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George Packer is a staff writer for *The New Yorker* and the author, most recently, of *The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq*. That book, which traced America's entry into the Iraq war and the subsequent troubled occupation, won the Overseas Press Club's 2005 Cornelius Ryan Award and the Helen Bernstein Book Award of the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and was named by *The New York Times* as one of the ten best books of the 2005. Packer has published two other works of non-fiction, *The Village of Waiting*, (1988), a memoir about his years in the Peace Corps in West Africa, and *Blood of the Liberals* (2000), a three-generational political history, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He has also published two novels, *The Half Man *(1991) and *Central Square*(1998), and was the editor of *The Fight Is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World* (2003). His articles, essays, and reviews on foreign affairs, American politics, and literature have appeared in *The New York Times Magazine*, *Harper's*, *Dissent*, and other publications. He received the 2006 Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown and his magazine reporting has won three Overseas Press Club awards. He was a 2001-2 Guggenheim fellow and has taught writing at Harvard, Bennington, and Columbia. He lives in Brooklyn.

Elaine Scarry, a professor of English and American Literature and Language, is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her interests include Theory of Representation, the Language of Physical Pain and Structure of Verbal and Material Making in Art, Science and the Law. She is the author of* The Body in Pain* which is known as a definitive study of pain and inflicting pain. She argues that physical pain leads to destruction and the unmaking of the human world, whereas human creation at the opposite end of the spectrum leads to the making of the world. Her 1999 study, "Dreaming by the Book" won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. In 1998, Elaine Scarry, a non-scientist, authored an article "The Fall of TWA 800: The Possibility of Electromagnetic Interference" which appeared in *The New York Review of Books*.

Andrew Dreyfus is Executive Vice President of Health Care Services for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. In that position, he is responsible for the company's health and wellness, performance measurement and improvement, and provider contracting and services divisions. He also leads the company's health care collaborative initiatives to improve the quality and safety of health care in Massachusetts. Andrew previously served as the first President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, which works to expand access and reduce barriers to health care for Massachusetts residents. During his tenure, the Foundation awarded nearly $17 million in grants to community organizations and launched a series of policy initiatives, including the "Roadmap to Coverage", which contributed to the successful passage of the state's landmark 2006 Health Reform Law. Andrew is a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System, and serves on the board of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, the Harvard Risk Management Foundation, and the Board of Advisors for the Brigham & Women's Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health.

Mitchel Resnick is LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. Resnick's research group has developed a variety of educational tools that engage people in new types of design activities and learning experiences, including the "programmable bricks" that were the basis for the award-winning LEGO Mindstorms and StarLogo software. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse, an award-winning network of learning centers for youth from under-served communities. Resnick's group has developed a new programming language, called Scratch, that makes it easier for kids to create their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art. Resnick is also involved in the next generation of Programmable Bricks and in the $100 laptop project. Resnick, a graduate of Haverford High School (Pa.), earned a BA in physics at Princeton University (1978), and MS and PhD degrees in computer science at MIT (1988, 1992). He worked for five years as a science/technology journalist for *Business Week* magazine, and he has consulted widely on the uses of computers in education. Resnick was awarded a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993. He is author of the book *Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams*, co-editor of *Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World *(1996), and co-author of *Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex, Dynamic Systems with StarLogo* (2001).

Keith Hampton, an expert in the study of social networks and new technologies, says that rather than destroying community life, being wired actually helps people connect. In fact, people who frequently use e-mail are more likely to be in frequent touch with others by telephone and in person, too. Seven years ago, Hampton set out to discover how online communication vehicles like e-mail are likely to impact our social contacts with family, close friends, and casual acquaintances. Are we going to meet less frequently in person? Are we going to become cut off from our communities? He also wanted to learn the extent to which global communication technologies can affect us at the local level particularly within our own neighborhoods. Keith Hampton is assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is completing a doctoral dissertation at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Andrea Walsh teaches in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, as well as the Women's Studies and Comparative Media Studies programs at MIT. Her academic background is in sociology and literature. Her teaching and research interests center on gender, popular culture, and aging. Dr. Walsh's publications include *Women's Film* and *Female Experience: 1940-1950* and various articles on gender, visual media and aging. Honors include among others, Bunting Institute Fellowship, Mellon Grant, Curriculum Development Project in Women's Studies, Clark University and Outstanding Academic Advisor, Northeast Region, American College, Testing, National Academic Advising Association.