I grew up in North Carolina and studied physics as an undergraduate
at Duke and a graduate student at Caltech. After receiving my PhD I
did research in theoretical physics and taught, first at the University
of Chicago and then at the University of Pittsburgh. I studied subatomic
particles and the nature of their component parts (quarks and gluons)
during the heyday of the “Standard Model” of particle physics
-- a time of unusual intellectual ferment and scientific progress in
the 1970's and 1980's.
An early user of the Internet, I became interested in its broader social
applications and was excited by the idea of technology that could inexpensively
connect everyone in the world. In 1989 I helped found the KIDSNET (later
KIDSPHERE) Internet mailing list, which evolved into a forum that coordinated
new activities in school networking. This led me to develop a project
that networked Pittsburgh Public Schools, with support from the National
Science Foundation.
My school networking activity expanded to include community access
sites, and in 1996 I founded the nonprofit Information Renaissance
to coordinate these blossoming activities. An early effort of this
nonprofit was to facilitate public involvement of the Federal Communications
Commission in a program to link schools and libraries to the Internet.
Information Renaissance developed an electronic docket for this proceeding
and conducted an online national dialogue to include teachers and librarians
in the program's planning. Since that time I have continued to work
at the intersection of public interest, government programs and information
technology.