Molly Wright Steenson (born 1971) is an American professor of design and a historian of

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

. Currently, Molly is the president and CEO of the

American Swedish Institute The American Swedish Institute (ASI) is a museum and cultural center in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The organization is dedicated to the preservation and study of the historic role Sweden and Swedish A ...

. Previously, she was the Carnegie Mellon University Vice Provost for Faculty, K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies, and Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Life and career

Steenson is a historian of design, architecture, and the history of those concepts alongside

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. Her current research focuses on the idea of artificial intelligence and how it's viewed and portrayed in contemporary media and culture. She argues that our ideas of artificial intelligence are outdated and this inhibits peoples' ability to understand what it really is. Her book ''Architectural Intelligence: How Designers & Architects Created the Digital Landscape'', published with Graham Foundation support, combines "an architectural history of interactivity and an interactive history of architecture." Steenson holds a PhD in architecture from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, a Master's in

Environmental Design Environmental design is the process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. It seeks to create spaces that will enhance the natural, social, cultural and physical environm ...

from

Yale School of Architecture The Yale School of Architecture (YSOA) is one of the constituent professional schools of Yale University, and is generally considered to be one of the best architecture schools in the United States. The School awards the degrees of Master of Arc ...

, and a BA in German from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

Publications

Books

* ''Architectural Intelligence: How Designers & Architects Created the Digital Landscape'' (MIT Press, 2017) * ''Bauhaus Futures'' (MIT Press, 2019), co-edited with Laura Forlano & Mike Ananny.

Articles

* "Beyond the Personal and Private: Modes of Mobile Phone Sharing in India," ''The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices'' (2008) * "Interfaces to the Subterranean," ''

Cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filing ...

'' 41 (summer 2011) - about postal services and pneumatic tube systems

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steenson, Molly Wright 1971 births Living people Architectural design Carnegie Mellon University faculty Princeton University alumni Yale School of Architecture alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni American women historians American architectural historians Historians of technology 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers