Bøger i The MIT Press serien

Statistical approaches to processing natural language text have become dominant in recent years. This foundational text is the first comprehensive introduction to statistical natural language processing (NLP) to appear. The book contains all the theory and algorithms needed for building NLP tools. It provides broad but rigorous coverage of mathematical and linguistic foundations, as well as detailed discussion of statistical methods, allowing students and researchers to construct their own implementations. The book covers collocation finding, word sense disambiguation, probabilistic parsing, information retrieval, and other applications.

An exploration of transformations in the nature of the art object and artistic authorship in the last four decades.In this book, Martha Buskirk addresses the interesting fact that since the early 1960s, almost anything can and has been called art. Among other practices, contemporary artists have employed mass-produced elements, impermanent materials, and appropriated imagery, have incorporated performance and video, and have created works through instructions carried out by others. Furthermore, works of art that lack traditional signs of authenticity or permanence have been embraced by institutions long devoted to the original and the permanent. Buskirk begins with questions of authorship raised by minimalists' use of industrial materials and methods, including competing claims of ownership and artistic authorship evident in conflicts over the right to fabricate artists' works. Examining recent examples of appropriation, she finds precedents in pop art and the early twentieth-century readymade and explores the intersection of contemporary artistic copying and the system of copyrights, trademarks, and brand names characteristic of other forms of commodity production. She also investigates the ways that connections between work and context have transformed art and institutional conventions, the impact of new materials on definitions of medium, the role of the document as both primary and secondary object, and the significance of conceptually oriented performance work for the intersection of photography and the human body in contemporary art. Buskirk explores how artists active in the 1980s and 1990s have recombined strategies of the art of the 1960s and 1970s. She also shows how the mechanisms through which art is presented shape not only readings of the work but the work itself. She uses her discussion of the readymade and conceptual art to explore broader issues of authorship, reproduction, context, and temporality.

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy.Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important.

An overview of naturalistic decision making, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced.

One of Japan's leading architects examines notions of Japan-ness as exemplified by key events in Japanese architectural history from the seventh to the twentieth century; essays on buildings and their cultural context.Japanese architect Arata Isozaki sees buildings not as dead objects but as events that encompass the social and historical context—not to be defined forever by their "everlasting materiality" but as texts to be interpreted and reread continually. In Japan-ness in Architecture, he identifies what is essentially Japanese in architecture from the seventh to the twentieth century. In the opening essay, Isozaki analyzes the struggles of modern Japanese architects, including himself, to create something uniquely Japanese out of modernity. He then circles back in history to find what he calls Japan-ness in the seventh-century Ise shrine, reconstruction of the twelfth-century Todai-ji Temple, and the seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial Villa. He finds the periodic ritual relocation of Ise's precincts a counter to the West's concept of architectural permanence, and the repetition of the ritual an alternative to modernity's anxious quest for origins. He traces the "constructive power" of the Todai-ji Temple to the vision of the director of its reconstruction, the monk Chogen, whose imaginative power he sees as corresponding to the revolutionary turmoil of the times. The Katsura Imperial Villa, with its chimerical spaces, achieved its own Japan-ness as it reinvented the traditional shoin style. And yet, writes Isozaki, what others consider to be the Japanese aesthetic is often the opposite of that essential Japan-ness born in moments of historic self-definition; the purified stylization—what Isozaki calls "Japanesquization"—lacks the energy of cultural transformation and reflects an island retrenchment in response to the pressure of other cultures.Combining historical survey, critical analysis, theoretical reflection, and autobiographical account, these essays, written over a period of twenty years, demonstrate Isozaki's standing as one of the world's leading architects and preeminent architectural thinkers.

Video games as both a departure from and a development of traditional games; an analysis of the interaction between rules and fiction in video games.A video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world, but we slay a dragon (for example) only in the world of the game. In this thought-provoking study, Jesper Juul examines the constantly evolving tension between rules and fiction in video games. Discussing games from Pong to The Legend of Zelda, from chess to Grand Theft Auto, he shows how video games are both a departure from and a development of traditional non-electronic games. The book combines perspectives from such fields as literary and film theory, computer science, psychology, economic game theory, and game studies, to outline a theory of what video games are, how they work with the player, how they have developed historically, and why they are fun to play.Locating video games in a history of games that goes back to Ancient Egypt, Juul argues that there is a basic affinity between games and computers. Just as the printing press and the cinema have promoted and enabled new kinds of storytelling, computers work as enablers of games, letting us play old games in new ways and allowing for new kinds of games that would not have been possible before computers. Juul presents a classic game model, which describes the traditional construction of games and points to possible future developments. He examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players, and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world. Juul's lively style and eclectic deployment of sources will make Half-Real of interest to media, literature, and game scholars as well as to game professionals and gamers.

A rigorous but nontechnical treatment of major topics in urban economics.Lectures on Urban Economics offers a rigorous but nontechnical treatment of major topics in urban economics. To make the book accessible to a broad range of readers, the analysis is diagrammatic rather than mathematical. Although nontechnical, the book relies on rigorous economic reasoning. In contrast to the cursory theoretical development often found in other textbooks, Lectures on Urban Economics offers thorough and exhaustive treatments of models relevant to each topic, with the goal of revealing the logic of economic reasoning while also teaching urban economics.Topics covered include reasons for the existence of cities, urban spatial structure, urban sprawl and land-use controls, freeway congestion, housing demand and tenure choice, housing policies, local public goods and services, pollution, crime, and quality of life. Footnotes throughout the book point to relevant exercises, which appear at the back of the book. These 22 extended exercises (containing 125 individual parts) develop numerical examples based on the models analyzed in the chapters. Lectures on Urban Economics is suitable for undergraduate use, as background reading for graduate students, or as a professional reference for economists and scholars interested in the urban economics perspective.

How design for disabled people and mainstream design could inspire, provoke, and radically change each other.Eyeglasses have been transformed from medical necessity to fashion accessory. This revolution has come about through embracing the design culture of the fashion industry. Why shouldn't design sensibilities also be applied to hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, and communication aids? In return, disability can provoke radical new directions in mainstream design. Charles and Ray Eames's iconic furniture was inspired by a molded plywood leg splint that they designed for injured and disabled servicemen. Designers today could be similarly inspired by disability. In Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin shows us how design and disability can inspire each other. In the Eameses' work there was a healthy tension between cut-to-the-chase problem solving and more playful explorations. Pullin offers examples of how design can meet disability today. Why, he asks, shouldn't hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear? What new forms of braille signage might proliferate if designers kept both sighted and visually impaired people in mind? Can simple designs avoid the need for complicated accessibility features? Can such emerging design methods as "experience prototyping” and "critical design” complement clinical trials? Pullin also presents a series of interviews with leading designers about specific disability design projects, including stepstools for people with restricted growth, prosthetic legs (and whether they can be both honest and beautifully designed), and text-to-speech technology with tone of voice. When design meets disability, the diversity of complementary, even contradictory, approaches can enrich each field.

A sumptuously illustrated exploration of themes from science fiction and space travel, as imagined by artists across the Americas from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Thirty-nine essays explore the vast diversity of video game history and culture across all the world's continents.

The first complete account in English of the evolution of 'pataphysics from its French origins, with explications of key ideas and excerpts from primary sources, presented in reverse chronological order.

What it takes to be a genius: nine essential and contradictory ingredients.

A balanced look at globalization and its potential environmental effects, both destructive and beneficial.

The story of how diesel engines and gas turbines, used to power cargo ships and jet airplanes, made today's globally integrated economy possible.

Lewis Branscomb and Philip Auerswald address early-stage, high-tech innovation in the context of business decision making and innovation policy.

