Philip Agre Explained

Philip E. Agre is an American AI researcher and humanities professor, formerly a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known for his critiques of technology.^[1] 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.

Agre was reported missing on October 16, 2009. He was found on January 16, 2010, but never returned to public life.

Biography

Agre grew up in Maryland and attended college early. Agre and his collaborator David Chapman started their PhDs under the supervision of 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 Nouvelle AI, an approach to artificial intelligence emphasizing behavior as emerging in interaction with the environment rather than the entire codification of behavior. This is illustrated by Agre and Chapman's 1989 article, "What are plans for?"^[2] This work is considered 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.^[3] He then took a position in the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science, later joining the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (now the School of Informatics) at the University of Sussex and finally the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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 Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970), and Michel Foucault's works surrounding the concept of panopticism.^[4] Foucault argues that a constant exercise of such surveillance is not necessary, since its mere possibility induces self-restrained action among the inmates.^[4]

Criticism of conservatism

Agre has argued that conservatism is "the domination of society by an aristocracy.", that it "is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general." and that "It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world." He also argued that "most of the people who call themselves 'conservatives' have little notion of what conservatism even is."^[5]

Disappearance

On October 16, 2009, Agre's sister filed a missing persons report for Agre.^[6] 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.^[7]

Publications

Books and chapters

• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice. Rowman & Littlefield. 2004. 978-0-7425-2959-5. Feenberg. Andrew. Lanham. Social Skills and the Progress of Citizenship. Barney. Darin. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/republic.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Internet Research Annual: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences, 2000-2002. Peter Lang. 2004. 978-0-8204-6840-2. Consalvo. Mia. 1. New York. Internet Research: For and Against. 6. Baym. Nancy. Hussinger. Jeremy. Jensen. Klaus Bruhn. Logie. John. Murero. Monica. Shade. Leslie Regan. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/research.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation. MIT Press. 2003. 978-0-262-02544-7. Bishop. Ann P.. Cambridge. Information and Institutional Change: The Case of Digital Libraries. 6. Van House. Nancy A.. Buttenfield. Barbara P.. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/dl.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Narrative Intelligence. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2003. 978-90-272-5171-8. Mateas. Michael. Amsterdam. Writing and Representation. 6. Sengers. Phoebe. Phoebe Sengers . https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/ni.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Computationalism: New Directions. MIT Press. 2002. 978-0-262-19478-5. Scheutz. Matthias. Cambridge. The Practical Logic of Computer Work. 6. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/practical.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. SAGE Publications. 1998. 978-0-7619-1462-4. Jones. Steven G.. Thousand Oaks. 69–100. Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic, and Political Contexts. 10.4135/9781452243689.n3. 6. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/genre.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Computation and Human Experience. Cambridge University Press. 1997. 978-0-521-38603-6. Cambridge. 6.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic, and Psychological Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 1997. 978-0-8058-2037-9. Kirshner. David. Mahwah. Living Math: Lave and Walkerdine on the Meaning of Everyday Arithmetic. 6. Whitson. James A.. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/er-lave.html.
• .Book: Agre, Philip E.. Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Explorations of Computing as a Social Practice. Ablex Publishing. 1997. 978-1-56750-258-9. Agre. Philip E.. Greenwich. Introduction: Computing as a Social Practice. 6. Schuler. Douglas. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/diac.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape. MIT Press. 1997. 978-0-262-01162-4. Agre. Philip E.. Cambridge. Beyond the Mirror World: Privacy and the Representational Practices of Computing. 6. Rotenberg. Marc. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/mirror.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 1997. 978-0-8058-2403-2. Bowker. Geoffrey C. Mahwah. Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI. 6. Gasser. Les. Star. Susan Leigh. Turner. William. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html.
• Book: Agre, Philip E.. Computational Theories of Interaction and Agency. MIT Press. 1996. 978-0-2625-1090-5. Agre. Philip E.. Cambridge. Introduction: Computational Theories of Interaction and Agency. 6. Rosenschein. Stanley J.. 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. 10.1207/S15327809JLS1203_4. 62539315. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2003. P2P and the Promise of Internet Equality. Communications of the ACM. 46. 2. 39–42. 10.1145/606272.606298. 16925038. free.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2002. Real-Time Politics: The Internet and the Political Process. The Information Society. 18. 5. 311–331. 10.1080/01972240290075174. 2235715. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2002. Cyberspace As American Culture. Science as Culture. 11. 2. 171–189. 10.1080/09505430220137234. 143027344. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2001. Changing Places: Contexts of Awareness in Computing. Human-Computer Interaction. 16. 2–4. 177–192. 10.1207/S15327051HCI16234_04. 11659803. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2001. Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Society. Ethics and Information Technology. 3. 4. 289–298. 10.1023/A:1013837409419. 8271068. SpringerLink.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2000. The Market Logic of Information. Knowledge, Technology & Policy. 13. 3. 67–77. 10.1007/s12130-000-1021-y. 154191015. SpringerLink.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2000. Commodity and Community: Institutional Design for the Networked University. Planning for Higher Education. 29. 2. 5–14. Society for College and University Planning.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 2000. Infrastructure and Institutional Change in the Networked University. Information, Communication & Society. 3. 4. 494–507. 10.1080/13691180010002323. 144326682. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1999. The Distances of Education. Academe. 85. 5. 37–41. 10.2307/40251767. 40251767. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1999. Information Technology in Higher Education: The "Global Academic Village" and Intellectual Standardization. On the Horizon. 7. 5. 8–11. 1074-8121. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1999. The Architecture of Identity: Embedding Privacy in Market Institutions. Information, Communication & Society. 2. 1. 1–25. 10.1080/136911899359736. Taylor & Francis Online.
• Agre. Philip E.. Horswill. Ian. 6. 1997. Lifeworld analysis. PDF. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. 6. 1. 111–145. 10.1613/jair.342. cs/9704101. 1997cs........4101A. 60348. Google Scholar.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1995. Institutional Circuitry: Thinking About the Forms and Uses of Information. Information Technology and Libraries. 14. 4. 225–230. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1995. Guzeldere. Guven. Franchi. Stefano. Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. Stanford Humanities Review. 4. 2. 1–19. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1982. The Assq Chip and Its Progeny. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working Papers. MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. WP-225. 1–25. 1721.1/41168. MIT Libraries.

