Barry Katz was educated at McGill University in Montréal, the London School of Economics, and holds a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is Professor of Design at California College of the Arts and Consulting Professor in the Design Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, at Stanford University. Outside of academia he is a fellow at IDEO, Silicon Valley’s leading design and innovation consultancy, and at the i-School, University of Tokyo.

Dr. Katz' training is in cultural theory and the history of technology, and his earlier works included Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation (Verso), Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942–1945 (Harvard), and Technology and Culture: A Historical Romance (Stanford). His more recent research explores themes in the history and theory of design, including Change By Design, with Tim Brown (Harper Collins, 2009) and NONOBJECT, with Branko Lukic (MIT Press, 2010); a new book, Phase Change: The Dynamic History of Silicon Valley Design, is forthcoming from MIT Press.

Barry has served as executive editor of the Design Book Review and contributing author to magazines such as I.D., Metropolis, and Dwell, and his writings on the history and philosophy of design have appeared in many academic, professional, and popular journals. He has an extremely short attention span and easily becomes interested in new things.