IAP 2014 Activities by Sponsor - Science, Technology, and Society

David Mindell, Gabriella Jordan

Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

This course (formerly called "Living an Extraordinary Life") provides an exciting, eye-opening, and thoroughly useful inquiry into what it takes to live an extraordinary life, on your own terms. This course addresses what it takes to succeed, and to be proud of your life and happy in it. You will tackle career satisfaction, money, your body, vices, your relationship to yourself. Address your own life and how you live it and learn from it. An inquisitive nature and willingness to face the truth are required.

Web: http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/311-span-classhighlightlivingspan-span-classhighlightanspan-span-classhighlightextraordinaryspan-lifemit

Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Diane Olsen, diane@handelgroup.com

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Jan/27	Mon	10:00AM-01:00PM	E51-335
Jan/29	Wed	10:00AM-01:00PM	E51-335
Jan/31	Fri	10:00AM-01:00PM	E51-395

Gabriella Jordan, David Mindell

Sarah Johnson, Visiting Scholar

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

This seminar will explore the history and cultural resonance of the search for life on Mars.  We'll trace how scientific ideas about Mars have evolved as we have learned more about the planet, from our 19th centrury speculations about an advanced civilization on the planet's suface to our current belief that, at most, there may be microbes within the planet's interior.  We will explore why, despite our diminished expectations, the search for life on Mars continues today with as much, or more, energy and resources as any point in the past.  We'll read firsthand accounts of scientists through the generations, examining not only what it means for a world as rich, complex, and enigmatic as our own to join the sphere of human significance, but also how, in different ages, our conceptions of Mars have reflected a telling portrait of life on Earth.  In so doing, the seminar will illustrate one of the core lessons of the space age: that the act of exploring another world invariably reveals so much about our own.

Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Sarah Johnson, 859-361-5321, ssj@mit.edu

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Jan/13	Mon	03:00PM-04:00PM	56-162
Jan/14	Tue	03:00PM-04:00PM	56-162
Jan/15	Wed	03:00PM-04:00PM	56-162
Jan/16	Thu	03:00PM-04:00PM	56-162
Jan/17	Fri	03:00PM-04:00PM	56-162

Sarah Johnson - Visiting Scholar

Shira Shmuely

Jan/28

Tue

04:00PM-07:00PM

E17-128

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up

One three hours session on the topic of primates and scientists in films. We'll watch and discuss selected scenes from the films: Primate, directed by Frederick Wiseman (1974); Rise of the Planet of the Apes, by Rupert Wyantt (2011)and Project Nim, by James Marsh (2011). We'll examine the way human-animal dichotomy is constructed in these films, with a special attention given to the role played by science and scientists.

Addressing these questions, we'll pay attention to the peculiarities of the cinematic medium in reinforcing, or challenging the cultural borders between humans and other animals. For example, how the distance of the camera from its subjects, the close uups and the cuts produce an effect of closeness or alienation of the human spectator from the nonhuman animal "actor"?

Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society
Contact: Shira Dina Shmuely, 917-912-2036, sshmuely@mit.edu