Gerald Jay Sussman
Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his S. B. and Ph. D. degrees in mathematics from MIT in 1968 and 1973 respectively. He has been involved in artificial intelligence research at MIT since 1964, his research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has worked in computer languages, in computer architecture and in VLSI design. Sussman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and received his S. B. in mathematics in 1968. He continued his studies at MIT and obtained a Ph. D. in 1973 in mathematics, under the supervision of Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky. His doctoral thesis was titled "A Computational Model of Skill Acquisition" focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning, using a computational performance model called "HACKER."
Sussman is a coauthor of the introductory computer science textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It was used at MIT for several decades, has been translated into several languages. Sussman's contributions to artificial intelligence include problem solving by debugging almost-right plans, propagation of constraints applied to electrical circuit analysis and synthesis, dependency-based explanation and dependency-based backtracking, various language structures for expressing problem-solving strategies. Sussman and his former student, Guy L. Steele Jr. invented the Scheme programming language in 1975. Sussman saw that artificial intelligence ideas can be applied to computer-aided design. Sussman developed, with his graduate students, sophisticated computer-aided design tools for VLSI. Steele made the first Scheme chips in 1978; these ideas and the AI-based CAD technology to support them were further developed in the Scheme chips of 1979 and 1981. The technique and experience developed were used to design other special-purpose computers.
Sussman was the principal designer of the Digital Orrery, a machine designed to do high-precision integrations for orbital mechanics experiments. The Orrery was designed and built by a few people in a few months, using AI-based simulation and compilation tools. Using the Digital Orrery, Sussman has worked with Jack Wisdom to discover numerical evidence for chaotic motions in the outer planets; the Digital Orrery is now retired at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Sussman was the lead designer of the Supercomputer Toolkit, another multiprocessor computer optimized for evolving systems of ordinary differential equations; the Supercomputer Toolkit was used by Sussman and Wisdom to confirm and extend the discoveries made with the Digital Orrery to include the entire planetary system. Sussman has pioneered the use of computational descriptions to communicate methodological ideas in teaching subjects in Electrical Circuits and in Signals and Systems. Over the past decade Sussman and Wisdom have developed a subject that uses computational techniques to communicate a deeper understanding of advanced classical mechanics.
In Computer Science: Reflections on the Field, Reflections from the Field, he writes "...computational algorithms are used to express the methods used in the analysis of dynamical phenomena. Expressing the methods in a computer language forces them to be unambiguous and computationally effective. Students are expected to extend them and to write new ones; the task of formulating a method as a computer-executable program and debugging that program is a powerful exercise in the learning process. Once formalized procedurally, a mathematical idea becomes a tool that can be used directly to compute results." Sussman and Wisdom, with Meinhard Mayer, have produced a textbook and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, to capture these new ideas. Sussman and Abelson have been a part of the Free Software Movement, including releasing MIT/GNU Scheme as free software and serving on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. For his contributions to computer-science education, Sussman received the ACM's Karl Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award in 1990, the Amar G. Bose award for teaching in 1991.
Sussman, Hal Abelson, Richard Stallman are the only founding directors still active on the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Sussman is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a bonded locksmith, a life member of the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute, a member of the Massachusetts Watchmakers-Clockmakers Association, a member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, a member of the American Radio Relay League. Gerald Sussman is married to Julie Sussman. Julie is an MIT graduate and has studied many languages including French, German, Japanese, Swedish, Dutch and Serbo-Croatian, she has written a book on everyday Chinese characters.
Marvin Minsky Seymour Papert Terry Winograd MDL programming language Sussman anomaly Video of "Flexible Systems The Power of Generic Operations" talk for LispNYC, January 2016 Video clip of Sussman speaking a
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. This field first became an identifiable occupation in the half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, electric power distribution and use. Subsequently and recording media made electronics part of daily life; the invention of the transistor, the integrated circuit, brought down the cost of electronics to the point they can be used in any household object. Electrical engineering has now divided into a wide range of fields including electronics, digital computers, computer engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, control systems, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing and microelectronics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations such as hardware engineering, power electronics and waves, microwave engineering, electrochemistry, renewable energies, electrical materials science, much more.
See glossary of electrical and electronics engineering. Electrical engineers hold a degree in electrical engineering or electronic engineering. Practising engineers may be members of a professional body; such bodies include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Electrical engineers work in a wide range of industries and the skills required are variable; these range from basic circuit theory to the management skills required of a project manager. The tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to a top end analyzer to sophisticated design and manufacturing software. Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century. William Gilbert was a prominent early electrical scientist, was the first to draw a clear distinction between magnetism and static electricity, he is credited with establishing the term "electricity". He designed the versorium: a device that detects the presence of statically charged objects.
