[ExI] An overdue introduction

[Jonathan El-Bizri]

(Members of the AGI list, forgive me for this essentially duplicate
message.)

Somewhere in this maelstrom of lions eating zebras and rounding up zealots
for the rapture, an introduction was missed out. I am sure I have met a
number of you at last year's singularity summit, which I assisted with, or
will meet you at this year's, where I will be assisting again.

I am in my second year of a masters in research psychology at San Francisco
state. My (current) thesis involves the psychological constructs of the mind
in regards to online entities: how we conceive and relate to synthetic
groups, such as this email list, or your friends on facebook, and also
complex non-human systems, as they become more nuanced and intelligent.

I am also working towards PMP Project and Program Management Certifications
(despite a decade of 'real world' work, one is still required to take an
undergraduate class to qualify for the examination :/), with an eye towards
a career bridging the worlds of research and engineering on graduation with
some writing on the side.

This scholastic endeavour is my second (third?) life: before this I was a
dot-commer, working at start ups, before eventually getting swallowed by
Microsoft and then Juniper Networks. And before that, I wrote video game
soundtracks (I'm sure you've played some of my games :>) and tv commercials,
and managed the production group at a small game firm.

In addition to working on my thesis project, I am currently reviewing the
developmental psychology texts of my undergraduate days, in order to refresh
myself, and with the additional intention of writing a review of the
literature suitable for the non-developmental, non-psychologist working in
AGI (and as a springboard towards further research of this type). If anyone
can point me in the direction of similar work of this fashion, it would be
appreciated - so far, the topic does not seem well covered, which is good
news for me, after a fashion.

In any case, I am enjoying the chatter here, and will probably be lurking
around here for quite a while, depending on the anticipated advances in
extropian and life extension technologies of course :>

Regards,

Jonathan El-Bizri
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080813/34cc6f39/attachment.html>