6:00 - Social Hour (BYOB)
7:00 - Presentation

BYOB - Adaptive Path will provide soft drinks and snacks. Feel free to bring your own beverages.

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Ancient Information Architecture

“Computer science is currently so successful,” wrote the philosopher Werner Kunzel, “that it has no use for its own history.” The technology industry’s relentless fixation on the future has led to a kind of collective historical amnesia, often blinding us to the rich history of information systems that preceded the digital age. In this presentation, writer and information architect Alex Wright will take us on a tour of the deep history of information systems, drawing on material his recently published book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. From ancient folk taxonomies to Ice Age social networks, classical libraries to medieval memory palaces, Renaissance encyclopedias to early computer networks, people have spent tens of thousands of years developing strategies for coping with an ever-growing stream of data. Along the way, we will look for patterns of information-sharing that seem to recur throughout human history, examining the historical relationship between information technology and social change.

Bio
Alex Wright is a writer and information architect who currently works for the New York Times. His articles have appeared in Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The Believer, Harvard Magazine, and other national and regional publications. As an information architect, Alex has led projects for Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, Harvard University, The Long Now Foundation, and the Internet Archive, among others. He has previously spoken at Gartner Group, the Institute of Design-Chicago, UC-Berkeley, the ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit, Seybold, and various Web industry conferences. Alex holds an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a B.A. In English and American Literature from Brown University. He writes regularly about technology and design at http://www.alexwright.org/

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