When
Presented by Professor Barry Wellman; Sponsored by the University of Arizona School of Information and the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies.
Wednesday, February 10th from 4:00 - 5:00 PM Union Kiva, 2nd Level, Student Union Memorial Center
Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by pings and responses. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But, the evidence shows that the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of "networked individualism" liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.
Barry Wellman, a visiting faculty member in the School of Information, is the Co-Director of the NetLab Network and the retired S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Wellman founded the Internaitonal Network for Social Network Analysis, and two journals: Connections, and City & Community. He is the North American editor of Information, Communication & Society. Wellman is the co-author (with Lee Rainie) of Networked: The New Social Operating System (MIT Press).