Richard Lachman
Toronto
Position: Professor
Organization: Toronto Metropolitan University
Richard Lachman is a Professor in the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he also serves as Director of the Experiential Media Institute and Academic Director of the Zone Learning network of incubators. An award-winning digital producer and frequent media-commentator on technology issues, Richard has led projects with UNICEF, TIFF, The Banff Centre, Penguin UK, The Discovery Channel, the CRTC, and others. His work in transmedia has been honored with a Gemini Award, a CNMA, and a Webby Honouree. Richard completed his doctorate at UNE in Australia researching spreading activation networks for documentary storytelling, and earned both a Master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab’s Interactive Cinema Group and a Computer Science degree from MIT. Early in his career, he was part of a startup acquired by Mattel, where he ended as Lead Designer and Engineer on the Petz software series, which shipped over three million units worldwide. His research spans AI, technology in society, transmedia storytelling, digital documentaries, immersive media, and collaborative design thinking.
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My Work
What I do:
When I started my working-life in the late 1990s, I spent a lot of time trying to convince media companies that the internet should become part of their business. Now, in the 2020s, it’s difficult to think of any aspect of our life that isn’t touched by tech. It’s part of how we raise our kids, educate ourselves, get healthy, treat illness, care for our parents, and run our countries. The CEOs of our technology companies are running a series of huge-scale experiments, in real-time, on how we communicate, form community, manage attention, develop a sense of well-being, and make a living. I want us to take an active role in reshaping technology, and my job is to help us understand more about the underlying issues so we can pick a better path together
Ask me about:
I help make the confusing and worrying world of our digital lives understandable to the general public. Questions about AI, chatbots in mental health, teens online, privacy in social media, videogame violence, or any of the worries we have about how our lives intersect with technology, are all areas I’m comfortable speaking to.
Why me:
I take as part of my professional responsibility to speak to the general public, and make complex ideas understandable and engaging. I believe only if a wider portion of society understands the issues can we understand how to change our regulation, our behaviours, and our expectations. My book, Digital Wisdom, is aimed at a wide audience, to answer how we can re-shape our relationship with technology.
Fun facts:
My first job-title after Grad school was the ominously “Behaviour Programmer” I met Drake when he was just a teenager, when I was working on a digital storytelling project around Degrassi
About Me
Sector: Academia (Post Secondary)
English proficiency: Read, Write, Speak
French proficiency: Read
Title: Dr.
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Gender: Male
Demographic: South Asian