Professor Richard Harper (Microsoft Research, Cambridge) presents on how to design for 'being human' in an age when human-as-machine type metaphors, deriving from Turing and others, tend to dominate thinking in the area.
Richard Harper is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and co-manages the Socio-Digital Systems group. Trained as a sociologist, he has recently published his 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), co-authored with Abi Sellen. He is currently working on an edited collection called At Home with Smart Technologies: the future of domestic life (Springer). 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.
