HAI Weekly Seminar with John Markoff - Second Thoughts on Digital Utopianism

Bio: John Markoff is HAI’s Journalist-in-Residence. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences or CASBS, participating in projects focusing on the future of work and artificial intelligence. He is currently researching a biography of Stewart Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. Previously he was a Berggruen Fellow at CASBS. He has also been a staff historian at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Until 2017, he was a reporter at The New York Times, beginning in March 1988 as the paper’s national computer writer. Prior to joining the Times, he worked for the San Francisco Examiner. He has written about technology for Pacific News Service. He was a reporter at Infoworld and West Coast editor for Byte Magazine and wrote a column on personal computers for the San Jose Mercury. He has also been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism and an adjunct faculty member of the Stanford Graduate Program on Journalism. In 2013 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting as part of a New York Times project on labor and automation. In 2007, he was named a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, the organization’s highest honor. In June of 2010, the New York Times presented him with the Nathaniel Nash Award, which is given annually for foreign and business reporting. He is the co-author of The High Cost of High Tech, published by Harper & Row. He co-wrote Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier published Simon & Schuster. Hyperion published Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw, which he co-authored with Tsutomu Shimomura. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, was published by Viking Books. Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, was published by HarperCollins Ecco. Markoff grew up in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. He attended graduate school at the University of Oregon and received a masters degree in sociology.