In 1762 Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke invented a device named electrophorus that produced a static electric charge. By 1800 Alessandro Volta had developed the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the electric battery In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify. Notable developments in this century include the work of Hans Christian Ørsted who discovered in 1820 that an electric current produces a magnetic field that will deflect a compass needle, of William Sturgeon who, in 1825 invented the electromagnet, of Joseph Henry and Edward Davy who invented the electrical relay in 1835, of Georg Ohm, who in 1827 quantified the relationship between the electric current and potential difference in a conductor, of Michael Faraday, of James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1873 published a unified theory of electricity and magnetism in his treatise Electricity and Magnetism. In 1782 Georges-Louis Le Sage developed and presented in Berlin the world's first form of electric telegraphy, using 24 different wires, one for each letter of the alphabet.
This telegraph connected two rooms. It was an electrostatic telegraph. In 1795, Francisco Salva Campillo proposed an electrostatic telegraph system. Between 1803-1804, he worked on electrical telegraphy and in 1804, he presented his report at the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Salva’s electrolyte telegraph system was innovative though it was influenced by and based upon two new discoveries made in Europe in 1800 – Alessandro Volta’s electric battery for generating an electric current and William Nicholson and Anthony Carlyle’s electrolysis of water. Electrical telegraphy may be considered the first example of electrical engineering. Electrical engineering became a profession in the 19th century. Practitioners had created a global electric telegraph network and the first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK and USA to support the new discipline. Francis Ronalds created an electric telegraph system in 1816 and documented his vision of how the world could be transformed by electricity.
Over 50 years he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers where he was regarded by other members as the first of their cohort. By the end of the 19th century, the world had been forever changed by the rapid communication made possible by the engineering development of land-lines, submarine cables, from about 1890, wireless telegraphy. Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for standardised units of measure, they led to the international standardization of the units volt, coulomb, ohm and henry. This was achieved at an international conference in Chicago in 1893; the publication of these standards formed the basis of future advances in standardisation in various industries, in many countries, the definitions were recognized in relevant legislation. During these years, the study of electricity was considered to be a subfield of physics since the early electrical technology was considered electromechanical in nature; the Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the world's first department of electrical engineering in 1882.
The first electrical engineering degree program was started at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department
Byte (magazine)
Byte was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Whereas many magazines were dedicated to specific systems or the home or business users' perspective, Byte covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software," and sometimes other computing fields such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing. Coverage was in-depth with much technical detail, rather than user-oriented. Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with an initial yearly subscription price of $10. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013. In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 and his ex-wife, Virginia Londner Green was the Business Manager of 73 Inc. In the August 1975 issue of 73 magazine Wayne's editorial column started with this item: The response to computer-type articles in 73 has been so enthusiastic that we here in Peterborough got carried away.
On May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August... Byte. Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his "Experimenter's Computer System", a personal computer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor. In January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers; the last issue was published on May 12, 1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine. Carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, described his new job as editor of Byte magazine. I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of'73 Magazine' saying hello and why don't you come up and talk a bit; the net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using the facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the editorial focus for the magazine. Virginia Londner Green had returned to 73 in the December 1974 issue and incorporated Green Publishing in March 1975.
The first five issues of Byte were published by Green Publishing and the name was changed to Byte Publications starting with the February 1976 issue. Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications; the first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Wayne came to work and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out and taken the January issue with them; the February 1976 issue of Byte has a short story about the move. "After a start which reads like a romantic light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine has moved into separate offices of its own." Wayne Green was not happy about losing Byte magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte. Byte trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in Byte magazine; the new magazine was called Kilobaud. There was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You? by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, Sphere appear, among others. Early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer. Significant articles in this period included the "Kansas City" standard for data storage on audio tape, insertion of disk drives into S-100 computers, publication of source code for various computer languages, coverage of the first microcomputer operating system, CP/M. Byte ran Microsoft's first advertisement, as "Micro-Soft", to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers. In spring of 1979, owner/publisher Virginia Williamson sold Byte to McGraw-Hill, she became a vice president of McGraw-Hill Publications Company.