An exploration of the smallest and simplest of dwellings offers answers to some of the largest and oldest questions about architecture.This small book on small dwellings explores some of the largest questions that can be posed about architecture. What begins where architecture ends? What was before architecture? The ostensible subject of Ann Cline's inquiry is the primitive hut, a one-room structure built of common or rustic materials. Does the proliferation of these structures in recent times represent escapist architectural fantasy, or deeper cultural impulses? As she addresses this question, Cline gracefully weaves together two stories: one of primitive huts in times of cultural transition, and the other of diminutive structures in our own time of architectural transition. From these narrative strands emerges a deeper inquiry: what are the limits of architecture? What ghosts inhabit its edges? What does it mean to dwell outside it? Cline's project began twenty-five years ago, when she set out to translate the Japanese tea ritual into an American idiom. First researching the traditional tea practices of Japan, then building and designing huts in the United States, she attempted to make the "translation" from one culture to another through the use of common American building materials and technology. But her investigation eventually led her to look at many nonarchitectural ideas and sources, for the hut exists both at the beginning of and at the farthest edge of architecture, in the margins between what architecture is and what it is not. In the resulting narrative, she blends autobiography, historical research, and cultural criticism to consider the place that such structures as shacks, teahouses, follies, casitas, and diners—simple, "undesigned" places valued for their timelessness and authenticity—occupy from both a historical and contemporary perspective. This book is an original and imaginative attempt to rethink architecture by studying its boundary conditions and formative structures.

Available again in a boxed hardcover edition, the definitive work on Bauhaus.

Artists, theorists, activists, and scholars propose concrete forms of non-fascist living as the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the foundations of common life.Propositions for Non-Fascist Living begins from the urgent need to model a world decidedly void of fascisms during a time when the rise of contemporary fascisms threatens the very foundations of a possibility for common life. Borrowing from Michel Foucault's notion of "non-fascist living” as an "art of living counter to all forms of fascism,” including that "in us all... the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us,” the book addresses the practice of living rather than the mere object of life.Artists, theorists, activists, and scholars offer texts and visual essays that engage varied perspectives on practicing life and articulate methods that support multiplicity and difference rather than vaunting power and hierarchy. Architectural theorist Eyal Weizman, for example, describes an "unlikely common” in gathering evidence against false narratives; art historian and critic Sven Lütticken develops a non-fascist proposition drawn from the intersection of art, technology, and law; philosopher Rosi Braidotti explores an ethics of affirmation and the practices of dying.Propositions for Non-Fascist Living is the first in a BASICS series of readers from BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, engaging some of the most urgent problems of our time through theoretically informed and politically driven artistic research and practice.Contributors includeRosi Braidotti, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jota Mombaça, and Thiago de Paula Souza, Forensic Architecture, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Patricia Kaersenhout and Lukás Likavcan, Sven Lütticken, Jumana Manna, Dan McQuillan, Shela Sheikh, Eyal Weizman, Mick WilsonCopublished with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

How sonically distinctive digital "signatures"-including reverb, glitches, and autotuning-affect the aesthetics of popular music, analyzed in works by Prince, Lady Gaga, and others.

An integrative overview of network approaches to neuroscience explores the origins of brain complexity and the link between brain structure and function.

How lessons from kindergarten can help everyone develop the creative thinking skills needed to thrive in today's society.

A comprehensive and unified account of the neural computations underlying speech production, offering a theoretical framework bridging the behavioral and the neurological literatures.In this book, Frank Guenther offers a comprehensive, unified account of the neural computations underlying speech production, with an emphasis on speech motor control rather than linguistic content. Guenther focuses on the brain mechanisms responsible for commanding the musculature of the vocal tract to produce articulations that result in an acoustic signal conveying a desired string of syllables. Guenther provides neuroanatomical and neurophysiological descriptions of the primary brain structures involved in speech production, looking particularly at the cerebral cortex and its interactions with the cerebellum and basal ganglia, using basic concepts of control theory (accompanied by nontechnical explanations) to explore the computations performed by these brain regions.Guenther offers a detailed theoretical framework to account for a broad range of both behavioral and neurological data on the production of speech. He discusses such topics as the goals of the neural controller of speech; neural mechanisms involved in producing both short and long utterances; and disorders of the speech system, including apraxia of speech and stuttering. Offering a bridge between the neurological and behavioral literatures on speech production, the book will be a valuable resource for researchers in both fields.