I think many of these claims as "MIT's contribution to transform Computer Science" is unjustified. Particularly, wasn't Bob Kahn already out of MIT when Vint Cerf and him created TCP/IP? What was MIT's role here? Just that they paid salary to Bob Kahn in the distant past?
On the other hand, when I think of MIT, the most important contribution to Computer Science that comes to my mind is Seth Gilbert and Nancy Lynch's proof to Brewer's Conjecture, famously called CAP theorem. This proof is so profound, so important to Computer Science and the way we build large-scale computer systems today. And d'uh, it has been left out.
This looks like pure marketing to me. And in some sense misleading.
Yeah, and if I remember correctly, RMS's work on GNU was not affiliated with MIT and he did it on top of his actual responsibilities in the AI Lab. It's like saying your high school is a great place to be educated because you became famous down the road.
dear downvoter: I am happy to counter each and every argument you may have, in case you should have any.
Otherwise forget the PR and dig deeper than usual.
ps: Actually, this MIT piece is like the CERN web pieces, run by the PR department of said institutions.
Such accomplishments are rarely if ever obtained by a single lab, or institution for that matter. They are rather embodiments of the spirit of the times, the effort of many of a given era implemented with the technology then available (see Otlet). The only question is, who gets to win the (often propaganda) fight for the claim and who gets to write history.
Most of this work is publicly funded. They whole VC industry is built on it. It should return more of its profits to the public, just as it would to early-stage investors.
That's what public funding of research work is for.
Basically, there's a continuum ranging from public research (i.e., high-risk, high-impact) to industrial research and startups (medium risk, medium-to-high impact) to common adoption (low risk, low impact).
Ok, I'll bite. Next time you invest in a startup, or if you ever were to, you agree to forego equity. Instead take a cut of the sales tax, a job, and the opportunity to purchase the product. Fair deal?
The question is, would an angel investor take that deal? The answer is obvious: no way.
An analogy would be if we all belonged to a VC fund, and the fund manager took a deal where instead of equity they take a cut of future sales tax. Imagine that. No way you'd consider that a fair deal, even if the startup produced some nice products and job opportunities.
You'd want equity if it was your personal investment. Why should it be any different for taxpayer funds?
Individuals are generally selfish and don't think very well about collective society good, but ever since the Neolithic revolution we've been pretty good about collective investment and risk.
Asking for direct obvious returns from research funds means much useful research won't get done, and researchers will focus on more incremental surer bets (like industrial research or startups). We'd just completely kill our society's competitiveness and might as well start learning Chinese to better welcome our Han overlords.
The entire U.S. system of public high tech investment is mostly done under the pretext of military spending. The military has specific objectives and is looking for clear ROI, but that doesn't impair their ability to invest in core science. They just take a longer term view.
Licensing core tech (instead of giving it away) is not the same as asking for direct returns. It's just giving the taxpayers their fair share of the eventual returns on their investment, instead of letting VCs collect it all.
The whole space program was about developing ICBMs. WII led to huge technological advances (computers for one), etc...
I'm not sure what the mix today is between military-oriented and social-oriented spending is. The fed obviously give lots of money to lots of research universities, medical oriented research with no obvious military applications coming up at the top of list.
For example: #12 The PC (1973), this is Butler Lampson's work on Alto while at PARC. MIT (the university) had nothing to do with it. Also, #17 TCP/IP (1977), Bob Kahn was at MIT for 2 years or so a decade before working on TCP/IP.
Including such things takes away attention from "pure" MIT inventions e.g., RSA (all of that work was done by Ron Rivest while at MIT).
my favorite is the GUI. While many credit XEROX with the GUI, most of the ideas came out of the quite amazing Sketchpad by Ivan Sutherland. As an MIT student, this list makes awesome reading!
Here is the relevant snippet:
Nearly 50 years before the iPad, an MIT PhD student had already come up with the idea of directly interfacing with a computer screen. Ivan Sutherland’s “Sketchpad” allowed users to draw geometric shapes with a touch-pen, pioneering the practice of “computer-assisted drafting” that has proven vital for architects, planners, and now even toddlers.
The work demonstrated by Engelbart in his MOD was actually done at SRI, which then inspired XEROX.
When Alan Kay started his PhD at U of Utah, he was given Sutherland's dissertation to start off with (where Sutherland was a professor). That eventually led to his ground breaking Dynapad concept.
"50 ways that MIT has transformed computer science"
This is really misleading and makes MIT look bad. It's just spin.
MIT has done plenty of great work; there is no need to try to take credit for things that they really can't lay claim to.
Many examples elsewhere in the comments, but I'll throw in that Ethernet was not invented at MIT. I know the main title now says "MIT-related", but the article is not so modest.
Somewhere in between music school and programming for a living, I had the superficially nonsensical epiphany that algorithms and data structures were essentially music... just another language for expressing ideas about combinations and time. It's interesting to see this other perspective... an algorithm expressed as a song for the purpose of clearly communicating how it works.
The title should be "50 ways that MIT has transformed computer industry".
Not too much are about "computer science".
To say that MIT has transformed computer industry, it should include include someone like Leslie Lamport.
Well Lisp itself is a Stanford invention. Scheme is an MIT invention. I agree that Scheme deserves a mention though, even though it isn't widely popular, it certainly transformed how people thought about education and things like garbage collection.
"While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet readily available for home and office use."
Because inaction in response to federal charges being brought against an unconnected individual outweighs more than 100 years of academic contribution.
I think this actually played into Swartz case. That possibly MIT didn't want waken a moral/ethical discussion around technology which is exactly what Aaron was trying to do. His message wasn't dangerous, but the conclusion of it means that the the army of engineers who work on MIT's weapons programs could disrupt a huge cash cow.
Is there a school that's done more for computer science than MIT? I can think of a few contenders - and obviously this is largely subjective - but when I think computer science in the U.S. I think MIT, Stanford and Cal-Poly in that order.
This. I agree that there is an element of subjectivity to it (Is Cambridge better than Oxford?), but I think it is simply impossible to successfully defend the claim that (as an example) The University of Phoenix has made more contributions to computer science than, say, Berkeley.
One way — not the only way, but a reasonable way — to measure it is by the # of Turing Award laureates[0]. Cal Poly isn't even on the list. (Neither is it on the list of Nobel Prize winners, for what it's worth).
It's interesting that they include the FSF, Internet Archive, Creative Commons, and Open Courseware among their "computer science" contributions. These are more political than scientific, although some of them did end up contributing massively to the development of computer science.
Now let's talk about some ways in which MIT hindered the development of computer science, including political hindrances.
1. Complicity in the persecution of Aaron Swartz (2011)
On the other hand, when I think of MIT, the most important contribution to Computer Science that comes to my mind is Seth Gilbert and Nancy Lynch's proof to Brewer's Conjecture, famously called CAP theorem. This proof is so profound, so important to Computer Science and the way we build large-scale computer systems today. And d'uh, it has been left out.
This looks like pure marketing to me. And in some sense misleading.