Caution: Geniuses at Work and Play

"An affectionate look at the wacky wizards of that Nerd World Country, M.I.T."

---from Readers' Digest, October 1986 condensed from the New England Monthly

Alexander Theroux

I grew up in Medford, Mass. where, tough and cool, we used to refer to M.I.T. as the "Mental Institute for the Touched". This was actually the opposite of what we felt. Whenever I passed its courtyard off Memorial Drive in Cambridge, looking up at the dome and reading the historic names on the buildings, I felt a secret stir of reverence. I later taught at M.I.T. for three years, and still feel the same.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded in 1862, is a place matchless in a thousand ways, the virtual symbol of wizardry, scientific genius, and technological innovation. Jay W. Forrester, who invented the magnetic memory for computers, is an M.I.T. Alumnus. Other M.I.T. scientists include Prof. John Sheehan, who synthesized penicillin; alumnus Claude E. Shannon and Prof. Norbert Wiener, pioneers in the field of intelligent machines; and four astronauts who landed on the moon. The New York Times rates M.I.T. as "this country's most prestigious technological institute."

There are inevitable comparisons to Harvard, its formidable rival down the street. (Harvard attempted to annex M.I.T. in 1870, and several times since.) [We have also tried to annex them. M.] A story is told of a fellow at Cambridge supermarket standing in an express checkout line limited to ten items; he has fifteen. "That's either an M.I.T. student who can't read," so the joke goes, "or a Harvard student who can't count."

There's a Harvard look, a sort of self-congratulatory slovenliness. Nothing like this exists at M.I.T.; the students have no time for it. At Harvard, they say, the main difficulty is getting in; at M.I.T. the difficulty is getting out. [This is also true-- most people here wouldn't mind staying at MIT for the rest of their careers. M.]

The workload is ferocious. An education at M.I.T. has been described as trying to take a drink from a fire hose. [Another joke is that we get hosed and our parents get soaked. M.] A student needs 360 credits to graduate. One course in aeronautical engineering takes a minimum of 14 hours a week. [Any guesses which one? K.L.] [Kevin is referring to Unified, which I will tell you about. M.]

Many students are caffeine freaks who stay awake for days to complete lab projects and term papers. I've met seniors who because of work have scarcely ever traveled across the bridge to Boston. The grim student joke about the school colors, cardinal and gray, is apposite-- "blood on concrete."

M.I.T. is the West Point of technology. Students come from over 97 countries. But corridors are long, buildings gray; loneliness is a problem, silence pervades the place. [Not completely true-- the silence is because people communicate over zephyr instead of speech. M.] People communicate by posters and wall notices [Before the era of zephyr, I guess. K.L.] And although there were 2340 women in 1987 and most of the dorms are coed, it doesn't matter. Work is a refrigerant; tension and grief are anaphrodisiacs.

Oddly enough, though, the social calendar is far from infirm. There are supposedly more clubs at M.I.T. than anywhere else. There's the Soaring Associatin, Tech Model Railroad Club, and a singing group called the Chorallaries. There is even a Tiddlywinks Association.

Besides hard work, M.I.T. owes its success to unusual teaching. "The fundamental note is research-- finding out something new on your own," M.I.T graduate David O. Woodbury once wrote. In one course, each student is given a box containing springs, wood, wire, motors, and other components-- and asked to design a machine.

Such a challenge attracts genius. The place has long been a mecca for "nerds"-- people who get so lost in their studies that knowledge becomes a way of life. To most of us, these single-minded young idealists seem weird. In fact, they are among the most complicated, least understood mortals on earth. [Some of the most fun, too. M.]

The unofficial sport at M.I.T. is "hacking". A hack, briefly, is a prank. Computer hacking originated with students trying to get into the computer rooms at night in order to have more time with the machines. There are hackers who, with a bobby pin, can snap a deadbolt or mortise-cylinder lock in seconds. They have acted out ingenious plots in dangerous air shafts, through roof doors and into machine rooms, then signed off with logos such as "Thumbsucker" or "Mr. McWeenie". [This is along the lines of what we do. M.]

