Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

On Higher Education and the Structure of Thought's Long-Term Progress
Friday, 19 Aug 2005 :-:

Have you noticed that the accumulation of information often changes the way you think? This happens in my brother, as his knowledge of Greek and Hebrew influences his speech patterns. It happens with me, as my understanding of hypertext influences me to think more in patterns and connections than in the past.

Have you noticed that higher education changes the sort of questions you ask? I recently noticed that I have moved from questions about the nature of life (which concern me directly) to more specific questions, which may not relate to personal life or to a quest to understand.

Notice the difference between posts on my current blog and my old site (compare). Ah, memories. One distinct one comes to mind -- it was my first large assignment, and I vividly remember reading Kafka's "Metamorphosis" late at night, on the couch in the living room at home, with one lamp on, and the yellow light and silent house adding the atmosphere of surreal nothingness to the reading experience. I was absorbed, enthralled, and entirely in love with the study of literature from then on.

I have lost the quest to really learn the deep things of the universe along the way. Have I just grown up, or have I betrayed my reason for reading?

I have done what I think is common in the generations of scholarly thought. I think this is a rule for history: Rather than supporting, refuting or responding to the old ideas of past scholars, the new generations of thinkers find new questions, and in doing so, think they are smarter than the previous generation, which did the same to their elders. This is what we in the humanities call "progress." We think it is bold to go new places where no mind has tread the gentle grass of our paradise ideas. In reality, it is rather cowardly, since we slink off to new ground and hope we don't have to admit defeat, all the while producing a new set of unanswerables for the next group to ignore.

** * **

I choose to lay aside the crust of years in the academic mindset, which sight-shortens us with little tasks so we never get to think of the big picture. I'm going back to a search for more than an interesting bit of theory, or something which makes a good paper, or helpful technique. I'm going back to digging for useful meaning.

Hold on tight. This process is not covered by the manufacturer's warrantee.