iHCI 2010

We are delighted to welcome Professor Richard Harper (Microsoft Research) to deliver the opening keynote address.

Do we communicate too much?

In this talk I will reflect on contemporary human expression when it is often said that everyone is suffering from communications overload. I will ask how we might measure communication, and draw a contrast between different ways of doing so. I will look at how measuring is done in communications engineering and computer science, for example, and will review some of the literature on email overload and the burdens of social networking that can be found in the anthropology, communications science and social science literature. I will contrast all this with techniques appropriate and commonplace in the everyday world of human affairs and suggest that one of the problems that we have when answering this question has to do with deciding on the relative merits and values of everyday and scientific reason. I will remark that HCI has to deal with this distinction in much of its current research activities.

I will comment on how we ought to decide between common sense and science. My claim will be that common sense is much more often useful and precise than we might think, and science often misleading and imprecise. Material for the talk with come from my latest book, Texture: human expression in the age of communications overload (MIT Press)

About Richard

Richard Harper is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and co-manages the Socio-Digital Systems group.

Richard is concerned with how to design for 'being human' in an age when man-as-machine type metaphors, deriving from Turing and others, tend to dominate thinking in the area. Trained as a sociologist and with a strong passion for ordinary language philosophy, he has published over 100 papers and is about to publish his 10th book, Texture: Human expression in the age of communication overload, (MIT Press). Amongst his prior books is the IEEE award winning The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press,2002), co-authored with Abi Sellen.

His work is not only theoretical or sociological, but also includes the design of real and functioning systems, for work and for home settings, for mobile devices and for social networking sites. Numerous patents have derived from his work.

Prior to joining MSR, Richard helped lead various technology innovation and knowledge transfer companies, while in 2000 he was appointed the UK's first Professor of Socio-Digital Systems, at the University of Surrey, England. It was here he also set up the Digital World Research Centre. Prior to this he was a researcher at Xerox PARC's fifth lab, EuroPARC, in Cambridge. He completed his Phd at Manchester in 1989. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and three troublesome but occasionally delightful children.