John Seely Brown
Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California; Co-chairman, Deloitte Center for the Edge; Best-Selling Author.
information age.
John Seely Brown is one of the most famous and honored scientists of his generation.
As director of the cutting edge research organization formerly known as Xerox PARC, he led a group of scientists and researchers who made stunning, lasting contributions to information technology and the world of computing.
While head of PARC, he led corporate research in such areas as organizational learning, knowledge management, complex adaptive systems, micro electrical mechanical system (MEMS), and NANO technology.
His personal research interests and expertise include digital culture and rich media, new forms of communication and learning, and the management of radical innovation.
Along with John Hagel III and Lang Davison, he is a founder of the Deliotte Center for Edge Innovation.
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The Silicon Valley-based Center helps senior executives make sense of and profit from emerging opportunities on the edge of business and technology. The Center focuses on the boundary, or edge, of the global business environment where strategic opportunity is the highest.
(From the Deliotte Center Website)
John Seely Brown is a prolific writer whose books, articles, and lectures explore the scope, impact, and meaning of evolving forms of information technology and our increasingly networked world. His newest book, cowritten with Douglas Thomas, is A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, the authors create a vision of learning for the future that is achievable.
Other Books
The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
Coauthors, John Hagel III and Lang Davison
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"The Power of Pull examines the "how question"—how can we effectively address our most pressing challenges in a rapidly changing and increasingly interdependent world? In The Power of Pull, John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison highlight fascinating new ways in which passionate thinking, creative solutions, and committed action can—and will—make it possible for us to seize opportunities and remain in step with change."
William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America
"Hagel, Brown, and Davison have given us a provocative and insightful look at the power of today's knowledge flow."
Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google
Coauthor, Paul Duguid
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". . .casts a critical eye at all the hype surrounding the boom of the information age. The authors' central complaint is that narrowly focusing on new ways to provide information will not create the cyber-revolution so many technology designers have visualized. The problem (or joy) is that information acquires meaning only through social context. Brown and Duguid add a humanist spin to this idea by arguing, for example, that "trust" is a deep social relation among people and cannot be reduced to logic, and that a satisfying "conversation" cannot be held in an Internet chat room because too much social context is stripped away and cannot be replaced by just adding more information, such as pictures and biographies of the participants. . .The result is an intellectual gem. . ."
Publishers Weekly
Credentials
- Co-chairman, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation
- Retired Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation
- Formerly, Director, Palo Alto Research Center, formerly Xerox PARC
- Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Cofounder, Institute for Research on Leaning
- Member, National Academy of Education
- Fellow, American Association for Artificial Intelligence
- Trustee, MacArthur Foundation
- Board of Directors, Corning, Amazon, Varian Medical Systems
- PhD, computer and communication sciences, University of Michigan
- BA, math and physics, Brown University
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