Adam Greenfield

Adam Greenfield is Nokia's head of design direction for user interface and services. An American writer and consultant, he was formerly well-known as an information architect, though (as of mid-October 2006) he no longer describes himself as such. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968.

Early life

Greenfield graduated from New York University in 1989, earning a degree in Cultural Studies. In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Army's reserve component Special Operations Command as a Psychological operations specialist, holding MOS 37F and eventually achieving the grade of Sergeant.

Career

After leaving the Army, Greenfield took up work in the then-nascent field of information architecture for the World Wide Web, holding a succession of prominent positions culminating in employment at the Tokyo office of Razorfish, where he was head of the information architecture department. He is currently best known for his 2006 book "Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing" (ISBN 0-321-38401-6), which has been called "groundbreaking" by Bruce Sterling: "One puts it down with a strange conviction that web-designers have transcended geekdom and achieved Zen soulfulness."

He currently co-teaches a class called Urban Computing at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program with Kevin Slavin of New York design practice area/code.

Greenfield had earlier proposed an "open-source constitution for post-national states" called the Minimal Compact, although he appears to have done little work on this project in recent years. He is also credited with having coined the word "moblog" to describe the practice of publishing to the World Wide Web from mobile devices, and having organised a conference devoted to discussing this practice in Tokyo in mid-2003.

He is generally considered to be a thought leader in the information architecture and user experience professions. Greenfield maintains a personal Web site called [http://speedbird.wordpress.com Speedbird] .

Personal life

He lives in Helsinki, Finland, with his wife, artist Nurri Kim where he aspires to curate vintage and antique bollards.

ee also

* moblog
* ubiquitous computing

External links

* , Greenfield's personal website
* [http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=1037] , "IA or not IA," Greenfield's farewell to information architecture
* [http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/270/Adam-Greenfield-Everyware-page01.html/ Discussion with Adam Greenfield on The WELL]
* [http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=339 Minimal Compact]
* [http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/27/ethics_and_rfids_vid.html Video of a Greenfield presentation in Tokyo, via Boing Boing]
* [http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/all_watched_over_by_machines_of_loving_grace_some_ethical_guidelines_for_user_experience_in_ubiquitous_computing_settings_1_ proposed ethical guidelines for developers of ubiquitous-computing environments]
* [http://talknewsindia.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=56966 Podcast interview on Talk News India where Greenfield talks about his book "Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing"]
* [http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/urban-computing-pamphlet-is-go/ "Urban Computing and its Discontents", a freely downloadable pamphlet co-authored with Mark Shepard]