Robert Stein on the Future of the Book

The IIP Public Diplomacy Forum Presents

The Future of the Book:  

The Evolution of Reading and Writing

in the Networked Era

featuring

Robert Stein

Visiting Scholar, New York University

Director, Institute for the Future of the Book

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3

12:00 – 1:00 PM

SA-5, C-2 Video Conferencing Center

For the past several hundred years intellectual discourse has been shaped by the rhythms and hierarchies inherent in the nature of print. As discourse shifts from page to screen, and more significantly to a networked environment, the old definitions and relations are undergoing substantial changes. Notions of authority are being challenged. The roles of author and reader are morphing and blurring. Publishing, methods of distribution, peer review and copyright - every crucial aspect of the way we move ideas around - is up for grabs. The new digital technologies afford vastly different outcomes ranging from oppressive to liberating. How we make this shift has critical long term implications for human society.

Speaker Biography:   Robert Stein is a Visiting Scholar at New York University and the Director of The Institute for the Future of the Book.  Previously Stein was the founder of The Voyager Company where over a 13-year period he led the development of over 300 titles in The Criterion Collection, a series of definitive films, and more than 75 CD ROM titles including the CD Companion to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Who Built America?, Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind, and American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. 

For more information, contact:

___________________________________________

Peter M. Benda

Program Officer, Democracy & International Security

Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP/SDIS)

SA-5, Third Floor

U.S. Department of State

2200 C Street, NW

Washington, DC  20522-0513

Tel:  (202) 632-9215

Email:  BendaPM@state.gov