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 4, 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
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