Webchat: 5 Myths About the "Information Age"

You are welcome to tune in to a video web chat on Wednesday, June 8, featuring Robert Darnton, Director of the University Library at Harvard, and the author of "The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future," and numerous other titles. Please see additional details below.
Regards,
Eileen Deegan, American Corners Program Analyst
Washington, DC
Date: Wednesday, June 8th

Time: 10:30 am DC (14:30 GMT/ 16:30 pm Rome)

Location: https://statedept.connectsolutions.com/rome

Description: Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged.

Join Robert Darnton for a conversation about 5 myths of the information age.
Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA). He has written and edited two dozen books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 16 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade), and Slander. The Art and Politics of Libel in Eighteenth-Century France (2008). His latest book is "The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future" (2009).

Format: This will be a video webchat in English.