Other articles in the media

• Agre. Philip E.. December 2006. Welcome to the Always-On World. dead. IEEE Spectrum. 10, 13. https://web.archive.org/web/20061206011504/http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/archive/1511. December 6, 2006.
• Agre. Philip E.. Winter 2001. Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places. Whole Earth Review. 106. 74–77. 6.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. 1999. Life After Cyberspace. EASST Review. European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. 18. 2/3. 3–5.
• Agre. Philip E.. 6. July 3, 1998. Yesterday's Tomorrow. Times Literary Supplement. News UK. 3–4. 0307-661X.

External links

• former Home Page for Agre at UCLA

Notes and References

1. News: He predicted the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago. Why did no one listen?. en-US. Washington Post. 2021-08-12. 0190-8286.
2. Agre. Phil. Chapman. David. 1990. What are plans for?. Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 6. 1–2. 17–34. 10.1016/S0921-8890(05)80026-0. ScienceDirect. 1721.1/6487. 43169899 .
3. The dynamic structure of everyday life. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20150912194644/https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14422. September 12, 2015. 2013-11-08. dspace.mit.edu. 1988. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1721.1/14422. Thesis. Agre. Philip.
4. Montfort, Nick, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. "Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy." The New Media Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2003. 737-760. Print.
5. Web site: Agre . Philip E. . August 2004 . What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? . 2022-04-23 . pages.gseis.ucla.edu.
6. News: Pescovitz. David. November 24, 2009. Missing: Phil Agre, internet scholar. Boing Boing. January 30, 2013.
7. News: Carvin. Andy. January 30, 2010. Missing Internet Pioneer Phil Agre Is Found Alive. NPR. live. January 30, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20220513202806/https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2010/01/missing_internet_pioneer_phil.html?t=1652473678870. May 13, 2022.