Biography:Philip E. Agre

Short description: Internet researcher and educator

Philip E. Agre is a former associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His new media writing includes the essay, Surveillance and Capture. He was successively the publisher of The Network Observer (TNO) and The Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). TNO ran from January 1994 to July 1996. RRE, an influential mailing list he started in the mid-1990s, ran for around a decade. A mix of news, Internet policy and politics, RRE served as a model for many of today's political blogs and online newsletters.

Prior to his teaching position at UCLA, Agre held faculty positions at the University of Chicago, the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (now the School of Informatics) at the University of Sussex and the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. Before teaching, he received a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1989.

Agre went missing on October 16, 2009, but was found on January 16, 2010.

PhD Work in Artificial Intelligence

Agre and his collaborator David Chapman started their PhDs working under Michael Brady at the MIT AI Lab. Upon Brady's departure for Oxford, they switched to a then-recent arrival at the laboratory, Rodney Brooks. Brooks gave the two young scientists relatively free rein, but together the three were seen as early major researchers in New AI. In particular, Agre and Chapman's 1989 AI memo "What are plans for?" is seen as seminal to reactive planning, though neither researcher approved of the term. Agre went on to receive his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1989.

Agre went on to take up a position in the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science, but then changed his disciplinary emphasis to Sociology and moved to UCLA.

Surveillance and Capture

Agre's essay Surveillance and Capture deals with privacy and surveillance issues made possible by our constantly evolving technological age. Influential works preceding this essay include George Orwell's 1984, Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Constituents of a Theory of the Media, and Michel Foucault's works surrounding the concept of panopticism. Foucault argues that a constant exercise of such surveillance is not necessary, since its mere possibility induces self-restrained action among the inmates.

Disappearance

On October 16, 2009, Agre's sister filed a missing persons report for Agre. She indicated that she had not seen him since the Spring of 2008 and became concerned when she learned that he had abandoned his apartment and job sometime between December 2008 and May 2009. Agre was found by the LA County Sheriff's Department on January 16, 2010, and was deemed in good health and self-sufficient.

Publications

Books and chapters

• Agre, Philip E. (2004). "Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship". in Feenberg, Andrew. Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-2959-5. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/republic.html. 
•        (2004). "Internet Research: For and Against". in Consalvo, Mia. Internet Research Annual: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences, 2000-2002. 1. New York City: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-6840-2. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/research.html. 
•        (2003). "Information and Institutional Change: The Case of Digital Libraries". in Bishop, Ann P.. Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-02544-7. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/dl.html. 
•        (2003). "Writing and Representation". in Mateas, Michael. Narrative Intelligence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-5171-8. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/ni.html. 
•        (2002). "The Practical Logic of Computer Work". in Scheutz, Matthias. Computationalism: New Directions. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-19478-5. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/practical.html. 
•        (1998). "Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic, and Political Contexts". in Jones, Steven G.. Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. pp. 69-100. doi:10.4135/9781452243689.n3. ISBN 978-0-7619-1462-4. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/genre.html. 
•        (1997). Computation and Human Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38603-6. 
•        (1997). "Living Math: Lave and Walkerdine on the Meaning of Everyday Arithmetic". in Kirshner, David. Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic, and Psychological Perspectives. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8058-2037-9. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/er-lave.html. 
• .       (1997). "Introduction: Computing as a Social Practice". in Agre, Philip E.. Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice. Greenwich: Ablex Publishing. ISBN 978-1-56750-258-9. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/diac.html. 
•        (1997). "Beyond the Mirror World: Privacy and the Representational Practices of Computing". in Agre, Philip E.. Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01162-4. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/mirror.html. 
•        (1997). "Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI". in Bowker, Geoffrey C. Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8058-2403-2. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html. 
•        (1996). "Introduction: Computational Theories of Interaction and Agency". in Agre, Philip E.. Computational Theories of Interaction and Agency. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-2625-1090-5. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/aij-abstracts.html. 

Selected academic works

• Agre, Philip E. (2003). "Hierarchy and History in Simon's "Architecture of Complexity"". Journal of the Learning Sciences 12 (3): 413-426. doi:10.1207/S15327809JLS1203_4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327809JLS1203_4. 
•        (2003). "P2P and the Promise of Internet Equality". Communications of the ACM 46 (2): 39-42. doi:10.1145/606272.606298. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/606272.606298. 
•        (2002). "Real-Time Politics: The Internet and the Political Process". The Information Society 18 (5): 311-331. doi:10.1080/01972240290075174. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01972240290075174. 
•        (2002). "Cyberspace As American Culture". Science as Culture 11 (2): 171-189. doi:10.1080/09505430220137234. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505430220137234. 
•        (2001). "Changing Places: Contexts of Awareness in Computing". Human-Computer Interaction 16 (2-4): 177-192. doi:10.1207/S15327051HCI16234_04. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327051HCI16234_04. 
•        (2001). "Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Society". Ethics and Information Technology 3 (4): 289-298. doi:10.1023/A:1013837409419. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1013837409419. 
•        (2000). "The Market Logic of Information". Knowledge, Technology & Policy 13 (3): 67-77. doi:10.1007/s12130-000-1021-y. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12130-000-1021-y. 
•        (2000). "Commodity and Community: Institutional Design for the Networked University". Planning for Higher Education 29 (2): 5-14. https://www.scup.org/resource/commodity-and-community-institutional-design-for-the-networked-university/. 
•        (2000). "Infrastructure and Institutional Change in the Networked University". Information, Communication & Society 3 (4): 494-507. doi:10.1080/13691180010002323. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691180010002323. 
•        (1999). "The Distances of Education". Academe 85 (5): 37-41. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/academe.html. 
•        (1999). "Information Technology in Higher Education: The "Global Academic Village" and Intellectual Standardization". On the Horizon 7 (5): 8-11. ISSN 1074-8121. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/global.html. 
•        (1999). "The Architecture of Identity: Embedding Privacy in Market Institutions". Information, Communication & Society 2 (1): 1-25. doi:10.1080/136911899359736. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/136911899359736. 
•       ; Horswill, Ian (1997). "Lifeworld analysis" (PDF). Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 6 (1): 111-145. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://www.jair.org/index.php/jair/article/download/10184/24177/&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zBFAYIjwIfGTy9YP2IeW0AM&scisig=AAGBfm0Or7kWZQP2puTnnbDuiJ1WSEl-Rw&nossl=1&oi=scholarr. 
•        (1995). "Institutional Circuitry: Thinking About the Forms and Uses of Information". Information Technology and Libraries 14 (4): 225-230. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/circuitry.html. 
•        (1995). Guzeldere, Guven; Franchi, Stefano. eds. "Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities". Stanford Humanities Review 4 (2): 1-19. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/shr.html. 
•        (1982). The Assq Chip and Its Progeny. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working Papers. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. pp. 1-25. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/41168. 

Other articles in the media

• Agre, Philip E. (December 2006). "Welcome to the Always-On World". IEEE Spectrum: 10, 13. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/archive/1511. 
•        (Winter 2001). "Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places". Whole Earth Review (106): 74-77. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/bar-code.html. 
•        (1999). "Life After Cyberspace". EASST Review (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology) 18 (2/3): 3-5. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/life.html. 
•        (July 3, 1998). "Yesterday's Tomorrow". Times Literary Supplement (News UK): 3-4. ISSN 0307-661X. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/tls.html. 

External links

• former Home Page for Agre at UCLA