Phil Agre, PhD

Phil Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, known for bridging artificial intelligence research and critical social theory—particularly his influential concept of “critical technical practice,” which called on technologists to reflect philosophically on the assumptions embedded in their work. Before UCLA (1998), he taught at UC San Diego, the University of Sussex, and the University of Chicago. He authored “Computation and Human Experience” (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and co-edited landmark volumes on technology, privacy, and computing as social practice. He edited the widely read internet mailing list The Red Rock Eater News Service throughout the 1990s, an early model for online political commentary. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1989, where his Hertz Fellowship supported dissertation research at the AI Laboratory on computational models of improvised activities.