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ESD Faculty Summer Reading List Summer 2008 Joseph M. Sussman JR East Professor Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts June 2, 2008 Continuing our tradition of many years, here is a recommended summer ESD reading list. This year, we have a rich set of titles: three from MIT ESD authors and then some additional titles that are in the ESD spirit, I believe. The three MIT-authored books relate to domains of interest to ESD. The three others are all more cross-cutting, concerned with ways of thinking, the relationship between small-scale (individual) behavior and systems behavior, and the value of aggregate knowledge derived from groups. Several of these came to my attention through the book reviews by our ESD PhD students in ESD.83, taught by Professor Chris Magee. Anyway, think how sophisticated you will look lounging by poolside with one or more of these books! Stan Finklestein and Peter Temin—Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis FT Press January, 2008 Finkelstein and Temin believe that the mounting U.S. drug price crisis can be contained and eventually reversed by separating drug discovery from drug marketing and by establishing a non-profit company to oversee funding for new medicines. They present their research and detail their proposal for dealing with the U.S drug price crisis. They address immediate national problems—the rising cost of available medicines, the high cost of innovation and the 'blockbuster' method of selecting drugs for development—and predict worsening new ones, unless bold steps are taken. Following the utility model, Finkelstein and Temin propose establishing an independent, public, non-profit Drug Development Corporation (DDC), which would act as an intermediary between the two new industry segments – just as the electric grid acts as an intermediary between energy generators and distributors. The DDC also would serve as a mechanism for prioritizing drugs for development. Finkelstein and Temin's plan would also insulate drug development from the blockbuster mentality, which drives companies to invest in discovering a billion-dollar drug to offset their costs. Pharmaceutical News, March 2008 David A. Mindell—Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight The MIT Press, May 2008 As Apollo 11's Lunar Module descended toward the moon under automatic control, a program alarm in the guidance computer’s software nearly caused a mission abort. Neil Armstrong responded by switching off the automatic mode and taking direct control. He stopped monitoring the computer and began flying the spacecraft, relying on skill to land it and earning praise for a triumph of human over machine. In Digital Apollo, engineer-historian David Mindell takes this famous moment as a starting point for an exploration of the relationship between humans and computers in the Apollo program. In each of the six Apollo landings, the astronaut in command seized control from the computer and landed with his hand on the stick. Mindell recounts the story of astronauts' desire to control their spacecraft in parallel with the history of the Apollo Guidance Computer. From the early days of aviation through the birth of spaceflight, test pilots and astronauts sought to be more than "spam in a can" despite the automatic controls, digital computers, and software developed by engineers. Digital Apollo examines the design and execution of each of the six Apollo moon landings, drawing on transcripts and data telemetry from the flights, astronaut interviews, and NASA's extensive archives. Mindell's exploration of how human pilots and automated systems worked together to achieve the ultimate in flight—a lunar landing—traces and reframes the debate over the future of humans and automation in space. The results have implications for any venture in which human roles seem threatened by automated systems, whether it is the work at our desktops or the future of exploration. Publisher Comments, MIT Press, March 2008 Fred Moavenzadeh and Mike Markow—Moving Millions: Transport Strategies for Sustainable Development in Megacities Alliance for Global Sustainability Book Series Springer 2007 Moavenzadeh and Markow explore how the issues of transportation strategy and environmental sustainability interact in the context of megacities, especially those megacities in the developing world where the rapid rates of growth in population and economic development outpace the supply of infrastructure. While much of the current literature assumes a tradeoff between transportation and environmental sustainability, this book looks to the synergy between the two if public policies are crafted in the proper way. Transportation infrastructure capacity is typically a serious constraint in urban areas worldwide. Problems in providing additional infrastructure - whether related to available financial resources, environmental protection, local institutional capabilities, available technology, available land and land use, social disruption, and other factors - tend to be magnified in rapidly developing megacities. Given the reality of these constraints, there are nevertheless several ways in which the demand for transportation and the efficient operability of the available supply can be managed successfully to relieve the pressure on existing infrastructure, accommodate the time needed to build additional capacity, and balance the competing requirements among urban mobility, economic development, and environmental sustainability such that each area sees gains. This book demonstrates how transportation strategy and environmental sustainability can be pursued in a comprehensive and harmonious, rather than unconnected and potentially conflicting, set of public policies by applying lessons from several urban areas around the world (e.g., Bogota, Singapore, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and others). Publisher Comments, Springer, 2007 OTHER BOOKS OF INTEREST Howard Garner—Five Minds for the Future Harvard Business School Press 2007 This is a relatively short and accessible book and I enjoyed it. It is interesting to contemplate how these five minds relate to the ESD concept of engineering systems thinking – JS Five Minds for the Future outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead. They include: The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft. The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others. The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena. The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups. The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen. Gardner draws from a wealth of diverse examples to illuminate these ideas, designed to inspire lifelong learning and also to provide valuable insights for those charged with training and developing organizational leaders. From Publishers Weekly, 2007 Thomas C. Schelling—Micromotives and Macrobehavior W.W. Norton Revised edition October 2006 Given its positioning as a ”popular” book, I was surprised to see it get pretty mathematical pretty quickly. Not light reading in many sections—but some very interesting ideas – JS "Schelling here offers an early analysis of 'tipping' in social situations involving a large number of individuals."—official citation for the 2005 Nobel Prize. Before The Tipping Point there was this classic by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Micromotives and Macrobehavior was originally published over twenty-five years ago, yet the stories it tells feel just as fresh today. And the subject of these stories—how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group—is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbors of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations. Publisher comments 2006 James Surowiecki—The Wisdom of Crowds Anchor Press August 2005 This book starts out with a hackneyed story about averaging the predictions of a number of people about the weight of an ox, and that average being very close to the correct weight. The crowd was wiser collectively than the expert. But it gets a lot better and more interesting quickly. A very enjoyable book – JS New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organized and how we live our daily lives. Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, economic behaviorism, artificial intelligence, military history and political theory to show just how this principle operates in the real world. Publisher Comments, Anchor Press, August 2005