Ramesh Srinivasan

American academic

OccupationUniversity teacher

Employer

University of California, Los Angeles

Ramesh Srinivasan (born 1976) is a professor of Information Studies.^[1]

Professional life

Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan is a scholar, author, and thought leader who explores the intersection of technology, innovation, politics, business, and society. His work focuses on understanding how humanity can overcome the pressing issues that technology has perpetuated, such as artificial intelligence, social media and data privacy, misinformation, political bias, and the future of work.

As a professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles since 2005, he blends his skills as a leading academic, author, engineer, social scientist, storyteller, and policy advisor to shine a light on how technology and innovation, from all quarters and countries, will make a balanced world possible for all. His mission is to help repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic digital world.

In 2024, Ramesh also launched a podcast series called ‘Utopias’ in which he talks with well known individuals interested in a future that is more equal and just. Featured guests include various political figures, journalists, artists, scientists, environmentalists, religious practitioners, and scholars, including American philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West, political commentator Ana Kasparian, American businessman and 2020 democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, Congressman Ro Khanna, among others.

Additionally, Srinivasan served as a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and as an Innovation policy committee member for President Biden.^[2]

Publications

Srinivasan’s most recent book, "Beyond the Valley" (MIT press), illustrates potential for a digital world of the future that supports businesses alongside the interests of workers, citizens, cultural diversity, and social justice. Other books he has authored include: “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World” with NYU Press, and “After the Internet” (with Adam Fish) on Polity Press.

He is a regular speaker for TED Talks, and has made frequent media appearances on MSNBC, NPR, The BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, CBS, The Young Turks, AtlanticLive, and The Economist. He has written op-eds or contributed to work featured in major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Al Jazeera English, WNYC, Salon, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, FAZ (Germany), Financial Times, World Economic Forum, CNN, Folda Sao Paolo (Brazil), BBC News, Forbes, HuffPost, National Geographic, Quartz, CBC, The Economist, and many others.

In February 2021, Srinivasan was cited in an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. Mr. Friedman reiterated his suggestion that America urgently needs to enact a digital bill of rights that “sets the right balance between free speech and algorithms that make hate speech and blatantly false information from unreputable sources go viral.”^[3]

Academic background

Dr. Srinivasan earned his PhD in design studies at Harvard University; a master's degree in media arts and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering at Stanford University.^[4] He has served fellowships in MIT's Media Laboratory in Cambridge and the MIT Media Lab Asia. He has also been a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Design and Department of Visual and Environmental Design at Harvard.

Additionally, he is the founder of the research group Digital Cultures Lab,^[5] a UC-wide research group focused on technological advances and their impacts on various sectors.

Srinivasan is a regular speaker for TEDx Talks, and makes routine media appearances on NPR, Al Jazeera, The Young Turks, MSNBC, and Public Radio International.^[6]^[7]

Srinivasan's projects explore how technologies impact political revolutions, economic development and poverty reduction, and the future of cultural heritage. Specifically, he has worked with bloggers who overthrew the recent authoritarian Kyrgyz regime,^[8]^[9]^[10] non-literate tribal populations in India to study how literacy emerges through uses of technology,^[11] and traditional Native American communities to study how non-Western understandings of the world can introduce new ways of looking at cultural heritage and the future of the internet and networked technologies.^[12]^[13]^[14] His work has impacted contemporary understandings of media studies, anthropology and sociology, design, and economic and political development studies.^[15]

Professional affiliations

He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Anthropological Association, and a member of the editorial boards of several academic journals, including Science, Technology, & Human Values, International Journal of E-Politics, and Information Technologies and International Development. Srinivasan serves on the board of directors for Digital Democracy, an organization that works with land protectors in the Amazon and around the world. He also advises One Project, New Public, along with numerous members of the US House & Senate and global leaders.^[16]

Notes

^ Srinivasan, Ramesh (2020-01-28). "Americans need a 'digital bill of rights'. Here's why | Ramesh Srinivasan". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
^ "Democratize the Internet". jacobin.com. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
^ Friedman, Thomas L. (2021-02-10). "Opinion | Cyberspace Plus Trump Almost Killed Our Democracy. Can Europe Save Us?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-09-20.
^ "Ramesh Srinivasan | UCLA GSEIS". gseis.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-01-19. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
^ "Ramesh Srinivasan". seis.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-20.
^ MSNBC (2017-03-13), How President Donald Trump's Team Uses Social Media To Impact The Public | Morning Joe | MSNBC, retrieved 2017-04-28
^ The Young Turks (2017-04-08), Data, Trump, and Our World - Conversation with Ramesh Srinivasan, retrieved 2017-04-28
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh; Fish, Adam (2009). "Internet Authorship: Social and Political Implications within Kyrgyzstan". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 14 (3): 559–580. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01453.x.
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh. (2010) "The Mail: A letter in response to Malcolm Gladwell's article" The New Yorker, 25 October 2010.
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh. (2011) "The Net Worth of Open Networks" The Huffington Post, 15 February 2011.
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh. "Reflective Media and Policy in Developing Nations" Archived 2011-03-08 at the Wayback Machine (blog post)
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh. (2007). “Ethnomethodological Architectures: The Convergence Between an Information System and the Cultural Landscape.” Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology. 58(5): 723-733
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh. (2006). “Indigenous, Ethnic, and Cultural Articulations of New Media." International Journal of Cultural Studies 9(4): 497-518.
^ Srinivasan, Ramesh, Katherine M. Becvar, Robin Boast, and Jim Enote. (2010). "Diverse knowledges and contact zones within the digital museum." Science, Technology, and Human Values 35(5): 735-768
^ Merl, Christina. (2007) "A challenging view on the future of global knowledge sharing. Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine Rural Development News 1:13-16.
^ "Ramesh Srinivasan". Ramesh Srinivasan. 2023-02-12. Retrieved 2023-05-21.