The Myth of the Global Village: How Technology Divides Us

Speaker

Nicholas Carr

About the Speaker

Nicholas Carr is a compelling writer and speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, economics, and culture. He is currently the Richmond Visiting Professor at Williams College in Massachusetts and was formerly the executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. A journalist by trade, Carr is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010), a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller, and The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (2014), which examines the personal, social, and business consequences of our ever-growing dependency on computers, robots, and apps. His most recent book, Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations (2016), uses a collection of his seminal essays to further explore the Internet’s impact on society. Carr is also the author of two other influential books, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008), which the Financial Times calls “the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing,” and Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage (2004). Carr has written for The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Wired, Nature, and MIT Technology Review, and his books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Streaming Media

Location

Fort Howard Theater at St. Norbert

Start Date

2-21-2019 7:00 PM

Description

In Nicholas Carr's provocative and counterintuitive lecture, The Myth of the Global Village: How Technology Divides Us, he will discuss why more information can lead to shallower thinking and more communication can bring greater societal strife. This is contrary to the presumption that the internet would democratize media and knowledge, making people smarter and society more harmonious. Mr. Carr will suggest that only by recognizing how technology amplifies our worst as well as our best traits can we begin to make better decisions about how we design and use smartphones, social media, and other digital products.