Shortly after the IBM PC was introduced, in 1981, the magazine changed editorial policies. It de-emphasized the do-it-yourself electronics and software articles, began running product reviews, it continued its wide-ranging coverage of hardware and software, but now it reported "what it does" and "how it works", not "how to do it". The editorial focus remained on home and personal computers). By the early 1980s Byte had become an "elite" magazine, seen as a peer of Rolling Stone and Playboy, others such as David Bunnell of PC Magazine aspired to emulate its reputation and success, it was the only computer publication on the 1981 Folio 400 list of largest magazines. Byte's 1982 average number of pages was 543, the number of paid advertising pages grew by more than 1,000 while most magazines' amount of advertising did not change, its circulation of 420,000 was the third highest of all computer magazines. Byte earned $9 million from revenue of $36.6 million in 1983, twice the average profit margin for the magazine industry.
It remained successful while many other magazines failed in 1984 during economic weakness in the computer industry. The October 1984 issue had about 300 pages of ads sold at an average of $6,000 per page. From 1975 to 1986 Byte covers featured the artwork of Robert Tinney. Thes
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT published under its own name a lecture series entitled Problems of Atomic Dynamics given by the visiting German physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Max Born. Six years MIT's publishing operations were first formally instituted by the creation of an imprint called Technology Press in 1932; this imprint was founded by James R. Killian, Jr. at the time editor of MIT's alumni magazine and to become MIT president. Technology Press published eight titles independently in 1937 entered into an arrangement with John Wiley & Sons in which Wiley took over marketing and editorial responsibilities. In 1962 the association with Wiley came to an end; the press acquired its modern name after this separation, has since functioned as an independent publishing house. A European marketing office was opened in 1969, a Journals division was added in 1972.
In the late 1970s, responding to changing economic conditions, the publisher narrowed the focus of their catalog to a few key areas architecture, computer science and artificial intelligence and cognitive science. In January 2010 the MIT Press published its 9000th title, in 2012 the Press celebrated its 50th anniversary, including publishing a commemorative booklet on paper and online; the press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with Yale University Press and Harvard University Press. TriLiteral was acquired by LSC Communications in 2018. MIT Press publishes academic titles in the fields of Art and Architecture; the MIT Press is a distributor for such publishers as Zone Books and Semiotext. In 2000, the MIT Press created CogNet, an online resource for the study of the brain and the cognitive sciences; the MIT Press co-owns the distributor TriLiteral LLC with Harvard University Press and Yale University Press. In 1981 the MIT Press published its first book under the Bradford Books imprint, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology by Daniel C.
Dennett. In 2018, the Press and the MIT Media Lab launched the Knowledge Futures Group to develop and deploy open access publishing technology and platforms; the MIT Press operates the MIT Press Bookstore showcasing both its front and backlist titles, along with a large selection of complementary works from other academic and trade publishers. The retail storefront was located next to a subway entrance to Kendall/MIT station in the heart of Kendall Square, but has been temporarily moved to 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a short distance north of the MIT Museum near Central Square. Once extensive construction around its former location is completed, the Bookstore is planned to be returned to a site adjacent to the subway entrance; the Bookstore offers customized selections from the MIT Press at many conferences and symposia in the Boston area, sponsors occasional lectures and book signings at MIT. The Bookstore is known for its periodic "Warehouse Sales" offering deep discounts on surplus and returned books and journals from its own catalog, as well as remaindered books from other publishers.
The Press uses a colophon or logo designed by its longtime design director, Muriel Cooper, in 1962. The design is based on a highly-abstracted version of the lower-case letters "mitp", with the ascender of the "t" at the fifth stripe and the descender of the "p" at the sixth stripe the only differentiation, it served as an important reference point for the 2015 redesign of the MIT Media Lab logo by Pentagram. The Arts and Humanities Economics International Affairs and Political Science Science and Technology The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch', 1960 Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen', 1962 Beyond The Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews and Irish of New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan', 1963 The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman', 1967 Bauhaus: Weimar, Berlin, Chicago by Hans M. Wingler', 1969 The Subjection Of Women, by John Stuart Mill', 1970 Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe', 1970 Learning From Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour', 1972 The Theory of Industrial Organization by Jean Tirole', 1988 Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge by Michael L. Dertouzos, Robert M. Solow and Richard K.
