Alan Liu is a Professor in the English at the University of California, Santa Barbara where his central interests include literary theory, cultural studies, information culture and new media, and British Romantic literature.

He is the author of Wordsworth: The Sense of History (1989) and The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (2004). He is principal investigator of the NEH-funded Teaching with Technology project at the University of California, Santa Barbara titled, Transcriptions: Literature and the Culture of Information, and co-director of the English department's undergraduate specialization on Literature and the Culture of Information. Liu's recent work on information technology and cultural criticism in The Laws of Cool and other places has been described as "enormous in scope, ambition and intellect as it provides an indispensable account of knowledge work" and its influence on the forms and practices of knowledge.

Professor Liu delivered the following address at the 2006 ASC conference.