He also co-directs the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative with Professor Steve Luby.

He was previously a Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, USA. The School of Information (SI) is an interdisciplinary professional school focused on bringing people, information, and technology together in more valuable ways.

His research explores the history, politics, and cultural aspects of computers, information infrastructures, and global climate science, including knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene.

He studied at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, USA and Université de Paris VIII, France before completing a PhD in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, CA, USA (1988).

He has been a visiting professor at Sciences Po (Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris), Paris, France (2012-13), Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Sciences (2012), and Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Netherlands (2007).

His publications include A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010); Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (edited with Clark Miller, MIT Press, 2001); and The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996).