The MIT Sloan School in Cambridge, MA is launching its next-generation Web site and a new Internet
curriculum initiative, along with a Digital Time Capsule that will be “sealed”
in the cornerstone of the school’s new Web site.
The capsule contains digitized representations, drawn from the Internet, of
the people, places, products, events, trends and news shaping business and the
Internet in early 1999. The contents have been encrypted into the capsule,
which will be opened in 2004.
The capsule also contains dozens of predictions from scholars, entrepreneurs,
public officials and celebrities, including Dean Richard Schmalensee,
businessmen such as Kofi Annan and Bill Gates; scholars and inventors, even
Martha Stewart offering their predictions about the Internet in 2004.
The Sloan School said it is making a dramatic statement that it is necessary
to pause and consider where life on the Internet is headed, particularly in
business terms. What seems dubious or impossible now may well be commonplace
in five years.
“There
is simply no question that one will marvel at how primitive some of these
contents are and how suggestive they are about trends that subsequently
overwhelmed society,” the school said in a statement.
The new e-commerce and marketing curriculum is an MBA program track that will
be ready for student enrollment by the fall semester 1999, and is part of a
new multi-disciplinary research and education program on electronic commerce
and marketing being developed by Sloan.
“The extraordinary advancement of information technology in home and business
along with the exploding use of the Internet
are transforming management in general and marketing in particular,” said
Schmalensee. “. . .The
school is in an ideal position to bring together the expertise at MIT with
students and industry partners to advance both the understanding and practice
of electronic commerce.”
The new MBA management track, the educational component of the program, will
be added to the seven such tracks now offered at Sloan. A unique concept in
business education, the tracks are comprised of an interdisciplinary mix of
courses along with exposure to industry practices. Other tracks include New
Product and Venture Development, Financial Engineering, and Strategic
Management and Consulting.