The Information Revolution and the Study of Information in a Networked World
Martha Pollack, Professor and Dean of the School of Information,
University of Michigan
Monday, October 19, 1:30-2:30 PM
Loew 355
Refreshments will be served
Talk abstract:
The information revolution has changed everything: the ways we
socialize and communicate; the ways we entertain ourselves; and the
way businesses, schools and governments work. From Facebook to the
White House web site, from Netflix movie recommendations to Ebay,
information systems affect our daily lives in countless ways. At the
heart of these changes is a transformation in how we generate,
collect, analyze, store, preserve, visualize, link, and disseminate
information. The study of these transformations forms the basis for
the exciting new field of information, which combines the perspectives
and methods of technical fields such as computer science with social
scientific ones like psychology and economics. This talk will
illustrate instances of information research, organized around topics
such as social media, pervasive computing, network science, and
collaboration technology–and will then place this research in the
broader context of the “iSchool movement.” Finally, it will describe
paths for doctoral education focusing on the design, development, use
and evaluation of information technology and systems.