Ethan Zuckerman - A master-course in how to connect and a syllabus for a spacious life

Ethan Zuckerman is a voice that you need to know. He’s a pioneer for the use of media as a tool for social change, for cultivating international development with technology, and for the activation of new media technologies by activists. Ethan is uncommonly insightful about the currents and trends of our society. In this conversation he helps us understand the shape of our public discourse, and relates it to the world of today and tomorrow.

Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and founder of the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure. Before joining UMass, he served as the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media for many years and is a former Research Fellow at MIT, Harvard, and Columbia.

Ethan's research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, cultivating international development with technology, and the activation of new media technologies by activists. He is the author of two marvelous books, Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection and, in January of this year, Mistrust. Both works are deeply fascinating and important calls to action for us citizens of the world. They are embodiments of Ethan’s almost mysterious penchant for seeing the currents and trends of our society and the public discourse. Both are compulsory reading for living in our digital world. 

Along his research and entrepreneurial path Ethan has accumulated high recognition. To name a few - in 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. He co-founded the global blogging community Global Voices. In 2002, he received the Technology in Service of Humanity Award from MIT Technology Review. 

Ethan earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Williams College in 1993 and studied ethnomusicology and percussion during a Fulbright scholarship in Ghana. 

Ethan is a champion and an innovator for freedom of expression in our digital age. He empowers open exchange in a society that seems determined to limit it. More importantly, he is the generous and visionary voice that we need leading public discourse in these times.