Dr. Jay David Bolter, co-director of the Wesley New Media Center and the Wesley Chair of New Media in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College, will deliver the commencement address at Georgia Tech's 213th commencement ceremony on Friday, August 2, 2002.
The ceremony will take place at 9:00 a.m. at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Approximately 922 students are expected to graduate.
In April, Bolter received Georgia Tech's Distinguished Professor Award. The prize, which includes the honor of delivering the summer commencement address, is the most prestigious award bestowed upon Tech faculty members. The recipient is chosen for his or her outstanding commitment to teaching, research and service and is selected by the Faculty Honors Committee. Bolter is the first Ivan Allen College faculty member to achieve this distinction.
Part of Bolter's research is exploring the ways technology can be used as a tool to improve education and society. One such project is exploring how augmented reality (AR) systems can enhance the way people absorb and use information. Augmented reality works by overlaying a computer-generated image on top of an image of the real world, giving the user access to a vast array of information about an object at a glance.
"In AR, you put on the headset and you can still see the visual world, but the computer adds its own views. Along with Blair MacIntyre in the College of Computing, we're designing a system that you could use in a museum where visitors are accompanied by a virtual character who is a historical figure. As you walk through the exhibit, she talks to you about her history," Bolter explained.
Another use for AR might involve having airplane mechanics wear goggles, which the computer would use to overlay their view of an airplane engine with schematics or a step-by-step illustration on which parts need to be adjusted.
Future applications include shirts for parental use to monitor babies and for military use to provide a trapped soldier's exact location and give triage units details about wounds.
In his speech to the graduates, Bolter said he will emphasize to them how they can use their technological skills to change the world.
"I want to make the point that digital information and the Word Wide Web isn't just about existing in some amorphous cyberspace, but has real and important consequences for our physical world and our social world," he said.
It's a point Bolter has made time and time again in his research and in the three books he has authored, Remediation: Understanding New Media with Richard Grusin in 1999, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing in 1991 and Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age in 1984.
Bolter came to Georgia Tech from the University of North Carolina in 1991. He holds a doctorate in the classics and a master's in computer science from UNC. He received his bachelor's in Greek from Trinity College in Toronto in 1973.