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Karlin Lillington

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Karlin Lillington
Lillington in 2015
Lillington in 2015
Born1959 (age 64–65)
Canada
OccupationJournalist, academic
LanguageEnglish
CitizenshipIreland, US, Canada
Alma materUniversity College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, UC Santa Barbara
GenreNon-fiction
SubjectTechnology and its interaction with business, society and culture; privacy; the poetry of Seamus Heaney
Years active1980–present
Notable awardsOutstanding Achievement at University College Dublin Smurfit School Business Journalist Awards
SpouseChris Horn
Website
indigo.ie/~karlin/kjhome.htm

Karlin J. Lillington is an Irish technology and business journalist, notable for her work with The Irish Times, The Guardian, Wired, Salon.com and other newspapers, magazines and online publishers. Born in Canada and growing up in California, she holds a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Her work also formed a basis for a judicial appeal which voided the European Union's Data Retention Directive.[1] She has been a member of the board of Ireland's public service broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, and is a long-serving member of the advisory board of Dublin's Science Gallery.

Early life and education

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Lillington was born in Canada, and moved to California at an early age.[2] Her father, Dr Glen Lillington, a half-Icelandic Canadian, from Winnipeg, was a professor of respiratory medicine at Stanford University and UC Davis. Her mother, Ellen (née Place), married Glen in 1957, and they settled in California in 1960, living in the college town of Davis, and moving to Menlo Park on his retirement. Karlin is the eldest of three children, the others being boys.[3][4]

Lillington studied at the University of California from the mid-1970s, at UC Santa Barbara.[5] She took a degree in literature, and later worked, for about a decade, towards a PhD in Anglo-Irish literature, with a focus on the poetry of Seamus Heaney.[6]

She visited Ireland to pursue postgraduate studies in Anglo-Irish Literature at University College Dublin, reading for an M.Phil. After this, she transferred to Trinity College Dublin where she read for a second M.Phil. in Anglo-Irish Literature, her 1987 dissertation being, Borrow the longship's swimming tongue: Scandinavian imagery in Wintering Out and North.[7] She hosted Heaney on a visit he made to California in the early 1990s.[6] She published her PhD thesis, Gender and metaphor in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, at TCD in 1995.[8]

Career

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Early stages

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Lillington taught at San Jose State University in the early 1990s, while pursuing her PhD, and it was at this stage that she secured her first e-mail account and pre-World Wide Web Internet access, and her interest in matters of technology developed from this.[6] She had worked in student journalism at UC Santa Barbara, including holding the post of editor of The Daily Nexus paper,[5] and of the biweekly magazine, Portal.[9] She began to work in professional journalism while waiting to defend her PhD thesis in Ireland.[6]

The Irish Times

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Her work for The Irish Times, comprising hundreds of pieces, dates back to at least 1996. The first article in the paper's archives was on the arts, specifically the launch of the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature,[10] while the majority were on the interface of technology with society and business.[11] She has, however, also written in other areas, and sometimes followed up on such pieces, writing, for example, on the need for greater animal welfare control of puppy and horse breeding in 2004, and, frustrated that her article was still widely quoted because the problems had not changed, returning to the topic in 2017.[12]

Lillington achieved prominence as the paper's technology correspondent,[13] and in Prof. Terence Brown's detailed history and review of the Irish Times and its influence as Ireland's newspaper of record, he credited Lillington with a broad public impact: "information technology in the 2000s became a major news story ... reported on expertly in the Irish Times by Karlin Lillington, a young Californian who had come to Ireland to study its literature, who had carved out a career for herself explaining the communications revolution to the Irish public. Middle-aged readers were familiarized in her lively columns with the argot of a new field: 'spam', 'identity fraud', 'downloads', 'search engine', ..."[14] Brown further highlighted a selection of her articles, including "Our Past Is Not So Far Behind Us", which mused on Ireland's past emigration situation, and the new technology multinationals, on the potential conflict between blogging and journalism, and on the conflict between Ireland's need for immigrants to power "new economy"-based growth and fears of the potential impact of such migration.[14]

The Guardian and others

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Lillington wrote regularly for The Guardian from at least 1997. She has also produced articles for Wired,[15] New Scientist, Salon.com, Red Herring, the Sunday Business Post, the Sunday Times and many other outlets.[2][16] She wrote an extensive essay, Ireland, Technology and the Language of the Future for journal The Irish Review.[17]

