Albert Robida: World's Greatest Futurist - Year of the Sciences - 2008-2009

2008-2009 at Furman was designated as the Year of the Sciences!

Special events and activities featured lectures by distinguished scholars, presentations by alumni, and sessions featuring undergraduate research accomplishments. Academic departments engaged in teaching and research in scientific disciplines were represented: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth & Environmental Sciences (EES), Health & Exercise Science (HES), Mathematics, Physics, and Psychology.

Albert Robida: World's Greatest Futurist

Date/Time/Location Event Description CLP?
Mon., Jan. 26, 2009, 8pm
Patrick Lecture Hall
Townes Science Center "Albert Robida: World's Greatest Futurist"
Speaker: Edward Tenner
Yes

Albert Robida, World's Greatest Futurist, from Harvard Magazine

Albert Robida, a nineteenth century French artist and writer, was also uncannily accurate in predicting both technological and social change in the 20th century. He foresaw both world wars, feminism, scientific developments such as test-tube babies and the hydrofoil, and Third World revolutions. He was fascinated by the industrialization of war, the replacement of art with mass-produced culture, and movements such as socialism and feminism. Robidas speculations about the development of our cultural and political world can help us understand -- and also perhaps change for the better -- the future that we are making.

For more information see: http://www.princeton.edu/~tenner/Tenner-Robida-Harvard.pdf.

(This event is sponsored by Touched By Books, Furman University's book collectors club.)

Edward Tenner, an affiliate of the Center for Information Technology Policy in the Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science, is a multi-disciplinary scholar, with interests in the effects of technology on human existence (from the development of the chair to the development of the internet), the history of science, and rare books and manuscripts. National Public Radio has dubbed Tenner the philosopher of everyday technology. His book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences has been an international bestseller. His most recent book is Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology.

A graduate of Princeton University (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), Mr. Tenner held teaching and research positions in Chicago and was a science editor at Princeton University Press. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991, was a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1995-96. A regular CV will not do Mr. Tenner justice: his website provides his complete and varied background: http://www.edwardtenner.com/index.htm.