William Crossman, M.A.

William Crossman, M.A. is a philosopher, futurist, and professor involved with issues of education, media and technology, language and culture, and human rights. He is Founder/Director of the CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures and is author of VIVO [Voice-In/Voice-Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers.
 
Will has spoken at conferences and meetings around the world, appeared frequently on TV, radio, and online, and served as a consultant for governmental and non-governmental agencies, think tanks, educational institutions, research and development centers, and corporations. In a special millennium issue (Dec. 2, 1999), the New York Daily News cited him as one of six key visionaries for the 21st Century, along with physicist Stephen Hawking, astronaut Jim Lovell, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, scientist Ray Kurzweil, and bioethicist Art Caplan.
 
Will has presented his controversial, thought-provoking views about talking computers and other future-related issues to such diverse groups as the U.S. Government Institute of Museum and Library Services, International Convocation of Academies of Engineering & Technology Sciences — CAETS, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Adelaide International Artists’ Festival 2000 (Australia), U.S. National Parks Chiefs of Interpretation and Education Conference, Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry — TAPPI International Conference, Maryland Public Libraries Technology Conference, Technology in Education International Conference — TechED, World Future Society, E-vision Digital Media Center (New Zealand), Lernout and Houspie Voice Recognition, Finland Futures Research Centre, University of California-Santa Cruz’s Perceptual Science Lab, The Vision Center for Futures Creation (Sweden), Georgia Tech University’s Digital Signal Processing Lab, Italian Public TV Network, and Radio New Zealand.
 
During a lengthy teaching career, Will has taught an eclectic mix of university and college courses in his areas of academic expertise, which include philosophy, critical thinking, writing, and English as a second language. While a graduate student at Harvard, he taught writing to Harvard freshmen. After studying at MIT, he joined the philosophy faculty at Tufts University.
 
Since then, he has taught at a variety of academic institutions including City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and Antioch College West. For eight years (1989–1997), he taught at Morris Brown College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently teaching at Berkeley City College in Berkeley, California.
 
He earned his B.A. in philosophy from Cornell University, his M.A. in philosophy from Harvard University, and continued his study of philosophy and linguistics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
Will is a longtime organizer/activist in the anti-racism and pro-human rights movements, a jazz pianist, and a poet. He lives in Oakland, California.