| UP THE INFINITE CORRIDOR: MIT and the Technical Imagination Fred Hapgood Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN 0-201-08293-4 | 203p. | HC/GSI | $22.95 | |
Although Hapgood writes with wit and insight, in a style somewhat reminiscent of John McPhee's, and although he has done a lot of research (reading and interviewing) on the subject, this book strikes me as fragmentary and incomplete.
He begins admirably enough, covering in the first five chapters the nature of the engineering profession, the historical context of MIT's origins, and its metamorphosis from a school of "traditional" engineering to an institute of Engineering Science — a crucial shift in approach. Then, however, he devotes each of the remaining chapters to a unique facet of the University — the model railroad club, the Media Lab, or even individual projects like John Wyatt's vision chip. This series of isolated vignettes simply ends, with no concluding chapter or afterword to tie everything together. In my opinion, the lack diminishes Hapgood's work.
It is still worth reading, for the descriptions of the projects glow with clarity and insight into the technical issues and the people involved. I doubt that anyone has written a finer crystallization of the soul of nerdhood, for example. The history is fascinating in itself, if not apparently relevant to the rest of the book. And the tale of Ernesto Blanco's musical-score pager is a masterful evocation of the wrenching process at the heart of engineering design.
In short, this is a useful supplement to more general works on the culture of science and engineering.
There are few outright errors. Robert Pirsig's last name is spelled "Persig" in both the text and the bibliography. (Pirsig is the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.) On page 173, reference is made to a "Brand" who has written a story on the Media Lab; I assume this is Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame), but the text omits his first name.
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