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LOW JINKS
Passing fancy

BY CHRIS WRIGHT

The high-tech wiseass has long been an icon at MIT. In 1982, a group of anonymous MIT smart alecks planted a weather balloon under the sod at Harvard Stadium, inflating it midway through a crucial Harvard-MIT football game. In 1994, a bunch of brainiacs deposited a police cruiser — life-size, with flashing lights — atop MIT’s Great Dome. In 1996, Al Gore’s MIT commencement speech was occasionally interrupted by yelps of joy as attendees played “Buzzword Bingo.”

This sort of thing, of course, has been going on at MIT for years. And while school administrators haven't exactly applauded such antics, they have, for the past decade, provided the school's famously enterprising practical jokers with a gallery in which to display their plastic cows, goofy banners, and airborne police cruisers. But not for much longer. On March 4, the MIT Museum's Hall of Hacks will close its doors for the last time — not, museum officials insist, because of a clampdown on such antics, but because of “space” issues. Still, the closure of the beloved hack museum has already caused some MITers to get their Zip drives in a twist.

Elaborate pranks are no joke at MIT. For many, they are as much a part of the school’s identity as Nobel Laureates and impaired fashion sense. The Hall of Hacks is held up not only as proof that geeks can be funny, but as an exemplification of the school’s commitment to engineering excellence.

“I think it’s a very important exhibition,” says Marc Abrahams, editor of the satirical journal The Annals of Improbable Research. “It shows that the best engineers always find a way to get something done, no matter what the obstacles, no matter what the constraints.” The Hall of Hacks, he adds, “is the gold standard, the platinum standard, the tritium standard” of technical innovation.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic. “One of the issues with the Hall of Hacks,” says museum director Jane Pickering, “is that it’s wonderful for the MIT community, but it can be very alienating for our public. They walk in and say, ‘What’s this?’ ”

The new exhibit — a more generalized look at campus life — will feature voguish interactive doodads and high-impact visuals. It will be called “Designing Minds.” “Designing Minds?” says one MIT insider. “Oh, God. Oh, jeez.”

“We know people will be disappointed,” says Pickering. “There’s no doubt about that.” But Pickering is quick to point out that the new museum will retain a few of the old antic artifacts, and that others will be distributed around the campus. “We don’t just want to put them in the basement,” she says. “We don’t want these things hidden away.”

Even so, when the Hall of Hacks goes, a large chunk of MIT history will go with it. And maybe that’s a part of the MIT tradition, too. “The moment you say ‘Let time stop,’ ” says professor emeritus Jerome Lettvin, “then you’re dead.”

“Museums are not now as they once were: places to wonder in and enjoy,” he continues. “They are places to make more money to make more museums. And the hacks now are very different from the hacks of the past. So a museum of that kind is a pleasure for those of us who lived through the days, but not necessarily an inspiration to new generations, or a delight to new administrators.”

The MIT Museum is located at 265 Mass Ave in Cambridge; call (617) 253-4444. Ultimate Hack Week takes place February 27 through March 4. Visitors are encouraged to vote for their favorite hacks or to make suggestions regarding the relocation of the exhibits, either in person or by sending an e-mail to museum@mit.edu