Renowned American Scientist to Speak at GMIT Conference

Renowned American Scientist to Speak at GMIT Conference

galway.net , 28 August 2003

What the world seems to need now is no longer - as the song once advised us - love, sweet love. Instead, its information, sweet volumes of information. Or is it?

According to a U.S. scientist, John Seely Brown, our former information famine has now become our information glut. But as he outlines in The Social Life of Information, a book that has already been translated into nine languages, its still possible for the mere mortal to navigate this information age.

Now the influential US author, who was chief scientist of the Xerox Research Centre (PARC) in California for 12 years, is bringing his information age tips to Galway.

Invited to take part in this months GMIT conference on the direction of the Tertiary Education Landscape in 2012, Dr John Seely Brown will speak on Learning in the Digital Age. His book, The Social Life of Information proposed to go behind the hype of the information age to show alternative ways of thinking for the future.

And having worked as a chief scientist in Xerox Corporation, the American author who also lists film-making and motor cycling on his CV has the workplace examples to back up his points.

If your web page is hard to understand, link to another. If a help system gets over burdened, add a help on using help, he quips in his books chapter on Limits of Information. Problems with information? Add more.

But more information on top of even more information can only lead to those awkward mental roadblocks. So bridging this gap between the hype and then the reality of the information age will be the focus of John Seely Brown in GMIT next week.

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