Department of Communication
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2050
Phone: (650) 804-1733
E-Mail: [email protected](link sends e-mail)
Web URL: www.stanford.edu/~nass(link is external)
Job: I am currently a professor of communication at Stanford University, with appointments by courtesy in computer science and sociology. I direct the CHIMe (Communication between Humans and Interactive Media) Lab at Stanford University (chime.stanford.edu). The vision of the lab is: To rapidly advance theory, design, and assessment of how individuals and groups behave, feel, and think when interacting with media, research must be general, psychologically informed, quantitatively grounded, complimentary to partners, and near-term informed. The CHIMe lab consists of four large project domains: CARSITE (Communication with Automobiles: Research on Safety, Information Technology, and Enjoyment), SMARTI (Source, Medium, and Receiver Technologies – Intelligent), SPACE (Social and Psychological Aspects of Computing Environments), and VoiLa (Voices and Language). The projects are all grounded in the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm: Individual’s interaction with interactive media is fundamentally social. I am also co-Director of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, whose mission is to accelerate venture creation in developing countries. I do a great deal of consulting on the design of interfaces, including call centers, cars, intelligent workspaces, etc. Recent accomplishments: My (with Brave) new book, “Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship” has just been published by MIT Press. A paper I wrote (Nass, C. & Moon, Y. (2000). Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers. Journal of Social Issues, 56(1), 81-103) has just become a top 1% cited paper. I’ve recently derived a statistic for detecting insufficiently-shuffled decks of cards. Personal news: I have a son, Matthew, who is 13. He is a prodigy in designing psychological experiments (which is a very odd thing to be a prodigy in). Ph.D. Dissertation: Society as Computer: The Structure of Information Work in the United States 1900-1980