As live online events are taking off due to states of quarantine and restricted travel, the growing medium is changing the way people consume information, learn and interact. How might we evolve to adapt to new digital mediums? And while increased digitization might lessen our environmental impact, how is it accelerating the spread of knowledge while affecting our states of deep learning and focus?
In this GLF Live, Landscape News editor Gabrielle Lipton spoke with acclaimed author Nicholas Carr, whose book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, and Brad Simmons, who leads the digital events platform of the World Bank, World Bank Live, about how the rapid growth of digital spaces is changing the course of human connections, equity and shared info.
Nicholas Carr is an acclaimed writer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, economics, and culture. His books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010), Utopia Is Creepy (2016), The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (2014), The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008) and Does IT Matter? (2004). Carr has also written for many newspapers, magazines, and journals, including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TheWashington Post, Wired, Nature, and MIT Technology Review. He is a visiting professor of sociology at Williams College in Massachusetts and was the former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. In 2015, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association.
Brad Simmons is an External Affairs Officer for Corporate Communications at the World Bank, where he has spent the last 13 years in several roles from web and multimedia production, to digital marketing and engagement and live streaming. He currently manages World Bank Live – a digital platform for live streaming and engaging with global audiences in open conversations about international development. Brad has directed the streaming for over 700 live events and 200+ live interviews. Before joining the World Bank, Brad worked for the US Department of Defense for 6 years in ICT, education technology and web development. Previously he was a research associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington D.C. Brad graduated with an M.A. in Digital Communications from Johns Hopkins University and holds his B.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University.
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