About Rita J. King

Rita J. King

Rita J. King


Rita J. King is Innovator-in-Residence at IBM’s Analytics Virtual Center, a Security Futurist at the Aspen Institute, a Senior Fellow at two think-tanks: The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York City, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress in Washington DC. She is the Creative Director of the Imagination Age and Founder of Dancing Ink Productions. Her essays, various writings and works of art have been commissioned, published and exhibited globally. She thinks of technology as a prism held up to the bright beam of the imagination to create a new global culture and economy.

Dancing Ink Productions (DIP) is a strategic creative content development and research company dedicated to the emergence of a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age — defined by creative use of digital technology to inhabit ideas, facilitate new dialogue and collaborate on solutions to challenging issues. Rita works globally across platforms to produce creative mixed media, mixed-reality events, research projects, broadcasts and related products.

Rita is a storyteller, artist and writer. She and Joshua S. Fouts recently completed the “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds” project that spanned four continents as well as the digital culture. She is author of the seminal, widely taught Village Voice cover story, “Terms of Service: Sweaty Scenes from the Life of an AOL Censor.” For seven years while working as an award-winning investigative reporter, Rita’s primary focus was reporting on corporate culture. This work culminated in her report, “Big, Easy Money: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast,” followed by a civil rights quest with the president of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development that included an exploration of critical places across the American Deep South. She recently contributed a chapter in the 2009 edited volume, “Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina.”

Her extensive writings on the role of the role of Internet-based social networking and immersive technologies for innovation in business and public policy include work for IBM, “From the Fire Pit to the Forbidden City: An Outsider’s Inside Look at the Evolution of IBM’s Virtual Universe Community,” Manpower, Inc., “Power of Collaboration: Manpower’s First Anniversary in Second Life,” and her essay for the British Council, “The Emergence of a New Global Culture in the Imagination Age,” which was published in a book to celebrate the launch of the Transatlantic Network 2020, a youth leadership initiative spearheaded by the British Council to cultivate multimedia connections between young people looking to collaborate on tackling serious global issues. Rita recently became a strategist and writer for Linden Lab, the company that owns the virtual world Second Life.

Rita is a frequent international speaker on the subject of meaningful creative collaboration, ROI in virtual worlds and the creative and economic implications of a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. Her work has been featured in or on The New York Times, the Village Voice, Press TV, TIME, CNN, NPR, The Guardian, BBC, Boing Boing, Wired, New World Notes, “MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams,” and strategy+business, among others.

See also: