Orit Halpern

Orit Halpern is Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She is currently working on the future of intelligence and planetary experiments.

Her first book Beautiful Date: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke UP 2015) was a history of big data and aesthetics. Her current book with Robert Mitchell (MIT Press 2023) is titled the Smartness Mandate. The book is a critical history of  "smartness" and a speculative guidebook to the landscapes of ubiquitous computing.  She also directs two design history and practice research platforms Governing Through Design and Against Catastrophe.