Welcome!

Welcome!
Credit: NASA

Like many American kids in the 1960s, the Apollo program had a dramatic impact on me.  I was fascinated by space travel, by the people who had the ambition and drive to make this happen, by the incredible machines they built to get us there.   Ultimately this drove me into wanting to be an engineer — I wanted to understand how to build things like this.   Technology was inspiring and meaningful, a way to achieve amazing goals, a way for people to work together on inspirational projects.

In my career, I was lucky enough to start working as the PC wave hit.   These little machines would let you do anything, and they took the power and control out of the hands of central computing administrators.  I was thrilled and wanted to be a part of delivering these tools to everyone, and was fortunate to find a company that would let me do that.  

And then I got to work during the rise of the Internet and the smartphone.  Two more great technologies that delivered information and power and creativity to everyone, everywhere, all the time.  

Of course all these technologies have downsides as well.  They can be used for uninspiring purposes.  They can be harmful and even destructive.  

But we can harness technology and choose to use technology in meaningful ways.  That is what I choose to focus on and to celebrate — technology that matters, and people that use technology to make a meaningful difference.