Orit Halpern is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design and art practice. She is also the director of the Speculative Life Research Cluster, a laboratory situated at the intersection of art and the life sciences, architecture and design, and computational media. Her recent monograph,  Beautiful Data (Duke Press, 2015), is a history of interactivity, data visualization, and ubiquitous computing. She is currently working on two books; the first is a history and theory of “smartness,” and the second is about extreme infrastructures. Find out more here.