Genevieve Bell
Director of Interaction and Experience Research
Intel

Biography:Dr. Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and researcher with 15 years of experience driving innovation in the high tech industry. As the Director of Interaction and Experience Research in Intel Labs, Bell leads a team of social scientists, interaction designers, human factors engineers and computer scientists. This organization researches new computing experiences that are centered around people's needs and desires. This foundationally shapes and then helps to create new Intel technologies and products. In this team and her prior roles, Bell has fundamentally altered the way Intel envisions and plans its products so that they are centered on people's needs rather than simply silicon capabilities. In addition to leading this increasingly important area at Intel, Bell is an accomplished industry commentator on the intersection of culture and technology and has been extensively featured in publications that include Wired, Forbes, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal. In August 2013, Fast Company declared her to be one of the top 25 smartest women on Twitter, where she goes by the handle, @feraldata. She is a regular public speaker and panelist at technology conferences worldwide, sharing myriad insights gained from her extensive international field work and research. In 2010, Bell was named one of Fast Company's inaugural '100 Most Creative People in Business.' Bell is a passionate advocate for the advancement of women in technology and in 2012 was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) hall of fame, as well being honored by the Anita Borg Institute as the 2013 Woman of Vision for Leadership. Her first book, 'Divining the Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing,' was co-written with Prof. Paul Dourish of the University of California at Irvine and released in April 2011. Bell is also the recipient of several patents for consumer electronics innovations. A native of Australia, Bell moved to the United States for her undergraduate studies and graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. She then earned a master's degree and a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Stanford University where she also taught as an acting lecturer in the Department of Anthropology from 1996-1998. With a father who was an engineer and a mother who was an anthropologist, perhaps Bell was fated to ultimately work for a technology company, joining Intel in 1998. Bell is currently an Intel Fellow.

The Pre-history of Robots

Genevieve Bell is a well known anthropologist, working at the intersection of culture and technology. Australian by birth, Bell runs one of Intel's premier research and development labs in the United States. In this talk, she unpacks the relationship between technology and anxiety, tracing out the origins of our socio-technical fears. Drawing on cultural, literary and historical accounts, Bell makes the case that we have an opportunity to re-imagine the ways in which we encounter and make sense of new digital technologies.