Faculty and Researchers with STS Interests - Profile

Gene Rochlin
Professor, Energy and Resources Group
University of California, Berkeley


Email: grochlin@berkeley.edu

Gene I. Rochlin is Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Assistant Professor of Physics at U.C. Berkeley for seven years before retraining in political science at MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. He returned to the Energy and Resources Group at Berkeley in 1975, becoming Full Professor in 1990. He teaches science and technology studies, organization theory, and political economy and public policy related to energy and environmental decision-making as well as social science methods. Most recently his teaching and student advising has focused on the social construction and political economy of risk, risk management and safety. He co-edits a series on science, technology and the environment for the MIT Press, and is on the editorial board of several journals.

Rochlin will spend Fall 2005 in Oxford. What he intends to begin work on while at the Oxford Internet Institute are the newer and more salient social and political effects of "embedded" computer/IT networks and structures, particularly the ways in which modes of dependency are emerging -- and being responded to only by those few who are really knowledgeable about their workings. This extends to inquiry into issues of risk, safety, and dependency in ways that he says he still finds somewhat difficult to articulate. The increasingly tightly integrated combination of personal computers and networks lends itself to increased control, increased surveillance, and increased vulnerability as well as increased capabilities. It also raises the prospect of new types of failures, ranging from the loss of personal information (and even identity) to catastrophic failures of large and critical socio-technical systems

Website: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~rochlin/

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