Not all hackers are nerds, but all nerds are hackers. There are pinball hackers, chess hackers, astronomy hackers. The more complicated and more challenging the task, the better; for, like finding the inverse of a large matrix, it's the difficulty which makes it fun.

Common hacks have involved putting a life-size plastic cow on a roof and walling up dorm rooms (with or without occupant). M.I.T. students have welded the Harvard gates shut and reprogrammed the carillion in the Harvard bell tower to play "Rock Around the Clock".

The most memorable hack took place at the Harvard-Yale football game in 1982. Just after a Harvard touchdown in the second quarter, a small black ball popped out of the ground at the 46-yard line and grew bigger and bigger, the letters M.I.T. appearing on it. The ball grew to six feet in diameter and then burst with a bang and a cloud of smoke. As the Boston Globe later reported, "M.I.T. won the game."

What is a nerd, exactly? At M.I.T., it is a priesthood of sorts, a group of gifted, but often socially inept students who manage to avoid high-level courses, like calculus and physics, by acing tests, which gives them time to sit around discussing cyborgs or trying to figure out the formula for Coca-Cola.

The M.I.T. nerd is a combination of irreverence, idealism and genius. He has memorized pi to its 50th decimal place. [Most people I know only know about 10 or 20 digits-- I know 7. M.] He is able to fix telephones and wire bombs. He's absorbed by the way things work, one of those rare species still found in college who uses his mind for fun. That's finally what's so wonderful about M.I.T. nerds-- they're intellectuals.

Boston broadcaster Christopher Lydon says their genius may save us in scientific competition with Japan, a "whole nation of nerds". And, oh my, M.I.T. nerds are different. Growing up they wore little plastic Donald Duck glasses and they loved to watch their mothers ironing. They were experts on hamsters. Much of their time was spent in the cellar, constructing transformers.

Most are still sartorial goofballs. They pull their pants up too high and wear short-sleeved orlon shirts buttoned up at the top, with collars too long and pointy, and about a foot of belt hanging limp in front. [Not all of them look like this. M.] They use plastic pocket holders-nerd packs- filled with pens and pencils. In the winter, they actually put on black galoshes with ladder clips and out-of-fashion pullover hats with earmuffs. Personal vanity doesn't obtain with them; they're more interested in cult movies and being the first to own an HP-41CV, the ultimate nerd calculator.

The students at M.I.T. tend to come from small high schools in places such as Omaha, or Winnetka, Ill. Many have a chipmunkish look or resemble their fathers early on, with a hairline that began receeding by age ten. They tend to be politically conservative. [Not! M.] A certain type might argue about defense buildup, but most would rather be building acoustical stereos or baffle boards.

I find it heartening that the M.I.T. nerds habitually resist conventional academic pressure. They prefer playing Dungeons and Dragons, fixing old computers, or going to crazy movies. Surprisingly they don't like to study-- though they are challenged by other people's homework. [How true-- everyone is very willing to do mine rather than theirs. M.] They're notorious for quitting school, founding software companies in garages somewhere, and becoming millionaires at 22.

I've taught them and been to their rooms, which are either a mess, or maniacally neat. [The Center for Entropic Studies, perhaps? M.] A mobile or two. Magnetic tape spools. Science-fiction novels. Stereo components everywhere. And last but not least, of course, is the computer.

What really matters is the computer. It is a constant friend. Computers are to nerds what paprika is to Hungarians. And there they sit, hacking away into the wee hours, eyes like glassine, tap, tap, tapping on the Chiclets. Nerds rarely want to stop-- which explains their passion for junk food, as well as their bad complexions.

Some scientists believe there is a 50-percent chance that, by the year 2000, computers will be able to cope with most human activities. Computer programs are already able to pinpointing metal deposits and diagnosing human diseases, much like a human specialist.

But finally, artificial intelligence is about something much more interesting: the nature of thought itself. The computer will teach us about ourselves as it sweeps us into the 21st century. And that century is already inhabited by the nerds of M.I.T.