Paco Nathan
Encyclopedia
Paco Nathan is a computer scientist, author
, and performance art
show producer from San Luis Obispo, California
, who established much of his career in Austin, Texas
.
He studied mathematics and computer science at Stanford University
, specializing in UI design
and AI
, with Doug Lenat
as graduate advisor.
He received a teaching fellowship during 1984-1986, under the direction of Stuart Reges
, to create a course called CS1E, as a peer-teaching introduction to using the Internet
, informally called "PCs for Poets". It has since grown to become the popular Residential Computing program on campus.
Nathan collaborated with Robby Garner
on one of the first web chatterbot
s, named Barry DeFacto, in 1995.
The two have worked together on several related projects, including the JFRED
open source
project for developing Java-based chat bots. They used JFRED in BBC Television's "Tomorrow's World MegaLab Experiment" and attained a 17% Turing percentage during what was the largest online Turing test
at the time.
He was a co-founder (with Jon Lebkowsky
) and president of FringeWare, Inc., and the editor of FringeWare Review
. FringeWare, founded in 1992, was one of the early commercial sites on the Internet.
It experimented with mixing subcultural analysis
and ecommerce
, hence the name "fringe" + "ware".
Through work at FringeWare in support of small press publishers
and fringe subcultures, Nathan also helped produce a series of performance art
shows during 1997-1999, including events for Robert Anton Wilson
,
Survival Research Laboratories
,
Church of the Subgenius
,
RTMark
, and Negativland
. FringeWare was later used as a pattern for part of the organization of the Viridian design movement.
Nathan has written for several other publications including O'Reilly Net
,
Wired magazine, Whole Earth Review
, Mondo 2000
, and was a contributing editor for Boing Boing
during the early 1990s.
His first article for Mondo 2000
about the IBVA brainwave interface system was credited as inspiration for the song Hi-Tech Hippies by Yellow Magic Orchestra
.
Other popular writings have included a parody (nEurorAncid) of the cyberpunk
novel Neuromancer
,
and court-room reporting on behalf of a newly-launched Wired magazine during the federal trial of
Steve Jackson Games v. US Secret Service
.
More recent work has focused on applying aspects of Systems Theory
for computer network applications. Nathan led an engineering team at Symbiot to develop software for monitoring and visualizing risk metrics
of complex network security
systems.
That work received an Apple Design Award in 2004, was cited as a source for the United Nations UNCTAD Information Economy Report in 2005,
and spun off as an open source project called OpenSIMS. During his period at Symbiot, Nathan helped pioneer a controversial "hands on" college program in network security at Austin Community College
, for which he received a NISOD Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003.
Some of the technology at Symbiot emerged from an earlier project created by Nathan, called The Ceteri Institute, which used complex systems modeling to analyze aspects of transnational corporations
.
That effort followed from several years of writing, speaking, and political organizing on behalf of anti-corporate activism
.
During the period of 1999-2002, he summarized that material in a series of papers and lectures about Corporate Metabolism.
Paco Nathan currently works as the technical director for HeadCase Humanufacturing, combining previous experience in chat bots and ecommerce.
He sometimes writes online using the pseudonym
"Hugo Junot".
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
show producer from San Luis Obispo, California
San Luis Obispo, California
San Luis Obispo is a city in California, located roughly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Central Coast. Founded in 1772 by Spanish Fr. Junipero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of California’s oldest communities...
, who established much of his career in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
.
He studied mathematics and computer science at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, specializing in UI design
User interface design
User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user's experience and interaction...
and AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, with Doug Lenat
Douglas Lenat
Douglas B. Lenat is the CEO of Cycorp, Inc. of Austin, Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence, especially machine learning , knowledge representation, blackboard systems, and "ontological engineering"...
as graduate advisor.
He received a teaching fellowship during 1984-1986, under the direction of Stuart Reges
Stuart Reges
Stuart Reges is a senior lecturer of Computer Science Department at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Reges is currently in charge of redesigning their introductory Computer Science courses using a late-objects approach in Java...
, to create a course called CS1E, as a peer-teaching introduction to using the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, informally called "PCs for Poets". It has since grown to become the popular Residential Computing program on campus.
Nathan collaborated with Robby Garner
Robby Garner
Robby Garner is a natural language programmer and software developer. He won the 1998 and 1999 Loebner Prize Contests with the program called Albert One. He is listed in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records as having written the "most human" computer program.-Life:A native of Cedartown,...
on one of the first web chatterbot
Chatterbot
A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking...
s, named Barry DeFacto, in 1995.
The two have worked together on several related projects, including the JFRED
Fred Chatterbot
-History:The name Fred was initially suggested by Karen Lindsey, and then Robby jokingly came up with an acronym, "Functional Response Emulation Device." Fred has also been implemented as a Java application by Paco Nathan called ....
open source
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
project for developing Java-based chat bots. They used JFRED in BBC Television's "Tomorrow's World MegaLab Experiment" and attained a 17% Turing percentage during what was the largest online Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
at the time.
He was a co-founder (with Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Lebkowsky is an web consultant/developer, author and activist who was cofounder of FringeWare, Inc. . FringeWare, an early attempt at ecommerce and online community, published a popular "magalog" called FringeWare Review, and a literary zine edited by Lebkowsky called Unshaved Truths...
