It is graduation day and most people graduating are happy but Rob is anxious. Rob's parents are cutting him off and selling the house leaving him no safety net. After searching for months and getting no leads Rob is saved by a mysterious woman who appeared at his graduation. The woman recruits Rob into the mysterious I-Corp company. Rob thinks his business degree will finally be used and he will be doing what he wanted to with his degree. But Rob finds the job boring and wonders if this is what work is for most people. Until Rob's secretary shows him a mysterious infinite corridor that is broken. She then tells Rob that the corridor was broken and the real reason he was recruited was to help fix the corridor. Rob doesn't believe his secretary and finds the situation absurd. That unbelief ends up trapping Rob in the infinite corridor and into a bigger war between the master of the white corridors and the master of the nightmare black corridors. Now Rob is lost moving from door to door and world to world. Will Rob be the champion the master of the white doors needs him to be? How many worlds and people will he save along the way? Will Rob find his way home and out of the infinite corridors?

How a bottom-up problem-solving ethos, multidisciplinary approach, and experimental mindset has nurtured entrepreneurship at MIT. MIT is world-famous as a launching pad for entrepreneurs. MIT alumni have founded at least 30,000 active companies, employing an estimated 4.6 million people, with revenues of approximately $1.9 trillion. In the 2010s, twenty to thirty ventures were spun off each year to commercialize technologies developed in MIT labs (with intellectual property licensed by MIT to these companies); in the same decade, MIT graduates started an estimated 100 firms per year. How has MIT become such a hotbed of entrepreneurship? In From the Basement to the Dome, Jean-Jacques Degroof describes how MIT's problem-solving ethos, multidisciplinary approach, and experimental mindset nurture entrepreneurship. Degroof explains that, at first, the culture of entrepreneurship sprang from such extracurricular activities as forums, clubs, and competitions. Eventually, the Institute formally supported these activities, offering courses in entrepreneurship. Degroof describes why entrepreneurship is so uniquely aligned with MIT's culture: a history of bottom-up decision-making, a tradition of academic excellence, a keen interest in problem-solving, a belief in experimentation, and a tolerance for failure on the way to success. Entrepreneurship is the logical outcome of MIT's motto, Mens et Manus (mind and hand) ), translating theories and scientific discoveries into products and businesses--many of which have the goal of solving some of the world's most pressing problems. Degroof maps MIT's current entrepreneurial ecosystem of students, faculty, and researchers; considers the effectiveness of teaching entrepreneurship; and outlines ways that the MIT story could inspire conversations in other institutions about promoting entrepreneurship.

This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. Pepper White entered MIT in 1981 and received his master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. His account of his experiences, written in diary form, offers insight into graduate school life in general—including the loneliness and even desperation that can result from the intense pressure to succeed—and the purposes of engineering education in particular. The first professor White met at MIT told him that it did not really matter what he learned there, but that MIT would teach him how to think. This, then, is the story of how one student learned how to think. There have of course been changes at MIT since 1984, but its essence is still the same. White has added a new preface and concluding chapter to this edition to bring the story of his continuing education up to date.

Human life and the human condition are changing rapidly, and are about to change even faster and more radically. Dazzling scientific breakthroughs are changing how long we live, where we live, how we dress, how we communicate, how we work and what work we do, and even how we think and imagine. Scientist Vernor Vinge proposed that humanity is approaching what he called the Singularity, what Broderick has renamed the Spike: that moment in human history when heretofore unimaginable changes -- artificial intelligence, immortality, and nanotechnology, just to name a few -- occur with such rapidity and number that the human race will be transformed -- or destroyed. This book of wonders and dangers brings together all the fascinating possibilities. Don't miss Broderick's new Tor novel, Transcension, also published in February, in which one of the futures described in The Spike is the setting for a diverting entertainment. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

This book offers an accessible presentation of phenomenological approaches to place that draws valuable connections between different disciplines that focus on and investigate questions of place.