, says Charles Perrow. At its peril, our nation “privileges terrorism over natural and industrial disasters.”
From Perrow’s perspective, the U.S. landscape is riddled with “weapons of mass destruction:
Human Rights and Politics in Israel-Palestine
Human rights are central to the fraught politics between Israelis and Palestinians, these two panelists argue. Any conceivable solution to such an endless conflict must begin by acknowledging the current bleak realities of Palestinian life under Israeli rule, they say.
Anat Biletzki and the group B'T
The War in Afghanistan: How to End It
[from the MIT News Office]
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urges the Afghanistan government to consider bringing Taliban supporters into its political system, telling an MIT audience that the prompt pursuit of a political deal among Afghanistan’s warring factions is necessary to build a lasting p
The Road from Copenhagen
Following the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a five-member panel reviews the pros and cons of the events that took place. Moderated by Ernest Moniz, the panel includes Rob Stavins, Michael Greenstone, Stephen Ansolabehere (filling in for William Bonvillian)
Denialism: Media in the Age of Disinformation
A few hundred years after the Enlightenment, western civilization is rushing back to the Dark Ages. The causes are debatable, but, argue these science journalists, the public increasingly rejects the findings of science, from climate change to evolution, and is turning away from rationality and reason in general.
“People are
Contemplative Dimensions of Human Experience
In a mind-stretching talk covering the history of the planet, development of higher-order consciousness, and East-West religious practices, Trappist monk Thomas Keating claims that humanity is poised to take its next evolutionary step, to the “furthest levels of human understanding.”
While
Iraq and North Korea: A Former Insider Assesses U.S. Policy
Ambassador Gallucci focuses most of this talk on North Korea, and discusses the following questions:
Do we have a crisis in North Korea?
Why do we have one, if we do have one now?
How did we get to where we are with North Korea?
Where do we go from here?
This event is chaired by Stephen W. Van Evera, MIT Po
The End of Saddam and the Future of Iraq
Saddam Hussein left a very visible legacy from 30 bloody years in power: countless victims and a broken nation. But there is also a more obscure inheritance, literally mountains of documents left by the Ba’ath Party and security groups. Kanan Makiya’s mission is to retrieve and index these materials, and make public the comprehensive c
U.S. Planning and Realities of Post-War Iraq
Judging from these panelists, the more intimate your experience of Iraq, the more optimistic you are likely to be. David J. Nash was fully immersed. He organized the multi-billion dollar reconstruction effort of Iraq’s infrastructure in 45 days. His 2800 projects ran the gamut from new power plants and water compani
Discourses on Iraq and the Middle East
U.S. actions in Iraq get a thorough thrashing in this final chapter of the Reconstructing Iraq series. First, Yosef Jabareen sprints through editorial page cartoons from Arab print media, which represent the U.S. as immoral, abusive, greedy and above all, hegemonic. The drawings depict George Bush burning th
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
Perhaps no one comprehends the roots of depravity and cruelty better than Philip Zimbardo. He is renowned for such research as the Stanford Prison Experiment, which demonstrated how, in the right circumstances, ordinary people can swiftly become amoral monsters. Evil is not so much inherent in individuals, Zimbardo showed, but e
