Dr. Mayer-Schoenberger was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on January 7th, 2011 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, faculty affiliate with Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, is the Oxford Internet Institute‘s Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation. His research at the University of Oxford focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. He was previously Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Director of the Information + Innovation Policy Research Centre. Before coming to the LKYSPP he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Professor Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, including most recently Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (Princeton University Press 2009) and Governance and Information Technology (MIT Press 2007), as well as over a hundred articles (including in Science) and book chapters. A native Austrian, Professor Mayer-Schonberger founded Ikarus Software in 1986, a company focusing on data security, and developed Virus Utilities, which became the best-selling Austrian software product. He was voted Top-5 Software Entrepreneur in Austria in 1991 and Person-of-the-Year for the State of Salzburg in 2000. He chairs the Rueschlikon Conference on Information Policy, is the cofounder of the SubTech conference series, and served on the ABA/AALS National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. He is on the academic advisory boards of corporations and academic institutions, including Microsoft. He holds a number of law degrees, including one from Harvard and an MS(Econ) from the London School of Economics. In his spare time, he likes to travel, go to the movies, and learn about architecture.
