WFS AZ May 2016 Meeting: Melanie Swan on Blockchain Technology

We are pleased to present our speaker and topic for May:

Theorizing Technology through the Blockchain with Melanie Swan

Melanie has authored articles and the book, Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy (O'Reilly) and in our meeting she will discuss in workshop format the concepts behind blockchain and how they relate to technology generally. Melanie is also an old friend and member of our group, and we're delighted to have her join us while she is in the valley this month.

About Melanie:

Melanie Swan is a Philosopher and Economic Theorist at the New School for Social Research (http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/philosophy/) in New York, NY. She is the founder of several startups including the Institute for Blockchain Studies (http://www.blockchainstudies.org/), DIYgenomics (http://www.diygenomics.org/), GroupPurchase, and the MS Futures Group (http://www.melanieswan.com/). Ms. Swan's educational background includes an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School (http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/) of the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.upenn.edu/), an MA in Contemporary Continental Philosophy from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/research/crmep/) at Kingston University London (http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/) and Université Paris 8 (http://www.univ-paris8.fr/), and a BA in French and Economics from Georgetown University (http://www.georgetown.edu/). She is a faculty member at Singularity University (http://www.singularityu.org/) and theUniversity of the Commons (http://www.uotc.org/), an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/swan/), and an invited contributor to the Edge's Annual Essay Question (http://edge.org/).

Ms. Swan enjoys creating new solutions for how we do things in the world. Her career has focused on academic research, finance, and entrepreneurship. She served as Director of Research at Telecoms Consultancy Ovum RHK (http://www.ovum.com/), and previously held management and finance positions at iPass (http://www.ipass.com/) in Silicon Valley, J.P. Morgan (http://www.jpmorgan.com/) in New York, Fidelity (http://www.fidelity.com/) in Boston, and Arthur Andersen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen) in Los Angeles.