Paco Nathan (born 1962) is an American computer scientist and early engineer of the World Wide Web. Nathan is also an author and performance art show producer who established much of his career in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

Early life

Paco Nathan was brought up in

San Luis Obispo, California San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for " St. Louis the Bishop", ; Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfwa ...

. He studied mathematics and computer science at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, specializing in

user interface design User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, with

Douglas Lenat Douglas Bruce Lenat (born 1950) is the CEO of Cycorp, Inc. of Austin, Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence; he was awarded the biannual IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 1976 for creating the machine learning p ...

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 The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, informally called "PCs for Poets". It has since grown to become the popular Residential Computing program on campus.

Career

Nathan collaborated with Robby Garner on one of the first web

chatterbot A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would beha ...

s, named ''Barry DeFacto'', in 1995.R. Garner, P. Nathan
"FRED, Milton and Barry: the evolution of intelligent agents for the Web"
Advances in intelligent systems, 1997.''portal.acm.org'' They have worked together on several related projects, including the JFRED

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project for developing Java-based chat bots. They used ''JFRED'' in BBC Television's "Tomorrow's World MegaLab Experiment" and attained a 17%

Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...

percentage during what was the largest online

Turing test The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine's ability to artificial intelligence, exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing propos ...

at the time. He was a co-founder (with

Jon Lebkowsky Jon Lebkowsky (born April 20, 1949) is a web consultant/developer, author, and activist who was the co-founder of FringeWare Review (along with Paco Nathan). FringeWare, an early attempt at ecommerce and online community, published a popular " ...

) 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 E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managemen ...

, hence the name "fringe" plus "ware". Through work at FringeWare in support of small press publishers and fringe subcultures, Nathan also helped produce a series of

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

shows during 1997–1999, including events for

Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson ...

, Survival Research Laboratories,

Church of the Subgenius The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion that satirizes better-known belief systems. It teaches a complex philosophy that focuses on J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, purportedly a salesman from the 1950s, who is revered as a prophet by the Church. SubG ...

, RTMark, and

Negativland Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label (Seeland Records) is named after another Neu! track. The co ...

. FringeWare was later used as a pattern for part of the organization of the

Viridian design movement The Viridian Design Movement was an aesthetic movement focused on concepts from bright green environmentalism. The name was chosen to refer to a shade of green that does not quite look natural, indicating that the movement was about innovative des ...

. Nathan has written for several other publications including O'Reilly Net, ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'', ''

Whole Earth Review ''Whole Earth Review'' (''Whole Earth'' after 1997) was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the '' Whole Earth Software Review'' (a supplement to the ''Whole Earth Software Catalog'') and the ''CoEvolution Quarterly ...

'', ''

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 ''Wi ...

'', and was a contributing editor for ''

Boing Boing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won ...

'' during the early 1990s. His first article for ''

'' about the IBVA brainwave interface system was credited as inspiration for the song ''Hi-Tech Hippies'' by

Yellow Magic Orchestra Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO for short) is a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals). The group is conside ...

. YMO. "Hi-Tech Hippies", Technodon, track 5 (see liner notes), 1993. Other popular writings have included a parody (''nEurorAncid'') of the

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...

novel

Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...

, and court-room reporting on behalf of a newly launched ''

'' during the federal trial of Steve Jackson Games v. US Secret Service. More recent work has focused on applying aspects of

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

for computer network applications. Nathan led an engineering team at Symbiot to develop software for monitoring and visualizing risk metrics of complex

network security Network security consists of the policies, policies, processes and practices adopted to prevent, detect and monitor unauthorized access, Abuse, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources. Network securi ...

systems. That work received an

Apple Design Award The Apple Design Awards (ADAs) is an event hosted by Apple Inc. at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The purpose of the event is to recognize the best and most innovative Macintosh and iOS software and hardware produced by independent d ...

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 The Austin Community College District (ACC) is a public community college system serving the Austin, Texas, metropolitan area and surrounding Central Texas communities. The college maintains numerous campuses, centers, and distance learning opt ...

, 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

multinational corporations A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...

. That effort followed from several years of writing, speaking, and political organizing on behalf of

anti-corporate activism Anti-corporate activism refers to the idea of activism that is directed against the private sector, and specifically against larger corporations. It stems from the idea that the activities and impacts of big business are detrimental to the pub ...

. During the period of 1999–2002, he summarized that material in a series of papers and lectures about "corporate metabolism". (excerpted from Parallax View conference) Results of that work were forwarded by author

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

as a post-9/11 analysis. , Nathan works as the technical director for HeadCase Humanufacturing, combining previous experience in chat bots and ecommerce.

Early life

Career

See also

Notes and references

External links