Technology and the arts

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Lillington has written one-off pieces which bring together her literary studies and technology, such as a discussion around James Joyce and the concept of hypertext,[18] and on the digital arts, including an interview with the founding director of the Arthouse Multimedia Centre, Aileen MacKeogh,[19] and a later article on the demise of Arthouse.[20] She has been a speaker at many conferences and summer schools, including the Government of Ireland's invitation-only Digital Summit[21] and the MacGill Summer School.[22]

Social media and privacy

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Lillington has raised a number of privacy concerns, especially around social media, and also online platform nuisance issues, and cancelled her account on LinkedIn over the latter.[23] Her work also grounded the Digital Rights Ireland appeal to the European Court of Justice which resulted in the voiding of the EU Data Retention Directive.[24][1] In 2018 she was one of the expert witnesses called before the Grand International Committee on Disinformation, and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment, speaking about security and privacy risks.[25]

Media appearances and podcasts

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Lillington has also appeared on BBC and RTÉ radio, and on television with RTÉ and TV3.[2] In 2009 she produced her own series of podcasts, technoculture, including interviews with Chris Horn of IONA Technologies and leading designer Professor Anthony Dunne of Dunne & Raby,[26] and has participated in other podcasts, such as a memorial for Mary Mulvihill with Róisín Ingle,[27] and two concerning pets.[28]

Voluntary and public service roles

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Lillington has served as a member of the Leonardo Group, the advisory board of Dublin's Science Gallery, from its foundation year, 2008.[13] She has also served a term as a ministerial appointee on the board of Ireland's national public service broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ),[21] and on the board of the Dublin International Piano Competition.[25] She has also been a judge for the Mary Mulvihill Award.[29] She is, as of 2021, a member of the board of the contemporary music festival, New Music Dublin.[30] She has also spoken, with Chris Horn, for the Front Line Defenders human rights charity.[31]

Recognition

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Lillington was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the University College Dublin Smurfit School Business Journalist Awards in 2019.[1]

