The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

Allen further observed that shared spaces through which every member of an organization passes at least once a day are especially useful encounter promoters. He offered as an example MIT’s “Infinite Corridor,” an 825-foot-long hallway that runs through several buildings, effectively extending from one side of the campus to the other. (That’s longer than two football fields, although MIT students are less apt to be interested in football than in . . . other things. Undergraduates at the university celebrate the moment each school year when the sun lines up in just the right spot to beam its rays directly down the long hallway. They call it MIThenge.) More recent research has confirmed Allen’s original findings; in the age of texting, email, and Slack, the Allen curve still applies. Online communication, it seems, is no substitute for the offhand conversation, the casual exchange carried out in person.