Nicholas Carr (keynote speaker) is an acclaimed writer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, culture, and business. His book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction and a New York Times bestseller. Nick is a visiting professor of sociology at Williams College in Massachusetts and was formerly executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. In addition to “The Shallows,” Nick’s books include “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us,” which the New York Review of Books called “a chastening meditation of the human future;” “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google,” a national bestseller that the Financial Times called “the best read so far about the shift to cloud computing;” and the notorious “Does IT Matter?” His most recent book, “Utopia Is Creepy,” is a collection of essays.
Nick has written for many publications, including The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired, Nature, and MIT Technology Review. His essays, including “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and “The Great Forgetting,” have been collected in several anthologies, including The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best Spiritual Writing, and The Best Technology Writing. In 2015, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Nick is a former member of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s editorial board of advisors, was on the steering board of the World Economic Forum’s cloud computing project, and was a writer-in-residence at the University of California at Berkeley’s journalism school. Since 2005, he has written the popular blog Rough Type. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.
In addition to speaking at a wide range of corporate, professional, and scholarly events, Nick has appeared as a commentator on many television and radio programs, including NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “OnPoint,” the “PBS NewsHour,” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and the “Colbert Report.”