{"id":6035,"date":"2016-02-15T00:03:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T06:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6035"},"modified":"2016-02-13T12:11:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T18:11:53","slug":"cant-slow-down-to-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6035","title":{"rendered":"CAN’T SLOW DOWN TO THINK"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Alan Lightman, the first professor at MIT with a joint appointment in the humanities and science (italics added):<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was on the Harvard faculty for 10 years before I went to MIT, so I have a good sense of the differences in the student bodies.\u00a0 The students at MIT are brighter and they are quicker and more original, but they are not nearly as well read as the Harvard students.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

What I don\u2019t like about MIT and I don\u2019t mind saying this is that it\u2019s too high pressure, it\u2019s a workaholic place and I don\u2019t think this is good for the students and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s good for the faculty.\u00a0 The students are madly rushing to learn as much as they can.\u00a0 They take as many courses as they can.\u00a0 They just assume that more is better.\u00a0 It is their mantra.\u00a0 The more you can cram in, the better.\u00a0 They assume that all technology is progress.<\/em>\u00a0 If you design a car that goes at twice the speed as the current cars, you should design it.\u00a0 If you can build a machine that goes twice as fast, you should build it.\u00a0 If you can build a computer that stores twice the information, you should build it.\u00a0 They just assume without questioning that more is better.\u00a0<\/em> They don\u2019t take the time or they don\u2019t have the time to slow down and really think about what is important, what is the value of their lives, what is the value of this technology, to question the technology.\u00a0<\/em> Some technology can be used well and some cannot be used well, how should we be using the technology?\u00a0 What is important?\u00a0 They don\u2019t the time to go back to square zero and ask the question, why are we doing this?\u00a0 What do I really believe in?\u00a0 What\u2019s really important?\u00a0 They don\u2019t have the time for that.\u00a0 The students and faculty are similar.\u00a0 They are all rushing too rapidly.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The rest is here:<\/strong> http:\/\/www.concordlibrary.org\/scollect\/fin_aids\/OH_Texts\/Lightman.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Alan Lightman, the first professor at MIT with a joint appointment in the humanities and science (italics added): I was on the Harvard faculty for 10 years before I went to MIT, so I have a good sense of the differences in the student bodies.\u00a0 The students at MIT are brighter and they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,37,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-learningeducation","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6037,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6035\/revisions\/6037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}