Lester', 1989 Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson and Ronald L. Rivest', 1990 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan', 1994 The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord', 1994 Financial Modeling by Simon Benninga', 1997 Out of the Crisis, by W. Edwards Deming', 2000 The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William R. Easterly', 2001 The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich', 2001 The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda', 2006 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick', 2007 Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville', 2016 Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein, 2018 Official Website MIT Press Journals Homepage The MIT PressLog
Hal Abelson
Harold "Hal" Abelson is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, a fellow of the IEEE, a founding director of both Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation. He directed the first implementation of Logo for the Apple II, which made the language available on personal computers beginning in 1981. Together with Gerald Jay Sussman, Abelson developed MIT's introductory computer science subject, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a subject organized around the notion that a computer language is a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations. Abelson and Sussman cooperate in codirecting the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation; the MIT OpenCourseWare project was spearheaded by other MIT faculty. Abelson led an internal investigation of the school's choices and role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz by the FBI, which concluded that MIT did nothing wrong, but recommended that MIT consider changing some of its internal policies.
Abelson holds an AB degree from Princeton University and obtained a PhD degree in mathematics from MIT under the tutelage of mathematician Dennis Sullivan. Abelson has a longstanding interest in using computation as a conceptual framework in teaching, he directed the first implementation of Logo for the Apple II, which made the language available on personal computers beginning in 1981. His book Turtle Geometry, written with Andrea diSessa in 1981, presented a computational approach to geometry, cited as "the first step in a revolutionary change in the entire teaching/learning process." In March 2015, a copy of Abelson's 1969 implementation of Turtle graphics was sold at The Algorithm Auction, the world’s first auction of computer algorithms. Together with Gerald Jay Sussman, Abelson developed MIT's introductory computer science subject and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a subject organized around the notion that a computer language is a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations.
This work, through the textbook of the same name, videotapes of their lectures, the availability on personal computers of the Scheme dialect of Lisp, has had a worldwide impact on university computer-science education. He is a visiting faculty member at Google, where he is part of the "App Inventor for Android" team, an educational program aiming to make it easy for people without programming background to write mobile phone applications and "explore whether this could change the nature of introductory computing", he is the co-author of the book App Inventor with David Wolber, Ellen Spertus, Liz Looney, published by O'Reilly Media in 2011. Abelson and Sussman cooperate in codirecting the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation, a project of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; the goal of the project is to create better computational tools for engineers. But with powerful numerical computers, exploring complex physical systems still requires substantial human effort and human judgement to prepare simulations and to interpret numerical results.
Together with their students and Sussman are combining techniques from numerical computation, symbolic algebra, heuristic programming to develop programs that not only perform massive numerical computations, but that interpret these computations and "discuss" the results in qualitative terms. Programs such as these could form the basis for intelligent scientific instruments that monitor physical systems based upon high-level behavioral descriptions. More they could lead to a new generation of computational tools that can autonomously explore complex physical systems, which will play an important part in the future practice of science and engineering. At the same time, these programs incorporate computational formulations of scientific knowledge that can form the foundations of better ways to teach science and engineering. Abelson and Sussman have been a part of the Free Software Movement, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. Abelson is known to have been involved in the publishing of Andrew Huang's Hacking the Xbox and Keith Winstein's seven-line Perl DeCSS script, as well as LAMP, MIT's campus-wide music distribution system.
The MIT OpenCourseWare project was spearheaded by other MIT faculty. In January 2013, open access activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide, he had been arrested near MIT and was facing up to 35 years imprisonment for the alleged crime of downloading JSTOR articles through MIT's "open access" campus network. In response, MIT appointed professor Hal Abelson to lead an internal investigation of the school's choices and role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz by the FBI; the report was delivered on July 26, 2013. It concluded that MIT did nothing wrong, but recommended that MIT consider changing some of its internal policies. Abelson is a founding director of Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, a director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Designated as one of MIT's six inaugural MacVicar Faculty Fellows, in 1992, in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to teaching and undergraduate education 1992 Bose Award 1995 Taylor L. Booth Education Award given by IEEE Computer Society, cited for his continued contributions to the
Hacker
A computer hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem. While "hacker" can refer to any skilled computer programmer, the term has become associated in popular culture with a "security hacker", someone who, with their technical knowledge, uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems. Reflecting the two types of hackers, there are two definitions of the word "hacker": an adherent of the technology and programming subculture. Someone, able to subvert computer security. If doing so for malicious purposes, the person can be called a cracker. Today, mainstream usage of "hacker" refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s; this includes what hacker slang calls "script kiddies", people breaking into computers using programs written by others, with little knowledge about the way they work. This usage has become so predominant that the general public is unaware that different meanings exist. While the self-designation of hobbyists as hackers is acknowledged and accepted by computer security hackers, people from the programming subculture consider the computer intrusion related usage incorrect, emphasize the difference between the two by calling security breakers "crackers".
