Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sebastián Bustos

Michele Coscia

Ricardo Hausmann

Cesar A. Hidalgo

Juan Jimenez

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Sarah Chung (M.A.)

Alexander Simões

Muhammed A. Yıldırım

Harvard University. Center for International Development

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory. Macro Connections Research

Preface: Over the past two centuries, mankind has accomplished what used to be unthinkable. When we look back at our long list of achievements, it is easy to focus on the most audacious of them, such as our conquest of the skies and the moon. Our lives, however, have been made easier and more prosperous by a large number of more modest, yet crucially important feats. Think of electric bulbs, telephones, cars, personal computers, antibiotics, TVs, refrigerators, watches and water heaters. Think of the many innovations that benefit us despite our minimal awareness of them, such as advances in port management, electric power distribution, agrochemicals and water purification. This progress was possible because we got smarter. During the past two centuries, the amount of productive knowledge we hold expanded dramatically. This was not, however, an individual phenomenon. It was a collective phenomenon. As individuals we are not much more capable than our ancestors, but as societies we have developed the ability to make all that we have mentioned -- and much, much more. Modern societies can amass large amounts of productive knowledge because they distribute bits and pieces of it among its many members. But to make use of it, this knowledge has to be put back together through organizations and markets. Thus, individual specialization begets diversity at the national and global level. Our most prosperous modern societies are wiser, not because their citizens are individually brilliant, but because these societies hold a diversity of knowhow and because they are able to recombine it to create a larger variety of smarter and better products. The social accumulation of productive knowledge has not been a universal phenomenon. It has taken place in some parts of the world, but not in others. Where it has happened, it has underpinned an incredible increase in living standards. Where it has not, living standards resemble those of centuries past. The enormous income gaps between rich and poor nations are an expression of the vast differences in productive knowledge amassed by different nations. These differences are expressed in the diversity and sophistication of the things that each of them makes, which we explore in detail in this Atlas. Just as nations differ in the amount of productive knowledge they hold, so do products. The amount of knowledge that is required to make a product can vary enormously from one good to the next. Most modern products require more knowledge than what a single person can hold. Nobody in this world, not even the saviest geek nor the most knowledgeable entrepreneur knows how to make a computer. He has to rely on others who know about battery technology, liquid crystals, microprocessor design, software development, metallurgy, milling, lean manufacturing and human resource management, among many other skills. That is why the average worker in a rich country works in a firm that is much larger and more connected than firms in poor countries. For a society to operate at a high level of total productive knowledge, individuals must know different things. Diversity of productive knowledge, however, is not enough. In order to put knowledge into productive use, societies need to reassemble these distributed bits through teams, organizations and markets. Accumulating productive knowledge is difficult. For the most part, it is not available in books or on the Internet. It is embedded in brains and human networks. It is tacit and hard to transmit and acquire. It comes from years of experience more than from years of schooling. Productive knowledge, therefore, cannot be learned easily like a song or a poem. It requires structural changes. Just like learning a language requires changes in the structure of the brain, developing a new industry requires changes in the patterns of interaction inside an organization or society. Expanding the amount of productive knowledge available in a country involves enlarging the set of activities that the country is able to do. This process, however, is tricky. Industries cannot exist if the requisite productive knowledge is absent, yet accumulating bits of productive knowledge will make little sense in places where the industries that require it are not present. This "chicken and egg" problem slows down the accumulation of productive knowledge. It also creates important path dependencies. It is easier for countries to move into industries that mostly reuse what they already know, since these industries require adding modest amounts of productive knowledge. By gradually adding new knowledge to what they already know, countries economize on the chicken and egg problem. That is why we find empirically that countries move from the products that they already create to others that are "close by" in terms of the productive knowledge that they require. The Atlas of Economic Complexity attempts to measure the amount of productive knowledge that each country holds. Our measure of productive knowledge can account for the enormous income differences between the nations of the world and has the capacity to predict the rate at which countries will grow. In fact, it is much more predictive than other well-known development indicators, such as those that attempt to measure competitiveness, governance and education. A central contribution of this Atlas is the creation of a map that captures the similarity of products in terms of their knowledge requirements. This map provides paths through which productive knowledge is more easily accumulated. We call this map, or network, the product space, and use it to locate each country, illustrating their current productive capabilities and the products that lie nearby. Ultimately, this Atlas views economic development as a social learning process, but one that is rife with pitfalls and dangers. Countries accumulate productive knowledge by developing the capacity to make a larger variety of products of increasing complexity. This process involves trial and error. It is a risky journey in search of the possible. Entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers play a fundamental role in this economic exploration. By providing rankings, we wish to clarify the scope of the achievable, as revealed by the experience of others. By tracking progress, we offer feedback regarding current trends. By providing maps, we do not pretend to tell potential explorers where to go, but to pinpoint what is out there and what routes may be shorter or more secure. We hope this will empower these explorers with valuable information that will encourage them to take on the challenge and thus speed up the process of economic development.

Mapping Paths to Prosperity

The Atlas of Economic Complexity

Annual Report

Research in Materials

President's Report for the Year Ending ...

Report of a Planning Conference on Information Transfer Experiments, September 3, 1965

Intrex

Programme of the Courses of Instruction

Starr Roxanne Hiltz

Murray Turoff

Linda Marie Harasim

Lucio Teles

The field; Learning networks: an introduction; Networks for schools: exemplars and experiences; Networks for higher education, training, and informal learning: exemplares and experiences; The guide; Designs for learning networks; Getting started: the implementation process; Teaching online; Learning online; Problems in paradise: expect the best, prepare for the worst; The future; New directions; Network learning: a paradign for the twenty-first century; Epilogue: email from the future; Appendixes; Indice.

