Education and Training
Ph.D., Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA
S.M., Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA
B.A., Computer Science and Psychology, Yale U., New Haven, CT
Research Interests Warren Sack is a software designer and media theorist whose work explores theories and designs for online public space and public discussion.
His field of expertise is social computing. As a field of research, social computing explores two issues: (A) How can the insights of social, critical, cultural, and media theory be incorporated into and used to critique and evaluate software? and, (B) How can new media be designed to address outstanding social and political issues? Current and past projects include work in news media, Open Source software development, locative media, computer-supported translation, systems for visualizing and facilitating online discussions, and the design and analysis of network-based learning environments.
Selected Publications “Picturing the Public,” to appear in Network / Netplay, Joseph Karaganis and Natalie Jeremijenko, Editors (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming)
“Aesthetics of Information Visualization,” to appear in Context Providers, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, and Margot Lovejoy, Editors (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming)
with Françoise Détienne, Jean-Marie Burkhardt, Flore Barcellini, Nicolas Ducheneaut and Dilan Mahendran, “A Methodological Framework for Socio-Cognitive Analyses of Collaborative Design of Open Source Software,” to appear in Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (forthcoming).
“Discourse Architecture and Very Large-Scale Conversations,” in Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm, Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen, Editors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
“Agonistics: A Language Game,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, Editors (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and ZKM|Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, 2005)
“What does a very large-scale conversation look like?” Leonardo: Journal of Electronic Art and Culture, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2002.
Teaching Interests
New media art and design, critical studies of new media, social software, news and new technologies
