UC Institute for Software Research
 |
Professor, School of Information and Vice Provost for Academic
Information, University of Michigan
|
February 6
Friday
Refreshments and Networking: 1:30 - 2:00
Presentation: 2:00 - 3:30
Faculty Host: Prof. Richard
N. Taylor,
ISR Director
RSVP: Email RSVP required to Jessica Garcia at
by Monday February 2.
Location: Donald Bren Hall (building #314), room 6011
Cost: No cost to attend.
Directions and parking information are available.
Abstract: This talk is in the grand tradition of turning the inanimate
into metaphor for the animate. It's a fool's errand, to be sure, but it can
be jolly fun and, with luck, instructive. The purpose of this endeavor is
to knock together two things we don't understand very well -- society and
software -- and see if we can learn something. The exercise is a form of non-destructive
testing: neither software nor society will be injured in the process. A former
UCI faculty member once said that the law is just software. And Larry Lessig
said that both software and law are "code." If one digs far enough
back into the history of ICS, one can find reference to "procedures and
procedure-followers." Things
of this sort form the basis of a set of conjectures about society and software
that hopefully enhance our understanding and uphold the honor of the fool's
errand.
About the Speaker: John Leslie King is Vice Provost for Academic Information
and Professor and former dean in the School of Information at the University
of Michigan. He has published more than 150 books and articles on the relationship
between information technologies and institutional change. His work focuses
primarily on IT use and effect in highly institutionalized production sectors,
including government, education, health care, transport, finance, electric
power utilities, and common carrier communications. He served as Editor in
Chief of the INFORMS Journal Information Systems Research, and associate editor
for many other journals. He has recently served on the Board of Directors of
the Computing Research Association, and is currently a Senior Scientific Advisor
with the National Science Foundation, and a member of the advisory committees
for the NSF Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering,
and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. He was until recently a senior
scientific advisor for cyberinfrastructure for the National Science Foundation
as well as a member of the the NSF advisory committee for Computer and Information
Science and Engineering. He is currently on the NSF advisory committees for
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and for Cyberinfrastructure. He is
a member of the Council of the Computing Community Consortium. King is a Fellow
of the Association for Information Systems and a Fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science.