The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick genius - IELTS reading practice test

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led the world into the future for 150 years with scientific innovations.

The musician Yo-Yo Ma’s cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into one of the world’s great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there’s precious little going on that you would normally see on a university campus. The cello, resting in a corner of MIT’s celebrated truyền thông media laboratory — a hub of creativity — looks lượt thích any other electric classical instrument. But it is much more. Machover, the composer, teacher and inventor responsible for its creation, calls it a ‘hyperinstrument’, a sort of thinking machine that allows Ma and his cello vĩ đại interact with one another and make music together. ‘The aim is vĩ đại build an instrument worthy of a great musician lượt thích Yo-Yo Ma that can understand what he is trying vĩ đại vì thế and respond vĩ đại it,’ Machover says. The cello has numerous sensors across its toàn thân and by measuring the pressure, tốc độ and angle of the virtuoso’s performance it can interpret his mood and engage with it, producing extraordinary new sounds. The virtuoso cellist frequently performs on the instrument as he tours around the world. 

Machover’s passion for pushing at the boundaries of the existing world vĩ đại extend and unleash human potential is not a bad mô tả tìm kiếm of MIT as a whole. This unusual community brings highly gifted, highly motivated individuals together from a vast range of disciplines, united by a common desire: vĩ đại leap into the dark and reach for the unknown.

‘I lượt thích vĩ đại take on things that have never been done before rather kêu ca vĩ đại work in an iterative way just making small steps forward,’ he explains.

Merrill is already planning the start-up he wants vĩ đại mix up when he graduates in a year’s time. He has an idea for an original version of a contact lens that would augment reality by allowing consumers vĩ đại see additional visual information. He is fearful that he might be just too late in taking his concept vĩ đại market, as he has heard that a Silicon Valley firm is already developing something similar. As such, he might become one of many MIT graduates who go on vĩ đại khuông companies that fail. Alternatively, he might become one of those who go on vĩ đại succeed in spectacular fashion. And there are many of them. A survey of living MIT alumni* found that they have formed 25,800 companies, employing more kêu ca three million people, including about a quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley. What MIT delights in is taking brilliant minds from around the world in vastly diverse disciplines and putting them together. You can see that in its sparkling new David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which brings scientists, engineers and clinicians under one roof.

Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT’s combined work across all its five schools, channelling huge resources into the tìm kiếm for a solution vĩ đại global warming. It works vĩ đại improve the efficiency of existing energy sources, including nuclear power. It is also forging ahead with alternative energies from solar vĩ đại wind and geothermal, and has recently developed the use of viruses vĩ đại synthesise batteries that could prove crucial in the advancement of electric cars.

In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented the World Wide Web, ‘It’s not just another university.

Even though I spend my time with my head buried in the details of trang web technology, the nice thing is that when I vì thế walk the corridors, I bump into people who are working in other fields with their students that are fascinating, and that keeps u intellectually alive.’

adapted from the Guardian

* people who have left a university or college after completing their studies there