In Defense of the Infinite Corridor (MIT)

Occasionally I come across challenges to MIT’s Infinite Corridor based on its length compared to other corridors that may or may not exist elsewhere in the same universe. Of course, it is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that at a mere 147.491 Smoots from its entrance in building seven to the exit at building eight, the apparent length of the corridor is not very great. After all, the bridge connecting Boston to MIT measures a full 374.4 Smoots +/- one ear.

For a full explanation, I’ll draw on two of my fictional characters, walking the corridor for the first time in 1961, about the time that “IHTFP” became the de facto motto of the undergraduate student body.
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“So this is what they call “the Infinite Corridor.” Bill said to me as we walked along the lengthy hallway from Building Seven to Building Fourteen.

“Don’t they also call it something else, Stonehenge or something?”

“ MIT-henge, I think,” he replied.

To the uninitiated, we were walking from MIT’s main entrance on Mass. Ave toward the Hayden Memorial Library. MIT people communicated largely in numbers: buildings, courses, departments, were all identified that way.

The Infinite Corridor is the hallway, 251 meters (825 feet, 0.16 miles) long, that runs through the main buildings of MIT. This corridor, which at its midpoint passes directly under the Great Dome, serves as the most direct indoor route between the east and west ends of the campus.

As for MIT-henge, on several days each year, the sun sets in alignment with the Infinite Corridor and shines along its entire length. "MIT-henge" is a reference to Stonehenge's alignment with the sun. This occurs on several days around January 31 and November 11.

Myself, I never considered it “Infinite” because of its length, as that would define infinity as linear, and we all know that, like our life stories, infinity always turns back upon itself. It was actually one of four to nine connecting corridors, one on each floor. Intersecting on each level were U-shaped corridors bending back to their start. Staircases stood in each intersection. Every serious physics student is familiar with the Möbius Strip, a model of infinity that can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then joining the ends of the strip together to form a loop. M. C. Escher has a famous example, “Möbius Strip II”, featuring ants crawling endlessly around the surface of one. Add his “Ascending and Descending” to represent the staircases and you have a well decorated dorm room. Escher’s prints were popular items at our bookstore, “The MIT COOP.”

These corridors and stairways of MIT, with pipes exposed overhead and radiation and electrical warnings on many doors, were all painted a drab grey-green, giving MIT an industrial era appearance contrasting starkly with the classical architecture of Harvard and Wellesley. Some of my classmates would dream they were lost forever in this maze. My nightmare was that the corridors were bones, and that the buildings had decayed away, leaving only the rib cage of a vast evil leviathan to bleach on the muddy shores of the Charles. And rumors persist that on moonless nights you may still encounter the ghost of Claude Shannon on his unicycle, juggling as he propels himself through the maze.

You might note that today MIT has many new buildings on campus, many connecting with the original network of corridors. But remember, if the corridor is already infinite, adding all those new connections doesn’t increase the length at all.

You can find an interactive map of the current MIT campus here.

The explanation above is drawn from “Killer App –A Murder at MIT,” my novel in progress.

MIT and India Build a Global Force in IT

I never once suspected how large a role MIT played in building India into the force it is today in the global IT industry, despite my having attended many meetings stressing the symbiotic relationship between MIT and Entrepreneurship. Recently, Professor Ed Roberts described the significant contributions to the US economy made by foreign students who attended MIT and subsequently started companies here. Then I received the following invitation to a lecture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA:


“In the last fifteen years the very names Bangalore and Silicon Valley have become evocative of the important connections between India and the United States in the global IT industry. Historian Ross Bassett argues that the linkages between the two countries are far older and deeper than is widely known. In the course of his research, he found that Indian graduates of MIT, to a remarkable extent, significantly influenced the creation of modern technological India. In the colonial period, a small group of Indians, including some associated with Gandhi, went to MIT as an anti-colonial act and as a way to develop technological capabilities for India. Indian graduates of MIT played a key role in the founding of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), and in the years after 1947, were central figures in the Indian steel industry, the atomic program, and the space program. The Indian IT industry today is to an astounding degree the product of Indian graduates of MIT. Since 1965, Indian graduates of MIT and graduates of MIT once removed---that is graduates of the IITs---have also played an increasingly important role in American technology and computing.”

Alas, I won’t be able to attend this lecture, which is being held on Thursday, July 15. The Museum runs a variety of intellectually stimulating events such as this one. At the very least, I would recommend you visit their web site and subscribe to their electronic newsletter. Having been one of the founders of the original Digital Computer Museum, located here in Boston on Museum Wharf, it continues to sadden me that it moved to California. You can view a video describing the origin and goals of the museum here.

One museum function that I did attend was celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the IBM System/360. That night’s entire program can also be seen on video, although they stopped filming just as Bill Worthington and I joined Gene Amdahl, Fred Brooks, and many other members of the original team cutting the birthday cake.

Now about that outsourcing............

The iPad's Impact On Other Devices

Resolve Market Research has just completed a comprehensive study that looks at how the iPad is being used, and how the iPad is impacting other technology devices like e-readers, portable gaming consoles and netbooks. You can read more about it here.

The Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week 100

Yesterday, I wrote that Joe Caruso was hoping to recruit 100 thought leaders for a Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week  (BREW) to be held the week of Oct. 12, 2010. Joe was concerned that time was short to plan and organize this event.

Joe just got his 100th member, just 24 hours after he asked. It is quite an impressive group. Opinion leader or not, you can join the group here. Should that fail, go to Linkedin and look up “Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week.”

I tip my straw hat to Joe Caruso and his 100 BREW volunteers.

Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research

The last time I wrote about Morgan Stanley presentations, they had just published their report on the mobile internet. Now, just seven months later, the mobile internet has become just the internet. These reports contain great data for anyone who is preparing a business plan for a new venture.

Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research

View more presentations from CM Summit: Marketing in Real Time.

A new BREW: the Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week in October

A number of our very active local Angel Investors have cooked up a plan to designate the week of Oct. 12 as Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week. Present at the inception were Angel-at-Large Joe Caruso and Unconference Disorganizer Bill Warner, joined by Chris Sheehan, Dharmesh Shah, John Landry, and Jean Hammond.

“We're trying to expand Bill Warner's Unconference into a week of activity and celebration for entrepreneurial activities in Boston. We were just talking about the idea, and suddenly it has taken on a life of its own,” says Caruso, who hopes to involve Angel Groups, Venture Capitalists, technology-based corporations, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“We are hoping to get 100 thought leaders onboard very quickly,” says Caruso. He’s off to a good start. He set up a Linkedin group this morning and by midday he had 23 members.”

Opinion leader or not, you can join the group here. Should that fail, go to Linkedin and look up “Boston Regional Entrepreneurship Week.”

You can also contribute to discussions on Linkedin. I suggested to Joe that they expand the boundaries of the group beyond those regularly honored, running roughly from Microsoft NERD to the Longfellow Bridge, then West to the Kendall Square Red Line Stop, and South to the Stata Building at MIT. Using Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker Poster, “View of the World” as a guide, Joe promises to consider the idea.

New Hampshire’s New Start-Up Accelerator

A team of technology entrepreneurs led by Mark Galvin has partnered with the University of New Hampshire (UNH) to launch a new startup business accelerator - the New Hampshire Innovation Commercialization Center (NH-ICC). The goal of this nonprofit center, located at the Pease Tradeport, is to create new jobs in the region by selecting high potential early stage companies and providing them with a combination of business resources, seed capital and “hands on involvement” by seasoned startup executives.

UNH, which has developed a strong entrepreneurial culture through spin-off companies, by housing the internationally respected Center for Venture Research, and through its campus-wide Holloway Business Plan competition, provided startup capital for the NH-ICC as well as expertise in creating the unique public-private relationship. The NH-ICC will work to facilitate the use of university research by its resident companies through licensing and royalty agreements. UNH will also provide resident companies with student research assistants and mentors from its colleges, including the Whittemore School of Business and Economics.

“This is a great opportunity for the university to support technology entrepreneurship both on our campus and in our community, while at the same time leveraging our resources to help support the creation of private sector jobs in the state,” said UNH President Mark W. Huddleston. “Turning the university’s intellectual capital into commercial opportunities as a way not only to expand revenue streams but to enhance economic development and job creation in the state is a key component of the university’s 10-year strategic plan and I’m pleased we are well on the way to seeing results.”

“The economic downturn of the past two years has taken a significant toll on the New Hampshire startup community, where a host of innovative new technologies – not to mention local jobs - are languishing on the sidelines because of the lack of a viable path to commercialization,” said Mark Galvin, the founder of Whaleback Systems in Portsmouth, Cedar Point Communications in Derry and managing director of the NH-ICC. “The NH-ICC will provide a path for promising early stage companies to bring their products to market while also creating sustainable, high-value private sector jobs in the state.”

Added Galvin, “UNH has played a critical role in getting this initiative off the ground, providing both resources and funding. We look forward to helping the university accelerate the commercialization of its research, inventions and technology while also using the NH-ICC to attract entrepreneurs from throughout New England to build their startup business in New Hampshire.”

The NH-ICC will select up to 12 seed stage technology companies on a rolling 12-month basis and “graduate” resident companies after 18 months with the expectation that they will remain in New Hampshire, grow rapidly and create new jobs. The NH-ICC’s operations will be funded through a seed investment from UNH, private investment fund management fees and carried interest, and matching business development grants. Selected resident companies will receive $100,000 to $250,000 in seed funding from the private investment fund.



UNH has had a strong entrepreneurial focus since at least 1984, when the Center for Venture Research was created within the Whittemore School of Business and Economics. Currently led by Director Jeffrey Sohl, the Center studies early stage equity financing for high growth ventures.

The Whittemore School Holloway Prize Innovation-to-Market Competition, established in 1988, is designed to stimulate entrepreneurship throughout the University System of New Hampshire. A short video of this year’s final round is available on WMUR's Chronicle.

In 2001, the first company was spun off from UNH. Chaoticom, a joint project of the Math Department and the Whittemore School, received seed funding from the eCoast Angels Investment Network.

Now,  in 2010, we have NH-ICC. AT IBM in the 1960s, we knew it was summer when the Branch Manager switched to his straw hat.  This summer, I tip my straw hat to Mark Galvin for getting this accelerator launched.