The controversy is based on the assertion that the term meant someone messing about with something in a positive sense, that is, using playful cleverness to achieve a goal. But it is supposed, the meaning of the term shifted over the decades and came to refer to computer criminals; as the security-related usage has spread more the original meaning has become less known. In popular usage and in the media, "computer intruders" or "computer criminals" is the exclusive meaning of the word today. In the computer enthusiast community, the primary meaning is a complimentary description for a brilliant programmer or technical expert. A large segment of the technical community insist; the mainstream media's current usage of the term may be traced back to the early 1980s. When the term was introduced to wider society by the mainstream media in 1983 those in the computer community referred to computer intrusion as "hacking", although not as the exclusive definition of the word. In reaction to the increasing media use of the term with the criminal connotation, the computer community began to differentiate their terminology.
Alternative terms such as "cracker" were coined in an effort to maintain the distinction between "hackers" within the legitimate programmer community and those performing computer break-ins. Further terms such as "black hat", "white hat" and "gray hat" developed when laws against breaking into computers came into effect, to distinguish criminal activities from those activities which were legal. However, network news use of the term pertained to the criminal activities, despite the attempt by the technical community to preserve and distinguish the original meaning, so today the mainstream media and general public continue to describe computer criminals, with all levels of technical sophistication, as "hackers" and do not make use of the word in any of its non-criminal connotations. Members of the media sometimes seem unaware of the distinction, grouping legitimate "hackers" such as Linus Torvalds and Steve Wozniak along with criminal "crackers"; as a result, the definition is still the subject of heated controversy.
The wider dominance of the pejorative connotation is resented by many who object to the term being taken from their cultural jargon and used negatively, including those who have preferred to self-identify as hackers. Many advocate using the more recent and nuanced alternate terms when describing criminals and others who negatively take advantage of security flaws in software and hardware. Others prefer to follow common popular usage, arguing that the positive form is confusing and unlikely to become widespread in the general public. A minority still use the term in both senses despite the controversy, leaving context to clarify which meaning is intended. However, because the positive definition of hacker was used as the predominant form for many years before the negative definition was popularized, "hacker" can therefore be seen as a shibboleth, identifying those who use the technically-oriented sense as members of the computing community. On the other hand, due to the variety of industries software designers may find themselves in, many prefer not to be referred to as hackers because the word holds a negative denotation in many of those industries.
A possible middle ground position has been suggested, based on the observation that "hacking" describes a collection of skills and tools which are used by hackers of both descriptions for differing reasons. The analogy is made to locksmithing picking locks, a skill which can be used for good or evil; the primary weakness of this analogy is the inclusion of script kiddies in the popular usage of "hacker," despite their lack of an underlying skill and knowledge base. Sometimes, "hacker" is used synonymously with "geek": "A true hacker is not a group person. He's a person who loves to stay up all night, he and the machine in a love-hate relationship... They're kids who tended to be brilliant but not interested in conventional goals It's a term of derision and al
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering; the Institute is a land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant university, with a campus that extends more than a mile alongside the Charles River. Its influence in the physical sciences and architecture, more in biology, linguistics and social science and art, has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. MIT is ranked among the world's top universities; as of March 2019, 93 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 73 Marshall Scholars, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 41 astronauts, 16 Chief Scientists of the US Air Force have been affiliated with MIT.
The school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, the aggregated annual revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the tenth-largest economy in the world. MIT is a member of the Association of American Universities. In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a "Conservatory of Art and Science", but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers, was signed by the governor of Massachusetts on April 10, 1861. Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia, wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances, he did not wish to found a professional school, but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education, proposing that: The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.
The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories. Two days after MIT was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT's first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865; the new institute was founded as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes" and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay. MIT was informally called "Boston Tech"; the institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker.
Programs in electrical, chemical and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, the size of the student body increased to more than one thousand. The curriculum drifted with less focus on theoretical science; the fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these "Boston Tech" years, MIT faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot's repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding; the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty and alumni. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court put an end to the merger scheme. In 1916, the MIT administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion, to signify MIT's move to a spacious new campus consisting of filled land on a mile-long tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River.
The neoclassical "New Technology" campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded by anonymous donations from a mysterious "Mr. Smith", starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of Rochester, New York, who had invented methods of film production and processing, founded Eastman Kodak. Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $20 million in cash and Kodak stock to MIT. In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios; the Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering". Unlike Ivy League schools, MIT catered more to middle-class families, depended more on tuition than on endow
