OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE.  Lee Rainie, Director of the PEW Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, will speak at a Friends of ORNL Community Lecture on The Social Impact of Technology. Lee Rainie’s talk will be held at the American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) in Oak Ridge on Thursday June 23, 2011.

Reception beginning at 5:30 pm, lecture at 6:30 pm.

Lee Rainie is the Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit, non–partisan “fact tank” that studies the social impact of the internet. Since December 1999, the Washington D.C. research center has examined how people’s internet use affects their families, communities, health care, education, civic and political life, and work places.

The Project has issued more than 240 reports based on its surveys that examine people’s online activities and the internet’s role in their lives. All of its reports and datasets are available online for free at http://www.pewinternet.org

Lee is a co-author of Up for Grabs, Hopes and Fears, Ubiquity, Mobility, Security, and Challenges and Opportunities. All are based on Project surveys about the future of the internet. He is also writing a book entitled Networked: The new social operating system with sociologist Barry Wellman about the social impact of the internet and cell phones for MIT Press.

Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Lee was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master’s degree in political science from Long Island University.