James Carey RIP
James Carey, brilliant educator and communications professor at Columbia University, passed away in his sleep last night at his home in Rhode Island. You can see more about him at the Poynter Institute, including a podcast of comments about him. Jay Rosen also has reflected on Carey’s impact.
He was a gentleman, and when I was teaching at Columbia, he was always gracious in sitting down and talking about the nature of technology and communication. He is perhaps best know for writing about the influence of the telegraph on society, and “transmission and ritual” views of communication.
I had the pleasure of working with the communications program he started, and advised two of its PhD students. Perhaps the most humbling moment was when he left a note in my mailbox in 2000 with a portion of Norbert Wiener’s paper on cybernetics, and asked for my help interpreting a passage from it. I was not smart enough to give him a useful answer. 
Prof. Carey, was always inspiring for those Friday lectures he delivered to masters students in the J-school lecture hall. It was a journalism church service for weekly intellectual nourishment within the frenzy of deadline writing and RW1 professors breathing down students’ necks. He will be sorely missed.
