My turn.
BACKGROUND
Bachelor's Degree University of Illinois
Champaign--Astrophysics 1985, Supported myself in college programming
simulations for math professors. Dropped out of a Masters in Math Education
after getting tired of learning about Thomas Dewey than rays and bundles.
Spent four years as an itinerant artist, doing Science Fiction conventions
with friends -- I watched Larry Niven chasing a girl wearing only seashells,
had lunch with Piers Anthony, and shared a hot tub with Mercedes
Lackey.
In 1990, I moved to the Pacific Northwest. Became
involved with game programming (Director, game development, artificial
intelligence systems and so forth) and multimedia development. Wrote my first
magazine article in 1993, my first computer book in 1995, and am up to 150+
articles and 12 books. I've worked with most major dev environments since
their first releases, and watched an entire industry get wiped out overnight
(typesetting). In 1996 I encountered XML, and have rode that wave ever since.
I joined a consulting firm Net Objectives, two weeks ago,
Monday.
GENERAL
INTERESTS
Programming, Art,
Science Fiction and Fantasy, Physics, Astronomy, Biology, Psychology,
Mathematics, Macro-economics, Complexity/Systems Theory, Mermaids.
INTERESTS RELATING TO
HUMANMARKUP TC
I'm fascinated with the interaction between
humans and computers. So far this interaction has been delineated by
programmers and designers, the first of which tend to look at application
development as being a process of getting the humans to work with the logical
rules of the computer, the second of which tend to look at application
development as being a process of getting the computers to work with the
common-sensical world of people. These approaches tend to end up creating
programs that often do neither well.
I think that HumanML is a significant part of the
solution; if you can effectively provide a way for computers to model human
behaviors, characteristics and interactions, then these same computers
will be able to develop interfaces that more accurately reflect the needs of
the user, rather than that of the designer or programmer. Additionally, as
more and more of our communications take place over the province of the
computer, having a humanML system makes it possible to create synchratic world
views that are appropriate to the participants rather than to the developers
of the communication software.
I also think that there are inherent dangers
involved in creating models of humans, as modeled worlds by their very nature
limit the range of choices that can be accomodated. I'd like to help make
sure that HumanML is flexible enough to handle a healthy subset of modelling
the real world.
Tel: 360-951-6159 Fax:
360_357-5555
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