JOIN: Dan Clemmensen

From: Dan Clemmensen (dgc@cox.rr.com)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2001 - 20:05:23 MDT


Hi, I'm Dan Clemmensen. I had intended to do a bit more research
before posting, but I just inadvertently posted a reply, so I
feel that I should introduce myself. The FAQ enjoins me to
avoid modesty in a JOIN posting. Modesty is not a major problem
with me anyway, so here goes:

I'm 51 years old, married, three daughters, and I've been a computer
programmer specializing in data communications for about 30 years. My
official job title is "systems architect", which is fairly descriptive.
I prefer high-level design to management. I founded Netrix corporation
in 1985 and was the defacto CTO for about 14 years.

I've recently joined Hyperchip
      http://www.hyperchip.com
We are building an internet core router.

I was quite active on the extropians mailing list for a period
of time during the mid 1990's. Damien Broderick derived quite
a lot of background for his book, "The Spike", from the list during
that period. I'm quoted slightly more often than Elizier, mostly
because I was a "radical singulatarian." On May 1, 1996, I made
the prediction that the singularity would occur within ten years
of that date. I still believe this.

I wrote a small paper, "Paths to the Singularity," and put it on
the web, after reading Eliziers's "staring into the Singularity"
and other papers of the same vintage. Elizier apparently read it, but
I don't think it had much in the way of profound insights. I
think I coined the term "superintelligence," or SI, to identify the
class of possible transhuman intelligences that may or may not be
AIs. (If I'm wrong on this, I apologize to the originator.)

I'm not a well organized person. As evidence of this, "Paths to
the Singularity" is no longer available on the web. (I'll send it
to anyone who will find a place for it.)

A google search on "clemmensen singularity" shows that Elizier
refers to that little paper several times. From reading his
references, I believe that he extracted a lot more from the
paper than I put into it. This is very flattering, but I feel
the credit goes to him.

I have done a great deal of software design and implementation at
many levels. In particular, I've implemented several special-purpose
languages using YACC and LEX (or bison and flex) and I have some
experience with GCC internals.

I'm reading through the material on the
      http://intelligence.org/
web site, but with the press of a new job and family commitments
I'm going slower than I had hoped. As soon as I have anything
meaningful to say, I'll say it. Until then, I'll probably say
meaningless stuff :-)



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