PREMIER TECHNOLOGY JOURNALIST TO DISCUSS HIS NEW BOOK ON GOOGLE, IN THE PLEX (2011)

NYS Writers Institute, November 16, 2012
4:15 p.m. Seminar | Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
8:00 p.m. Reading | Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptwon Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
Steven Levy, premier technology journalist and author of the all-time tech bestseller, Hackers, will read from and discuss his new book on Google, In the Plex (2011), on Friday, November 16, 2012 at 8 p.m. in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the author will present an informal seminar in the same location. The events are free and open to the public, and are cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and UAlbany’s College of Computing and Information.

PROFILE
Steven Levy, “America’s premier technology journalist” (Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post), is the author most recently of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011).

Writing in the New York Review of Books, James Gleick (The Information) called it, “the most authoritative [book on Google] to date and in many ways the most entertaining.” Writing in the New Scientist, Andrew Keen said, “Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. . . . What’s more, his lucid introductions to Google’s core technologies -- the search engine and the company’s data centres -- are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. . . . In the Plex teems with original insight into Google’s most controversial affairs.” Amazon.com selected it as the “Best Book of 2011” in the Business and Investing category.

Levy achieved international renown for his now-classic 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, republished in a 25th Anniversary edition in 2009. PC Magazine, in a recent issue, named it the “Best Sci-Tech Book of the last 20 years.”

Levy’s other bestselling books include The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (2006), about the cultural impact of the iPod;  Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2001), about the revolution in cryptography; Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything (1994); and Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation (1992), about software-generated “virtual organisms.” He is also the editor of the anthology, The Best of Technology Writing 2007.

Currently a Senior Writer for Wired, Levy has appeared on the masthead of that publication since its very first issue in January 1993. He also served for a time as Senior Editor and Chief Technology Correspondent for Newsweek.

Before carving out his territory as a technology journalist, Levy wrote The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius (1988), about the conviction of Ira Einhorn, a leading figure of the 1960s Counterculture, for murdering his girlfriend Holly Maddux. Publishers Weekly called it a “spellbinding sociological/true-crime study.”

As a cub reporter for New Jersey Monthly in 1978,Levy is credited with tracking down the whereabouts of Einstein’s brain in the Wichita, Kansas office of the pathologist who had removed it from Einstein’s head 22 years earlier. In September 2012, images of cross-sections of that brain were made available to the entire world as an iPad app.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.