I’m a writer, tech thinker and entrepreneur.

In my early career I worked as a journalist for major news outlets including The Washington Post.

I wrote the NYT-bestselling book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age (HarperCollins). Published in many countries and languages, it launched me on a journey into the tech world that continues today.

In 2014 I joined the MIT Media Lab as a research scientist and spent the next five years working on innovative tech projects with constructive societal aims.

I co-founded and was CEO of Public Mind, a startup that developed AI-powered tools to make online public discourse more useful for democracy (2020-2023).

Based in Massachusetts, I’m currently Visiting Scholar for Humanistic Technologies at the Max Planck Center for Humans and Machines in Berlin, Germany.

– William Powers, 2024

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