[Editors] NYT article on Norbert Wiener from Institute Archives & Special Collections

[David L Chandler]

Hi Myles,

I take your point, but I think in this particular instance one could also interpret the "languished" reference to mean that scholars haven't taken advantage of this archive as much as they might have, at least until now. And specifically, that  this quite interesting essay apparently had not been made publicly available until now, and getting it out seems like a good thing.

One question that doesn't seem to be clearly answered in the intro is whether Wiener's first draft still exists anywhere, or whether that got lost in the process, which would be very sad. (And it's interesting that John Markoff at the Times doesn't seem to understand why the editors back then didn't just "keep a copy." The Xerox machine first came out in 1959, so in 1949 there really was no feasible way they could have.)

David


--------------------------------------
David L. Chandler
Energy, engineering and materials science writer
MIT News Office
room 11-400
(617) 253-2704


On May 21, 2013, at 10:31 AM, Myles P Crowley wrote:

> Dear Editors:
> 
> As is usually the case in articles about archival materials , this one annoyingly suggests that things go to archives to be hidden, not to be discovered. Wiener's papers haven't "languished for six decades." They've been responsibly preserved and shepherded for six decades. But stereotype persist.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Myles
> 
> Myles Crowley
> Administrative Assistant & Reference Associate
> Institute Archives and Special Collections
> MIT Libraries, Bldg. 14N-118
> 617-253-5690
> mcrowley at mit.edu
>  
> http://libraries.mit.edu/archives
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> From: nytdirect at nytimes.com [mailto:nytdirect at nytimes.com] 
> Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 7:07 PM
> To: Myles P Crowley
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> In 1949, He Imagined an Age of Robots
> By JOHN MARKOFF
> “The Machine Age,” an essay written for The New York Times by Norbert Wiener, a visionary mathematician, languished for six decades in the M.I.T. archives, and now excerpts are being published.
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