From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Sun Nov 24 2002 - 12:14:45 MST
Hello.
I've been a lurker on this list for about 6 years now, and have
delurked occasionally, but have never had sufficient free time to
really engage in conversations here.
I thought it high time that I delurk again and give active
correspondence another shot.
First, I'd like to say that this list has been a tremendous resource
for me. While it has its occasional signal / noise problems, there is
some amazingly high quality signal. So to all you posters that have
educated me over the years, thank you.
Now, who am I?
My name is Ramez Naam. My friends call me "mez". I'm a US citizen
residing in Seattle, WA. I was born in Cairo, Egypt and immigrated to
the US with my parents at the age of 3. I spent several years at a
major software company located just outside of Seattle leading the
design and development of software products used by 10s of millions of
people - specifically Outlook and Internet Explorer. I realize that
my former employer is the source of some controversy in a number of
online communities. I'm comfortable with that, as I am with my
contribution to the world through my work on those products. Ask me
sometime and I'll tell you what I'd do differently if I had to do it
over again, and what I'd keep exactly the same.
More recently I've been running a small nanotechnology software
startup - our aim is to make computer aided molecular design user
friendly enough for the average bench chemist, physicist, or chemical
engineer. For those of you not familiar with the field of computer
aided molecular design / computational chemistry / molecular modeling,
let's just say that it's currently a mess, which we believe we have
the opportunity to help clarify.
I'm also currently working on a book with the working title "More Than
Human: Technology and the Future of Mankind". The thesis of the book
is that it is a fundamental part of human nature to seek to improve
ourselves and our offspring, and as such, we should welcome
technologies such as intelligence augmentation, lifespan extension,
stem cells, cloning, genetic engineering, and brain computer
interfaces, as they provide very promising paths to the self- and
offspring- improvement that we seek. The book is aimed at a lay
audience and covers both the technologies I just mentioned and the
common sense ethical arguments for embracing them (with all due regard
to issues of safety). I hope to have the book completed by spring in
time for Fall publication, though my friends who are published authors
inform me that this is quite an ambitious timeline. If you're
seriously interested in reviewing and offering feedback on parts of
the book during the writing process, let me know and I'll add you to
my review loop.
So, that's a bit about me. It's a pleasure to be a member of this
list. Time allowing, you may see more of my posts in the near future.
cheers,
mez
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:21 MST