Blown to Bits | Harry Lewis & Hal Abelson | Talks at Google
14Wherever you go, whatever you say, write, photograph, or buy, you are generating information. That information can be captured, digitized, retrieved, and copied--anywhere on Earth, instantly. Sophisticated computers can increasingly uncover meaning in those digital tracesunderstanding, anticipating, and influencing you as never before. Is this utopia? Or the dawning of a 1984/Brave New World horror world? Whatever you call it, it's happening. What kind of world are we creating? What will it be like to live there?
Blown to Bits offers powerful and controversial answers to these questions and gives you the knowledge you need to help shape your own digital future, not let others do it for you. Building on their pioneering joint MIT/Harvard course, the authors reveal how the digital revolution is changing everything, in ways that are stunning even the most informed experts.
Hal Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and an IEEE Fellow. He has helped drive innovative educational technology initiatives such MIT OpenCourseWare, cofounded Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, and was founding director of the Free Software Foundation. Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard. He is author of Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future.
This event took place on June 25, 2008
License: CC-BY (2.5)