[PAST EVENT] Cancelled: Siva Vaidhyanathan talk on Google, Amazon, et al and the Battle for Control of Our Bodies

November 21, 2019
5pm
Location
Swem Library, Ford Classroom
400 Landrum Dr
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
Siva Vaidhyanathan

Prof. Vaidhyanathan has had to cancel. This talk will be rescheduled for spring.

The Operating System of Our Lives: How Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are Battling Each Other for Control of Our Bodies

This talk will describe a phenomenon that explains many of the plans, products, and strategies that the largest technology firms in the world have deployed in recent years. Instead of struggling to be the operating system of our mobile devices or merely our computers, these companies are moving their attention to human beings themselves. This process will reveal crucial questions about autonomy and democracy in the coming years. 

Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018). He also wrote Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011). He has written two previous books: Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). He also co-edited (with Carolyn Thomas) the collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 

Contact

[[iaknig, Arthur Knight]]