Re: HumanMarkup Introductions

Title: Re: HumanMarkup Introductions

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.

  
Kurt 
  Cagle
GeoAddress: 440 Decatur St. NW, Olympia, WA USA, 
  Earth
W3Address: http://www.netobjectives.com,http://www.kurtcagle.net
Email: 
  

  
Tel: 360-951-6159
Fax: 
  360_357-5555