Reading the Context: Becoming Fluent in AI through Play
With guest John Seely Brown
We've moved from the "age of Enlightenment" to the "Age of Entanglement," says John Seely Brown, a long-time leading thinker, technologist and scholar on learning. In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran go the source: JSB has done it all, from working at a bookie in high school to managing Xerox PARC, advising technology leaders and publishing more than 100 papers and books, many of which are on learning. JSB has spent his career experimenting -- and yes, playing -- with how the technology we build shapes the way we work and learn. What he's learned along the way? That learning, much like being part of a jazz group or surviving in the wilderness, involves constantly questioning and reexamining everything around us. "The notion of looking for the solution -- or even the (right) prompt doesn't compute anymore."
John Seely Brown
John Seely Brown, or JSB, was the former Independent Co-Chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC). Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades. A master integrator and instigator of productive friction, JSB explores the whitespace between disciplines and builds bridges between disparate organizations and ideas. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as the management of radical innovation, organizational learning, complex adaptive systems, and nano technologies. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). His personal research interests include new approaches to learning, digital youth culture, digital media, and the application of technology to accelerate deep learning within and across organizational boundaries—in brief, to design for emergence in a constantly changing world.
JSB is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS, and a past Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation. He serves and has served on numerous private and public boards of directors, including Amazon (14 years), Corning, and Varian Medical Systems. For a few of his more than 100 publications, take a further reading below.
JSB received a BA from Brown University in 1962 in mathematics and physics and a PhD from University of Michigan in 1970 in computer and communication sciences. He also has eleven honorary doctor degrees from three countries reflecting the breadth and diversity of his research experiences. He is also an avid reader, traveler and (former) motorcyclist. Part scientist, part artist and part strategist, JSB’s views are unique and distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technologies operate and a healthy skepticism about whether or not change always represents genuine progress.
So much to explore!
John Seely Brown has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and nine books including coauthoring the acclaimed, The Social Life of Information (HBS Press, 2000) with Paul Duguid, which has been translated into nine languages.
You could dip into John Seely Brown’s website, which is packed with slides from past presentations.
Or take a look at any of these publications:
A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 2011.
Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1: Designing for Emergence (Infrastructures) by Ann M. Pendleton-Julian and John Seely Brown, 2018.
Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 2: Ecologies of Change (Infrastructures) by Ann M. Pendleton-Julian and John Seely Brown, 2018.