A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online

Learning Networks

Report of the Treasurer

Register of Former Students

Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture

Interest in the Islamic garden has increased considerably in the past years, to such a point where a conference specifically on this subject was held at M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1994. This volume collects eight papers from the conference and two additional papers especially written for the book, to advance and promote the attention given by scholars these days to Islamic landscape architecture.

Theory and Design

Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires

This volume presents recent work on Babylonian celestialdivination and on the Greek inheritors of the Babyloniantradition.In the ancient world, the collection and study of celestial phenomena and the intepretation of their prophetic significance, especially as applied to kings and nations, were closely related sciences carried out by the same scholars. Both ancient sources and modern research agree that astronomy and celestial divination arose in Babylon. Only in the late nineteenth century, however, did scholars begin to identify and decipher the original Babylonian sources, and the process of understanding those sources has been long and difficult. This volume presents recent work on Babylonian celestial divination and on the Greek inheritors of the Babylonian tradition. Both philological and mathematical work are included. The essays shed new light on all of the known textual sources, including the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil, which contains omens from as far back as the early second or even third millennium, and the earliest personal horoscopes, from about 400 B.C., as well as the Astronomical Diaries, ephemerides, and other observational and mathematical texts. One essay concerns astronomical papyri that confirm the extensive transmission of Babylonian methods into Greek; a study of Ptolemy's lunar theory suggests that Ptolemy relied more on his own observations than previously thought; and an analysis of Theon's commentary on Ptolemy's Handy Tables shows that Theon explicated their meaning both conscientiously and competently.ContributorsAsger Aaboe, Alan C. Bowen, Lis Brack-Bernsen, John P. Britton, Bernard R. Goldstein, Gerd Graßhoff, Hermann Hunger, Alexander Jones, Erica Reiner, F. Rochberg, N. M. Swerdlow, Anne Tihon, C. B. F. Walker

Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination

Abstracts of Theses for the Engineer's (professional) Degree and the Master's Degree

Carroll Louis WILSON

STUDY OF CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS.

Study of Critical Environmental Problems (1970, Williamstown, Mass.)

Report of the Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP) ; Assessment and Recommendations for Action

Man's Impact on the Global Environment

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Emile Ernestine Ebba Hooft

Two-thirds of the surface of the Earth is created at mid-ocean ridges where magmas rise from the mantle and cool to form the oceanic crust. The objective of this Thesis is to examine the influence of magma supply and eruptive processes on axial morphology, crustal construction, and the properties of crustal magma chambers at intermediate and fast spreading ridges. Variations in magma supply on time scales of ~100 Kyr generate along-axis changes in crustal thickness and temperature. Magma sill properties and hydrothermal activity are closely linked to spreading events which occur on much shorter time scales (ca. 10-100 yr) than the longer-term variations in magma supply reflected in along-axis changes in ridge morphology. The seismically constrained depths of ridge crest magma sills (>1-2 km) are considerably deeper than the level of neutral buoyancy (100-400 m). The apparent inverse relationship between magma sill depth and spreading rate suggests that a thermally controlled permeability boundary, such as the solidus horizon, controls the depth at which magma ponds beneath mid-ocean ridges. Recent thermo-mechanical models predict that, at intermediate spreading rates, rift valley and magma sill formation are sensitive to small changes in crustal thickness and mantle temperature. Analysis of gravity at an intermediate spreading ridge shows that small differences in crustal thickness (300-700 m) and mantle temperature (10-15°C) are indeed sufficient to produce major changes in lithospheric strength and axial morphology. A stochastic model for the emplacement of dikes and lava flows with a bimodal distribution of lava flows is required to satisfy geological and geophysical constraints on the construction of the extrusive section. Most dikes are intruded within a narrow zone at the ridge axis. Short flows build up approximately half the extrusive volume. Occasional flows that pond at a considerable distance off-axis build up the remainder of the extrusive section. This Thesis underlines the importance of eruption dynamics in the emplacement of the uppermost volcanic layer of the crust and of the crustal thermal structure in controlling local variations in magma sill depth and ridge morphology.

The Influence of Magma Supply and Eruptive Processes on Axial Morphology, Crustal Construction and Magma Chambers

Norman Judson Padelford

M.I.T. Strategic Area Maps

M.I.T. Report

Catalogue Issue

Charles William Morris

A Study of the Relations of Signs and Values

Signification and Significance

Clark N. Glymour

American Association for Artificial Intelligence

Patrick J. Hayes

Fellow and Tutor in English Patrick Hayes

Kenneth M. Ford

"Were they reborn into a modern university, Plato and Aristotle and Leibniz would most suitably take up appointments in the department of computer science." Epistemology has traditionally been the study of human knowledge and rational change of human belief. Android epistemology is the exploration of the space of possible machines and their capacities for knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, desires, and for action in accord with their mental states. From the perspective of android epistemology, artificial intelligence and computational cognitive psychology form a unified endeavor: artificial intelligence explores any possible way of engineering machines with intelligent features, while cognitive psychology focuses on reverse engineering the most intelligent systems we know: us. The editors argue that contemporary android epistemology is the fruition of a long tradition in philosophical theories of knowledge and mind. The sixteen essays by both computer scientists and philosophers collected in this volume include substantial contributions to android epistemology, as well as examinations, defenses, elaborations, and challenges to the very idea. Contributors: Kalyan Shankar Basu. Margaret Boden. Selmer Bringsjord. Ronald L. Chrisley. Paul Churchland. Cary G. deBessonet. Ken Ford. James Gips. Clark Glymour. Antoni Gomila. Patrick J. Hayes. A. F. Umar Khan. Henry Kyburg. Marvin Minsky. Anatol Rapoport. Herbert Simon. Christian Stary. Lynn Andrea Stein.

Android Epistemology

President's Report

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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