Personal life

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As of the 2000s, Lillington lived in Dublin, and in 2018, after over 30 years of full or partial residence, became an Irish citizen, writing an account of her citizenship ceremony for the Irish Times.[32] Jointly with Chris Horn, her husband as of 2021, she has been a senior sponsor of the Irish National Opera since its launch year.[33] She has written and managed a specialist site for Cavalier King Charles Spaniels;[34] and founded a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel rescue charity;[28][35] she did a podcast on this in 2017.[28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Kearns, David (27 November 2019). "UCD News and Opinion: UCD Smurfit School Business Journalist Awards recognises the best in Irish business journalism". UCD News and Opinion (online). University College Dublin. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  2. ^ a b c Lillington, Karlin. "Karlin Lillington (bio)". techno\culture. Retrieved 6 April 2021. Born in Canada, brought to Silicon Valley as a prototype ... for formative years ... Science studies mutated into a literature degree, and eventually a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature ... a little brick house in Dublin with ... cats
  3. ^ "Glen A. Lillington (Oct. 20, 1926 – May 7, 2011)". Almanac News. Retrieved 6 April 2021. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada ... Icelandic heritage ... internationally recognized expert in respiratory disease and Emeritus Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California (Davis) and Stanford University ... wife, Ellen Place, a nursing student... married in 1957 and moved to California in 1960 ... daughter, Karlin (Chris) of Dublin, Ireland; sons, Peter of Placerville and Barry (Dawn) of Fairfax; and grandson, Zachary
  4. ^ Karlin Lillington [@klillington] (10 April 2021). "My US family now either vaccinated, or getting started next week. Bring on the vaccines here... ! Odd to be the eldest sibling and the only one not vaccinated..." (Tweet). Retrieved 11 April 2021 – via Twitter.
  5. ^ a b "(Masthead)". Daily Nexus (student newspaper, UC Santa Barbara). 6 June 1980. p. 2. Editor / Karlin J. Lillington
  6. ^ a b c d Lillington, Karlin (12 September 2013). "Crossing new borders in pursuit of Seamus Heaney". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 April 2021. Like so many who love technology, I came to it from a non-technical background ... wasn't a personal friend by any means, although we had met several times ... joyful day with him in California in the early 1990s. He had come to San Jose State University, where I was teaching, to give readings ... I drove him to San Francisco, with numerous detours ... In the course of my research, I was soon exploring the young, pre-web internet, eventually transitioning to the web.
  7. ^ Lillington, Karlin J. (1987). 'Borrow the longship's swimming tongue': Scandinavian imagery in Wintering Out and North / Karlin J. Lillington. The Library, Trinity College Dublin (Thesis). Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  8. ^ Lillington, Karlin J. (1995). Gender and metaphor in the poetry of Seamus Heaney / Karlin J. Lillington. The Library, Trinity College Dublin (Thesis). Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  9. ^ Portal (a biweekly magazine of the daily nexus, UC Santa Barbara): Society for Creative Anachronism. Santa Barbara, California. 14 November 1980. Karlin J. Lillington, Editor{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Lillington, Karlin (21 March 1996). "Irish writers installed by the bedside". The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  11. ^ "Irish Times Archive search (>2400 results)". The Irish Times. 6 April 2021. Retrieved 6 April 2021. over 2,400 – articles (1996–2021), references to articles and mentions of appearances
  12. ^ Lillington, Karlin (17 July 2017). "A well-enforced welfare system for animals long overdue". The Irish Times.
  13. ^ a b Science Gallery Re:view 2008. Dublin, Ireland: Science Gallery Dublin (Trinity College Dublin). 2009. p. 47.
  14. ^ a b Brown, Terence (12 March 2015). "12 (The Irish Times and a Modern Ireland)". The Irish Times, 150 Years of Influence (1st ed.). London, UK: Bloomsbury. pp. 401–405.
  15. ^ "Contributor: Karlin Lillington". wired.com. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  16. ^ Lillington, Karlin. "My writing". techno\culture. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  17. ^ Lillington, Karlin (2004). "Ireland, Technology and the Language of the Future". The Irish Review (31): 66–73. doi:10.2307/29736135. JSTOR 29736135. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  18. ^ Lillington, Karlin. "Portrait of the artist as webmaster". James Joyce (james-joyce.ru). Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  19. ^ Lillington, Karlin (7 July 1997). "The Art of the Impossible". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  20. ^ Lillington, Karlin (19 July 2002). "Hub must learn from mistakes at Arthouse". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  21. ^ a b "(Speakers) Dr. Karlin Lillington". Digital Summit (Dublin). Retrieved 6 April 2021.[permanent dead link]
  22. ^ "(Speakers 2019) Dr Karlin Lillington". MacGill Summer School. 27 June 2019. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  23. ^ Lillington, Karlin (21 April 2016). "Why LinkedIn needs to go away". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  24. ^ "Keynote speakers: Karlin Lillington". Societas Ethicas. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  25. ^ a b "Opening Statement by Karlin Lillington, Irish Times journalist to the Grand International Committee on Disinformation and Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment" (PDF). Houses of the Oireachtas. Dublin, Ireland. 7 November 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  26. ^ "technoculture". Apple – Podcasts. Apple, Inc. Retrieved 6 April 2021.[permanent dead link]
  27. ^ "Irish Times Women's Podcast". The Mary Mulvihill Award. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  28. ^ a b c Aftering podcasts (2017). "AnimalTalk:Irish Cavalier Rescue". soundcloud.com. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  29. ^ "Judges (Past Judges)". The Mary Mulvihill Award. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  30. ^ "About New Music Dublin". New Music Dublin. Retrieved 24 April 2021. ...Ireland's foremost contemporary music festival ... The Board of New Music Dublin CLG ... Karlin Lillington
  31. ^ Costanza, Tina (14 May 2013). "Tech Defenders links tech community to protect human rights defenders". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  32. ^ Lillington, Karlin (10 September 2018). "Citizenship ceremony: 'I thought it might be silly, but no, it was emotional'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 April 2021. to formally tie the knot with the country that has been my predominant home, on and off, for three decades. ... I'd originally come over from the US decades ago to do a one-year postgraduate course in Anglo-Irish literature.
  33. ^ "Acknowledgements (Founders Circle, also INO Patrons)". Irish National Opera. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  34. ^ Lillington, Karlin. "CavalierHealth.org – syringomyelia-affected Cavalier King Charles Spaniels" (PDF). CavalierHealth.org. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  35. ^ "Irish Cavalier Rescue". Irish Cavalier Rescue. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
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