If you are both thrilled and disturbed by the increasingly pervasive presence of the Internet, cell phones, and GPS tracking, come to hear former Dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis discuss his new book, Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion (Addison-Wesley, 2008).
If you have a cell phone, you also have a location-tracking device so your whereabouts can be tracked constantly and a microphone that can be turned on remotely and a radio that can beam your conversation away. If you use the Internet, you can be connected to people you would never have met, people who share your deepest interests and most unusual problems; you and your children can with equal ease be connected to scam artists and predators. You have at your fingertips the most powerful instrument of human enlightenment since the printing press, and the most flexible instrument of thought control ever invented. Will our children live in a world of greater understanding and enhanced freedom, or of manipulated information and pervasive monitoring? In Blown to Bits, Lewis and co-authors Hal Abelson and Ken Ledeen explore the peril and promise of our digital future.
Harry Lewis has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1974 and is currently Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. From 1995 through 2003 he was Dean of Harvard College, responsible for oversight of undergraduate affairs, and in 2003 was named Harvard College Professor in recognition of his outstanding teaching. He holds the AB, AM, and PhD degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard. His other books include Excellence without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? (Public Affairs, 2006), and Elements of the Theory of Computation (Prentice-Hall, 1981, 1997). He is teaching Computer Science E-2a, Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion, in the 2008-2009 Fall Term at Harvard’s Extension School (also available through distance learning).
Registration:
The cost for the lunch and speaker program is: $25 for each Harvard Club member,
$25 for a member's first guest and $35 for each additional guest or nonmember.
To sign up, please send your check (payable to the Harvard Club of the Research
Triangle) to Bill Joyner, 309 North Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.
Please provide the name of each attendee, your phone number and email address,
and any dietary restrictions with your check. Send your check and also RSVP by email to Bill
Joyner at
william.joyner@src.org before Noon,
Monday, November 10.
Questions? Contact Bill at
william.joyner@src.org,
919-929-7246.
Location: Radisson Hotel, 150 Park Drive, RTP
Time: Thursday, November 13, lunch 12-2
Directions: Heading East on I-40, take exit 280 (Davis Drive) and at top of exit ramp, go straight across Davis Drive onto Park Drive. Follow Park Drive a short distance until you come to a stop sign and then veer to the right up a hill. The hotel will be on your right. Heading West on I-40, take Exit 280, but take a left at the top of the ramp onto Davis Drive, then take first right onto Park Drive.