) and president of FringeWare, Inc., and the editor of FringeWare Review
FringeWare Review
FringeWare Review was a magazine about Subculture published in Austin, Texas. Many of the publication's writers and editors were associated with other publications such as Boing Boing, Mondo 2000, Whole Earth Review, and Wired. The last issue of the magazine was #14...
. FringeWare, founded in 1992, was one of the early commercial sites on the Internet.
It experimented with mixing subcultural analysis
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
and ecommerce
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online...
, hence the name "fringe" + "ware".
Through work at FringeWare in support of small press publishers
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
and fringe subcultures, Nathan also helped produce a series of performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
shows during 1997-1999, including events for Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
,
Survival Research Laboratories
Survival Research Laboratories
Survival Research Laboratories is a machine performance art group credited for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine performance. After about 30 years in San Francisco, California, SRL spent most of 2008 moving to Petaluma, California....
,
Church of the Subgenius
Church of the SubGenius
The Church of the SubGenius is a "parody religion" organization that satirizes religion, conspiracy theories, unidentified flying objects, and popular culture. Originally based in Dallas, Texas, the Church of the SubGenius gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s and maintains an active presence on...
,
RTMark
RTMark
RTMark is an activist collective that subverts the "Corporate Shield" protecting US corporations. The name is derived from "Registered Trademark"....
, and Negativland
Negativland
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! song, while their record label is named after another Neu! song...
. FringeWare was later used as a pattern for part of the organization of the Viridian design movement.
Nathan has written for several other publications including O'Reilly Net
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics...
,
Wired magazine, Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the Whole Earth Software Review and the CoEvolution Quarterly. All of these periodicals are descendants of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog...
, Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It covered cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine....
, and was a contributing editor for Boing Boing
Boing Boing
Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
during the early 1990s.
His first article for Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000
Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It covered cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine....
about the IBVA brainwave interface system was credited as inspiration for the song Hi-Tech Hippies by Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
.
Other popular writings have included a parody (nEurorAncid) of the cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
novel Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
,
and court-room reporting on behalf of a newly-launched Wired magazine during the federal trial of
Steve Jackson Games v. US Secret Service
Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service
Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service, 816 F.Supp. 432 , is a legal case that resulted from a raid by the United States Secret Service on the Austin headquarters of Steve Jackson Games in 1990...
.
More recent work has focused on applying aspects of Systems Theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
for computer network applications. Nathan led an engineering team at Symbiot to develop software for monitoring and visualizing risk metrics
RiskMetrics
The RiskMetrics variance model was first established in 1989, when Sir Dennis Weatherstone, the new chairman of J.P. Morgan, asked for a daily report measuring and explaining the risks of his firm. Nearly four years later in 1992, J.P...
of complex network security
Computer security
Computer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to...
systems.
That work received an Apple Design Award in 2004, was cited as a source for the United Nations UNCTAD Information Economy Report in 2005,
and spun off as an open source project called OpenSIMS. During his period at Symbiot, Nathan helped pioneer a controversial "hands on" college program in network security at Austin Community College
Austin Community College
The Austin Community College District is a regional community college district with eight campuses and 12 centers located in and around the city of Austin, Texas, United States....
, for which he received a NISOD Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003.
Some of the technology at Symbiot emerged from an earlier project created by Nathan, called The Ceteri Institute, which used complex systems modeling to analyze aspects of transnational corporations
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
.
That effort followed from several years of writing, speaking, and political organizing on behalf of anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activists believe that the influence of large business corporations poses a threat to the public good and democratic authority...
.
During the period of 1999-2002, he summarized that material in a series of papers and lectures about Corporate Metabolism.
Paco Nathan currently works as the technical director for HeadCase Humanufacturing, combining previous experience in chat bots and ecommerce.
He sometimes writes online using the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Hugo Junot".
See also
- FringeWare ReviewFringeWare ReviewFringeWare Review was a magazine about Subculture published in Austin, Texas. Many of the publication's writers and editors were associated with other publications such as Boing Boing, Mondo 2000, Whole Earth Review, and Wired. The last issue of the magazine was #14...
- Boing BoingBoing BoingBoing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
- Robby GarnerRobby GarnerRobby Garner is a natural language programmer and software developer. He won the 1998 and 1999 Loebner Prize Contests with the program called Albert One. He is listed in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records as having written the "most human" computer program.-Life:A native of Cedartown,...
- Tiffany Lee BrownTiffany Lee BrownTiffany Lee Brown is an American writer, editor, and interdisciplinary artist. Author of A Compendium of Miniatures , she is the Executive Director of the 501c3 non-profit organization New Oregon Arts & Letters...
- Wiley WigginsWiley WigginsWiley Ramsey Wiggins is an American film actor and blogger. A native of Austin, Texas, he is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, who was a member of Janis Joplin's early band, The Waller Creek Boys....
- EgregoreEgregoreEgregore is an occult concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people...
- FREDFred Chatterbot-History:The name Fred was initially suggested by Karen Lindsey, and then Robby jokingly came up with an acronym, "Functional Response Emulation Device." Fred has also been implemented as a Java application by Paco Nathan called ....
- CybercultureCybercultureCyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
External links
- Paco Nathan blog ("Hugo Junot" alias) ceteri.org
- Spock profile spock.com
- FringeWare Chronology laughingbone.com
- JFRED open source project mac.com
- Austin SRL 1997 show archive srl.org
- FringeWare content archives web.archive.org
- OpenSIMS open source project sourceforge.net
- HeadCase Humanufacturing home page headcaselabs.com
- ClaimID verified web pages claimid.com