Office park fountain stained purple, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 2010 (taken with iPhone)

Research I'm interested in information systems writ-large: human and computer-based interactions where people use what's available to learn more, to be able to understand and explain what they've learned, and to be able to provide the warrant behind their propositions. In short, to be an actually "informed" person. To these ends, I develop and test interfaces and retreival algorithms for several domains, using various OpenSource tools [Java, JS, Apache, PHP, etc.]. See the research projects site for more.

The future of information work turns on three important axes.

1. The first is the volume of data require interactive visualization techniques.
   


2. The second is that the wall between the creators and consumers of "information objects" is eroding. More people explore using software tools to create the kinds of interactive opportunities or displays they enjoy ... and that might help them make sense of it all. Traditional search-browse dichotomy won't work. New interfaces that enrich data stored in rdbms, that integrate full-text and multi-lingual texts, and even in kinds of intelligence integrated into the data object suggest we should develop interfaces that are more communicative, but realistic given what a computer provides and ethically. Attempts to second-guess user intentionality are misguided because semantic-level language parsing can do only so much and the old model of just "user submits query and receive someone else's relevancy ranked links" is just silly if we consider the possibilities.
   


3. The third issue revolves around the theories of human-human interaction and human-human via the computer. Communications-oriented approaches are not, despite Floridi's claim, wrong-headed. It all depends whether the researcher believes the user should be studied as an object, à la strong Empiricism, or be considered a self-advocating person, with what Habermas terms a "knowledge constitutive interest" in his or her own performance in society, the collection of influences, opportunities, and behaviors called the "lifeworld." The pursuit of such an ethics with computers entails an interest in truth, truthfulness, and the norms of interaction, derived from The Theory of Communicative Action, itself informed by Enlightenment ideals of human improvement. To believe otherwise is to fall to the nadir of destructive post-modernism.
   

Personal Interests Music (playing keyboard & listening), Graphic Design, Philosophy, Travel Photography, & Languages ... (and of course my cats).

Recent readings ... MaryAnn in Autumn (Armisted Maupin); Master & Commander series (21 vol. by Patrick O'Brien; have read the entire series 12 times) and stats, visualization texts and historical biographies, such as Theodore Rex.

Keen on exploring, however ineptly, learning and trying to speak various languages. With various degrees of success, I speak pretty good French, can converse easily enough in German, Spanish, Sign Language (having worked at the National Center on Deafness); used to speak well enough (but no longer!) Russian, and can plod reading other languages (with elementary speaking success) in Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, and Italian. With their great patience, it's fun, challenging, and eye-opening to try to mingle and speak with regular folk doing their thing.

Photography: Just an amateur with a cheap camera but enjoy taking pix of flowers, architecture, people, and odd things.

Music: Love all kinds of music - especially Baroque (Bach and sons but all), Classical (of course, Beethoven's Third) some Romantic (Brahms' 4th for example; Wagner's brilliant Walkure), and modern (both orchestral and stuff on the radio - from hiphop to pop).

Programming: I like to resolve problems. We hear all the time of some need on the job that a "computer system" might solve. But then folk blunder into over-priced, under-useful systems that over time become multiple, independent silos of data that can't be shared. Building proofs-of-concept and encouraging an enterprise-wide data model dramatically changes the work processes of an organization and can be shown to save money and contingency costs. If Microsoft, then bad. But Google's hyperactive grab-all is worse.

Arts: sounds cliché but taking in the sciences, arts, and music along with readings across the domains profits one greatly, enjoying the backstory to a piece of art or its associations with other movements, artists, and ideas. My name is Red is a good example.

Why say all this? Because it's nice to know about the people we work with and perhaps helpful to get to know the students better. Professors are not evil, power-hungry monsters - we're just folk, too, and it's always nice to meet people who share our interests.