University of Southern California

USC Network Culture Project

USC Annenberg School for Communication

Speaker: de Vries was formerly the Chief of Incubation, Senior Director of Advanced Technology and Policy at Microsoft Corporation, and is a Senior Fellow at Annenberg Center.

Abstract: Software is being used as a proxy for a raft of abstraction in many areas of the knowledge economy complex dynamic systems, financial markets, bodies of law. Yet the mental models on which they're built, De Vries argues, often rely on concrete metaphores that ignore software's inherent complexity, leading to errors and misjudgments.