When Tony joined Leeds Beckett University in 1994, computer scientists had not yet appropriated the term “informatics”, and Tony’s title was derived from Donna Haraway’s definition. Informatics encompasses the technologies of information and communication as well as the biological, social, linguistic and cultural changes that initiate, accompany and complicate their development.
In the early 1990s the world wide web was in its infancy, online browsing was done using something called Mosaic, and a small start-up company called Amazon began selling books online. Later in the decade Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and Google appeared, eventually ousting precursors such as Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos.
In this lecture Tony reflects on some of these technologies and changes, offering some insights gleaned from 30 years of thinking informatically.
www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/professor-antony-bryant/