David Weinberger

Researcher
Profile picture of David Weinberger

Particulars connected > Generalizations applied. Chaos is truth.

I write and speak about the effect of the technology on ideas, from a background in tech, business, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. In five books and countless posts and articles I’ve explored the effect of the Internet and AI on knowledge, on how we organize our ideas, and on the core concepts by which we think about our world.

My latest (2019) book, “Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We’re Thriving in a New World of Possibility” (Harvard Business Review Press) argues that AI is transforming our understanding of how the future happens, enabling us to acknowledge the chaotic unknowability of our everyday world — a Copernican-scale change in our self-understanding.

A researcher and affiliate of the Harvard Berkman Klein Center since 2005, , I have been co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, a journalism fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, an adviser to high tech companies and to presidential campaigns, and a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department. For four years, until recently, I was embedded in Google AI humanities and ethics groups as a part-time writer/editor-in-residence. I edit the Strong Ideas open access trade book series for MIT Press.

My spouse and I live in the Boston area, close to our children and grandchildren.