January 16, 2007
Helen Couclelis to deliver Marsh Distinguished Lecture at Clark on Jan. 31
 Worcester, Mass. - Geographer Helen Couclelis will deliver "The Future is in the Past: What Failed Predictions Can Teach Us About Tomorrow's Information Society" on Wednesday, January 31, at 4 p.m. in the Lurie Conference Room in Clark's Higgins University Center, 950 Main St., Worcester.
Since the dawn of the information age, scholars, journalists, and popular writers have ventured speculative predictions about the expected effects of ICT on society. It's time to take stock of these speculations, forty years later, to separate the more serious and informed arguments from the hype, and to assess these earlier ideas in light of current developments and trends.
This talk will explore the degree to which earlier predictions about the information society were borne out (or not), to identify developments that appear to have been genuinely unanticipated, and to examine the reasons for the multiple errors of commission (i.e., predictions that turned out to be off the mark) and omission (i.e., developments that could have been predicted, but were not). The goal is to identify patterns of success and failure that may provide clues as to how to better anticipate future developments - not only in relation to ICT, but also in the much broader domain of urban sustainability.
Couclelis is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the Geography Department at UC Santa Barbara in 1982, she spent several years as a professional planner and policy advisor in Greece. Her research interests are in the areas of geographic information science, urban and regional modeling and planning, integrated urban and environmental modeling, planning support systems, and spatial cognition.
Couclelis is a co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. She has co-edited A Ground for Common Search (with P. Gould and R.G. Golledge) and Geographic Information Research: Bridging the Atlantic (with M. Craglia). She was Associate Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) and currently serves on the executive committee of the NSF-funded Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS).
This lecture is part of the Marsh Distinguished Lecture Series at Clark University. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception. For more information, call (508) 751-4622.
|
 |
|
Additional Resources
|
|
|
|
You may also be interested in:
|
|
|
|
