Abbe Mowshowitz

Website Abbe Mowshowitz has been professor of computer science at the City College of New York and member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 1984. In this period he has also held academic appointments at the University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Rotterdam School of Management. Earlier he held academic appointments at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, and the University of Michigan. Mowshowitz began his research career in information theory and discrete mathematics, but shifted to organizational and social implications of computers some decades ago. He was awarded the 1990 Tinbergen Professorship at Erasmus University-Rotterdam in partial recognition of his work on computers and society. He has authored several books and reports (including THE CONQUEST OF WILL: INFORMATION PROCESSING IN HUMAN AFFAIRS, 1976), and many articles on the social implications of computing. In recent years, his research has centered on virtual organization (an idea he conceived in the late 1970s). A book on this subject (VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION: TOWARD A THEORY OF SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATION STIMULATED BY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY) was published in 2002. In addition to teaching and research, Mowshowitz has acted as consultant on the uses and impacts of information technology (especially computer networks) to a wide range of public and private organizations in North America and Europe.

• PhD, Computer Science, University of Michigan
• MS, Computer Science, University of Michigan
• MA, Mathematica, University of Michigan
• BS, Mathematics, University of Chicago

• CSc 104 Discrete Mathematical Structures
• CSc 598.66 Senior Project I (ethics and management component)
• CSc I0810 Topics in Software and Systems (Modern Information Retrieval: Search Technologies)

My current research interests lie in two areas: 1) organizational and managerial issues in computing, and 2) network science. A central focus in the first area is virtual organization, especially the “switching model” and its relationship to the problem of dynamic resource allocation. This research is an extension of work reported in my book Virtual Organization. In the second area I am studying network growth models, network vulnerability, embedding virtual networks in physical substrates, and the identification of ‘communities of interest’ in networks. Much of this research is connected with my participation in the International Technology Alliance funded by the U.S. Army Research Lab and the U.K. Ministry of Defense.

• A. Mowshowitz, Entropy of digraphs and infinite graphs, in Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications, M. Dehmer, F. Emmert-Streib, and A. Mehler, eds., Springer/Birkhäuser (in press)
• M. Dehmer and A. Mowshowitz, On measuring the complexity of sets of graphs using graph entropy, in Advanced Computational Technologies, B. Iantovics, ed. Romanian Academy Press, Bucharest, in press. )
• A. Mowshowitz and N. Kumar, Then there were three, IEEE Computer, 42(2): 106-108 (2009)
• A. Mowshowitz and V. Mitsou, Entropy, orbits and spectra of graphs, in Analysis of Complex Networks: From Biology to Linguistics, M. Dehmer, ed., Wiley-VCH: Weinheim (2009), 1-22.
• A. Mowshowitz: Technology as excuse for questionable ethics. AI & Society, 22, 2008, 271-282.
• N. Kumar and A. Mowshowitz, Increasing Internet access and freedoms with IGF participation. IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, 27(2): 33-36 (2008)
• A. Mowshowitz, G. Bent: Formal properties of distributed database networks. ITA Annual Conference, University of Maryland, 2007.
• Abbe Mowshowitz, Nanda Kumar: Public vs. private interest on the Internet. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 2007, 23-25.
• A. Mowshowitz and M. Turoff, eds. The digital society (special section of CACM). Communications of the ACM 48(10), 2005, pp. 32-74.
• E. Zureik and A. Mowshowitz. Consumer power in the digital society. Communications of the ACM 48(10), 2005, pp. 46-51.
• A. Mowshowitz and A. Kawaguchi. Quantifying the switching model of virtual organization. Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application 6(4), 2005 pp. 53-74.